Design : intelligence made visible

Design is all around us, it is impossible to avoid.

Everything that surrounds us has been designed - from the paperclip and the iPod, to our homes and the way we live. "Design: Intelligence Made Visible" is epic, opinionated, comprehensive in scope and forms the definitive statement on design for this century.

Written by Stephen Bayley, one of the world's best known commentators on modern culture and Terence Conran, one of the world's leading designers and arbiters of taste, this book pays tribute to the leading names, movements, materials and processes such as furniture, fashion, cars, graphics, products, signs and symbols.

The book combines essential facts with authoritative opinions - everything, as the industrial designer Raymond Loewy once said, from a lipstick to a steamship - but brought right up to date.

A series of essays begin by introducing how design has its place in modern cultural history including Terence Conran's definition of design. The main section of the book comprises an A-Z of iconic people, products and processes from 20th century to the present day with biographies of leading designers from past and present, as well as corporate histories, product appraisals, and witty accounts of relevant management, cultural and social theories.

A major appendix has Bayley and Conran assessing the up and coming designers of today and finally a chapter on branding concludes with a provocative methodology to assess brand value.

Beautifully designed and beautifully written, "Design: Intelligence Made Visible" is simply the indispensable guide to the contents of the modern world.