Hans Eckstein : Formgebung des Nützlichen Marginalien zur Geschichte und Theorie des Design was published as a vade-mecum with a washable plastic jacket shortly before the death of the author in 1985. In it Eckstein summarizes the essence of design from its beginnings in the 19th century up to the hochschule für gestaltung ulm (1953-1968). The book is incomplete. Eckstein does not give any list of references.

At the beginning of the winter semester 2000/2001, Prof. Gerd Fleischmann used this as an opportunity to formulate a challenge for the seminar on typography/layout in the advanced study period of graphic arts and communications design at the Faculty of Art and Design at the University of Applied Sciences in Bielefeld: theory and practice.
The study project is supposed to revise Eckstein’s legacy. The students are to make up for what he himself for understandable reasons did not manage to do anymore, that is to firmly embed his book in its historical context within which it is to be read and to investigate the many references and traces of information as well as to give evidence for them. At the end of the project the book shall be published as a completely revised edition in 12 volumes.
The individual volumes have been and are still worked on part in parallel and part in succesion; their publication results from the work process and therefore does not always correspond to the sequence of chapters in the original.