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Initially released in 1998 by the Portuguese Design Center, the book "Design and Malaise" was reissued in 2022 by Orfeu Negro publishing house. It compiles articles, interviews, essays, and speeches written by Daciano da Costa (1930–2005), a pivotal figure in the practice, teaching, and institutionalization of design in Portugal. This review addresses both editions of the book from a transatlantic perspective.

Presenting various definitions of design, Costa in these texts offers an analysis of Portuguese society during a period that includes the April Revolution, the entry into the European Union, and the turn of the millennium. However, he does not define the term that gives the book its enigmatic title: the malaise remains as a kind of silent anguish in the face of phenomena that lie beyond the proper scope of the designer's actions.

While one-third of the first edition is dedicated to drawings and photographs of projects from the Atelier Daciano da Costa, allowing readers to appreciate his design and identify his public and private clients, the new edition excludes this section, as if the projects were merely for decorating the written work. One was published by the only state institution dedicated to design in Portugal (now extinct); the other was released by an independent publisher at a time when Costa's career is being (re)discovered on both national and international levels.

Presented here together, these books are complemented by six examples of Costa's work and by one of several interviews that, like this book, contributed to making him the only Portuguese designer to aspire to the status of a public intellectual.

This text is a synopsis of the article published in Fazer #2, initially written for the exhibition Fazer #2. This and other articles from this print edition of the magazine will be available for reading and sharing online once its print run is exhausted.