A seismic design procedure is developed to enable concrete buildings to be designed to achieve a specified acceptable level of damage under the design earthquake. The acceptable limit is defined as a displacement profile related to limit material strains or code specified drift limits. In this procedure, the elastic properties, including initial stiffness, strength and period, are the end product of the design rather than the starting point. It is shown that the procedure is simple to apply, and results in significant differences from the more conventional force-based procedure. Designs for multi-storey frame and wall buildings are presented, and target displacements are compared with results from inelastic time-history analysis.