Well friends,
This thread opened several issues, and I'll try to address them all.
Why should we concentrate in the word design and the history of it's 
meanings?
What we are dealing here is the history of a word, its meanings 
throughout time that may enlighten its current usage as proper or 
improper, adequate or inadequate and, most of all, contribute to map and 
and make a delimitation of the Territory of Design as the field of 
design research.
The problem is that the graph "design" encompassed, at its origin when 
English orthography stabilised, three different meanings that evolved 
from three different words. The meanings where: things shall be done; 
designation & projective drawing. The origin of "designation" was in 
designare (an infinitive form of the verb designo) but the origin of 
projective drawing was disegno. "This shall be done" seems to have 
origin in the genitive of designo "designium".
Elaborating on the relation between designare and Design (arts & 
sciences) is idle because it was the origin of another word that the 
hazards of time and the proverbial tendency of English for 
simplification use the same spelling. It is like using the origin of 
"lute" as "fight" to explain the origin of the musical instrument 
"lute". (for that matter, it is more interesting to inquire about what 
the Hebrews called Bezallel's work, thank you Paul)
However, the inception of these three words in the English language 
coincide with a relevant period of human history that some called Early 
Modern. The relation between the "drawing" meaning of Design with 
Modernity is indisputable and the foundation of our present studies. 
Brake the link of Design with Modernity would be the same as brake the 
link between Agriculture and Neolithic. Design and Disegno where 
designating something that some professionals claimed to be their and 
New. Modern because it was supposed to revive and the overcome the works 
of the Ancients.
Roughly from 1600's to 1800's the 3 words were used in different 
contexts with no confusions between them. But when Noah Webster (the 
father of the Merriam Webster) wrote in 1828, the first American English 
dictionary he explained its meanings:
“DESIGN, v.t. [L. To seal or stamp, that is, to set or throw.]
1. To delineate a form or figure by drawing the outline; to sketch; as 
in painting and other works of art.
2. To plan; to form an outline or representation of any thing. Hence
3. To project; to form in idea, as a scheme. Hence,
4. To purpose or intend; as, a man designs to write an essay, or to 
study law.
5. To mark out by tokens"
(...)
He intertwined the three meanings as if they were the same word, giving 
the primacy of drawing over all others since from it all were deriving. 
Lovely Noah! This fascinating definition with the primacy on drawing 
must be linked to the development of industrialized America. We see this 
in the noun definitions where he writes: "In manufactories, the figures 
with which workmen enrich their stuffs, copied from painting or 
draughts." Some of the novelties of Early Modern gave place to full 
Modernity and Design came along.
In the same decade, the National Academy of Design was founded in New 
York as an Academy of Drawing, one of his mentors William Dunlap wrote 
the monumental 1834 "History of the Rise and Progress of the Arts of 
Design in the United States". Parallel to this, in England, the 
Government School of Design (later RCA) was founded by decree. Another 
facts consolidated Design as a discipline. I may underline the Journal 
of Design and Manufactures started in 1848 that gave to wider public a 
notion that Design was the use of sophisticated drawings in industry.
All over Europe and Industrialized countries, under different names, 
Schools and professionals were being developed to work as "artists" for 
industry.
By the end of WWII the word Design spread through out the world, not as 
a human capacity, but as a disicpline, a profession and a label we could 
add to some objects and this is why it was globally accepted. Ironically 
already in the 50's voices were claiming that Modernity was dead.
Herbert Simon's definition, something that was written to explain how 
the whole of artificiality was produced was wrongly adopted as a 
definition of Design (as a discipline).
Worse than that, disciplines that had very respectable designations for 
years, and with a similar evolution as Design, like Engineering, claimed 
their presence in the family picture of design , just because they were 
planning, projecting, because they changed existing situations into 
preferred ones...
A Territory that was about to be defined was shattered and, to my 
opinion, impossible to mend. Like Modernity is dead, Design will 
probably die as a discipline. The consequence today is that even if 
Design research is scientifically, epistemologically correctly pursuit, 
it lacks most of the times it s Ontological value because it is 
developed not really in the Territory of Design but in a constellation 
of ectoplasm activities that claimed the word.

Truth and Grace...well drawn or, as elegant artisans tearm it...
Best reagards,
Eduardo

PS. Zuccari's Etymology of Disegno is completely invented to "baptise" a 
concept that was dangerously linked to Neo Platonic ideas.

For more references you may read my paper published in 2010 by Grace 
Lees-Maffei in Working Papers on Design The Word “Design”: Early Modern 
English Dictionaries and Literature on Design, 1604 - 1837 at 
http://sitem.herts.ac.uk/artdes_research/papers/wpdesign/wpdvol4/corte_real.pdf

.


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