I left this comment on Mind, Media and Society II. There was a post about Massive Change and design.

The process of design creates an artifact.

This is design as a verb and shows how it relates to the Laws of Media. It is also useful in the deconstruction of the artifact.

More often we use design as a noun. I think you can then say design is the artifact. McLuhan applied the Laws of Media to many different artifacts. So design really is everywhere. The depth of design, and thus artifacts, is detailed in David M. Levy's book, Scrolling Forward.

If design really is everywhere then the question becomes why we think (or feel) that brands such as Prada are design. Perhaps design tries to be invisible while brands try to be visible. So is this a ground figure?

(I'll have to think about a tetrad for brand.)

I was looking for Buckminster Fuller's definition of design but could not find it. But ran across this article by Bill Miller On Design.