The mainstream perspective on sustainable development sees continued green growth as a result of technology innovation. As both an expert and diffuse discipline, design plays a key role in innovation and sustainable transition. Recently, circular economy has been proposed as the framework for design-driven innovation for a sustainability transition, and guides on circular design are now popular in the product innovation space. However, critics of popular interpretations of circular economy highlight a number of deficiencies in the approach, e.g., rebound effects, and circular design proposals are often limited to a focus on eco-design methods and uncritical adoption of mainstream circular assumptions. In an attempt to salvage the value of circularity, proponents of a sustainable circular economy and circular society outline approaches that address these shortcomings and simultaneously specify both expert, e.g. product design, and diffuse, e.g. co-design, roles for the change process. This revised agenda means that circular design approaches must embrace more than product and business model factors. Following a discussion of the role of technology in sustainable development and sustainability transitions, we review the shortcomings of the popular circular economy discourse and examine the role of design in enabling a circular sustainable transition. As a result, we identify seven characteristics of design, which make it perhaps the key discipline in envisioning sustainable circular economy possibilities. We illustrate how design projects demonstrate these principles and suggest how such considerations should influence industrial design practice toward sustainable circular economy futures.