To understand the meaning of design is… to understand the part form and content play… and to realize that design is also commentary, opinion, a point of view, and social responsibility. To design is much more than simply to assemble, to order, or even to edit; it is to add value and meaning, to illuminate, to simplify, to clarify, to modify, to dignify, to dramatize, to persuade, and perhaps even to amuse.
Design is both a verb and a noun. It is the beginning as well as the end, the process and product of imagination.
-Paul Rand Graphic designer.
From his book Design, Form, and Chaos, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1993.