triad of
ETYMOLOGY

Design is simultaneously⁵¹ a noun, a verb and an adjective. The chair you are presumably sitting on is a design (noun), the outcome of an act of design (verb) that someone has consciously engaged in and that a potential buyer or passerby perhaps might admire as a design marvel (adjective).

Engaging with design is thus about engaging with its different meanings, with the various forms in which it manifests. As the designer moves from inception to implementation, and to the stage where their design interacts with the world, they are also moving through a territory of meaning: of meanings that design has acquired over time, meanings that the designer has forged and meanings decoded by the end user. Just as meanings are not fixed, the designer realises that they are engaged in a process of unlimited semiosis.⁵²

51. As a noun, ‘design’ refers to the artefacts we design. As a verb, ‘design’ refers to the process or act of designing and as an adjective, ‘design’ refers to the quality that artefacts or services possess such that they are referred to as having been ‘designed’.
52. read Umberto Eco in Drift and Unlimited Semiosis (1990).