Three possible approaches towards justification of the place of design in the aesthetic theory are reconstructed in the article - within the Kant's esthetics, within the theoretical axioms of Marx' esthetics (M.S Kagan, “The art morphology”, I.I. Ioffe, “The Synthetic theory of art”, as well as within the polemically oriented towards the above mentioned conceptions “ collective sensibility” by I.M. Chubarov (“Collective sensibility. Theories and practices of left vanguard”, “Liberated object vs. objectivated conscience ”), in which the author, based on the theory and practice of literature and art vanguard formulates a new hypothesis describing objects existing in art space.