Annotation: Interacting with any book begins with its design. First we notice the book’s shape and color; then our attention turns to details of its graphic design; and, finally, we read the text in an order that is dictated by the composition’s font. Books are not the only things that we encounter in this manner: this is how we interact with most objects within our cultural reality. Design surrounds us on all sides. While we often use this extremely familiar word, it remains difficult to explain exactly what design is. The boundaries of this term and the phenomenon itself are blurred by the variability of dynamic sociocultural processes, and, in order to understand them, we must analyze the ways in which design and modern culture shape one another. Taking this approach, author and architect Alexey Ryabov shows the ways in which design and design products relate to digitalization and virtualization, new romanticism, and other cultural metaplots of the early 21st century.