W.J.T. Mitchell developed the idea of Metapictures in the book “Picture Theory” (1994). These are images about images. They can be cartoons about cartoons, photographs about photography, cartoons about photography, and so on. They can even theorize about images – hence “Picture Theory.” Magritte’s painting “The Treachery of Images,” commonly known as “This is not a pipe,” is a classic example of a Metapicture.

While reading “What do pictures want?” (2005), where Mitchell revisits the concept, I couldn’t help but wonder why there isn’t a similar study regarding design about design.

It is not a rare genre. Just off the top of my head, I recall books on typography, graphic identities for design studios, and monographs on designers, where a formal and imagistic reflection is made on the design processes.

Critical and historical reflections on these self-reflexive objects are avoided because, within the deontology of this discipline, using design on itself is considered self-indulgent. The classic designer should work for clients, and nothing more. Any theory, even while studying, is viewed with the utmost suspicion. When design does not deal with clients or the so-called “real world” (which corresponds to the commercial practice of an atelier), someone quickly labels that design as “theoretical.”

That may be why movements like Critical Graphic Design or the ‘designer as author’ are frustrating. They attempt to make design a critical practice about design and its position in the world. Still, they generally align with this imperative against formal self-reflection. Their politics is almost always circumscribed to content and context. Design processes are evaluated through their institutional or labor practices. An excessive preoccupation with form or image is disparaged as “trendy,”

In movements like Speculative Design or Design Fiction, one reaches the point of only imagining a self-reflexive design by resorting to fictional clients, future contexts, or alternate universes.

Is it possible to have self-reflexive design in this world?