Sir Terence Conran and Stephen Bayley, who collaborated on The Conran Directory of Design back in the '80s after founding London's Design Museum, are at it again. The pair have recently released Design: Intelligence Made Visible, a 335-page tome that took two years to put together.

Their new book is a witty and informative reference tool featuring designers, products and processes running from A-Z through the 20th century to the present day, encompassing subjects as high-brow as architecture by Le Corbusier, Art Nouveau and the Bauhaus movement, through to the minutiae of modern daily life, such as the iPod or Honda cars.

An excellent profile on the pair in The Scotsman illuminates the duo's history, the arguments over what design was good enough to make it into the book, and why Conran omitted his own nephew--a guy named Jasper Morrison. You can pick the book up here.