Preface : The useless machines -- Design as art -- Designers and stylists : what is a designer? ; Pure and applied ; A living language ; A rose is a rose is a ; The stylists ; Mystery art -- Visual design : Character building ; The shape of words ; Poems and telegrams ; Two in one ; A language of signs and symbols? ; 12,000 different colors -- Graphic design : Poster with a central image ; Poster without end ; Children's books -- Industrial design : Micro-art ; How one lives in a traditional Japanese house ; What is bamboo? ; A spontaneous form ; A prismatic lamp ; Wear and teat ; Orange, peas and rose ; A piece of travelling sculpture ; Luxuriously appointed gentlemen's apartments ; Knives, forks, and spoons ; And that's not all ; Fancy goods -- Research design : Iris ; Growth and explosion ; Concave-convex forms ; The tetracone ; Yang-yin ; Moir©♭ ; Direct projection ; Projections with polarized light ; The square ; The circle ; An arrow can lose its feathers but not its point ; Theoretical reconstruction of imaginary objects ; Exercises in topology, or rubber-sheet geometry ; Two fountains, nine spheres -- Appendix : the machines of my childhood (1924)