Anemic ad sales and the game-changing dynamics of this tangled Interweb continue to force media companies to shed titles (except in China, where they can't launch them fast enough). The latest casualty is modern design-focused Metropolitan Home, the 26-year-old publication edited by Donna Warner. It emerged today as the loser in a shelter category smackdown with ELLE Decor, also published by Hachette Filipacchi, echoing last month's decision by Condé Nast to keep the lights on at Bon Appétit while sticking a fork in Gourmet.

"We believe the best strategy in the upscale shelter segment is to boldly focus our resources and investment on ELLE Decor," said Alain Lemarchand, president and CEO of Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S. (HFMUS), in a statement issued today. ELLE Decor will now move from the HFMUS Luxury Design Group (which consisted of ELLE Decor, Metropolitan Home, and the web portal PointClickHome.com) to the ELLE Group, so it sounds as if PointClickHome.com is also history. The December issue of Metropolitan Home, which hits newsstands next week, will be the magazine's last. According to HFMUS, Warner and her staff will be leaving the company.

When it comes to daunting projects fraught with politics and strong opinions, rebranding the 89-year-old Art Directors Club (ADC) is right up there with selecting an official canine mascot for the American Kennel Club. But the ADC has done it—and kept the fur flying to a minimum—thanks to a committee helmed by ADC board members Brian Collins and Jakob Trollbäck. Designed by Trollbäck + Company, the new identity replaces the vertically arrayed acronym that hinted at a fraternal order with a fresh logo that spells out the club's name in tight text. As for that sizzling hue, you might recognize it as the signature pink of thehappycorp, the recently shuttered company founded by ADC president Doug Jaeger, who is now with TAXI New York. The new logo is indicative of the ADC's renewed "sense of engagement and vitality," noted Jaeger. "It will make the club more visible, and is only the beginning of what we are about to do."

Among the things on the ADC's to-do list is its annual Designism event, which "explores the responsibilities and experiences of creatives and designers to drive social and political change." Designism 4.0 takes place next Wednesday, November 18, at the ADC Gallery in New York City. Featured speakers will include charismatic Design Observer Bill Drenttel, Pentagram powerhouse Paula Scher, and Blake Mycoskie, founder and chief shoe giver at TOMS Shoes. Visit the ADC events calendar to register.

UPDATE: Veteran art director and font of knowledge Steven Guarnaccia has helpfully pointed out that the old ADC logo was based on Albrecht Durer's monogram.

While we went to a really great lecture last week, unfortunately everyone was entirely civil and friendly, which was a shame, as it seems like we're never luck enough to be at one where the guest speaker goes ballistic. Such was the case late last week when designer Michael Wolff spoke at the D&AD President's Lecture in the UK (no, not that Michael Wolff, the other one). His chief complaint was over the branding of cities, but he stopped from time to time to get in some other digs too. He complained that city branding was simply "an illusion of an easy win for cities, without actually making them any better to live in." And you know how everyone was up in arms about the 2012 Olympics branding back in late 2007? The work designed by Wolff Olins, Michael Wolff's former branding firm? Well he doesn't like them either:

He also slammed his former branding consultancy Wolff Olins, saying "the group's boldness has turned to arrogance, which has not a trace of humility in it."

However, Wolff apparently does still like Crocs, as Design Week mentions that he wore a pair to the event. We're guessing because he understands their great impact on in the humanity.

Starchitect, tough talker and suspected-fixer of Super Bowl XLII, Peter Eisenman, has been named the first Charles Gwathmey Professor of Architecture at Yale. The title was bestowed upon him thanks to a donation by fashion icon Ralph Lauren (estimated to have cost around $3 million), who had been a friend and admirer of the late architect who passed away in early August, shortly after completing his mixed-review restoration of Paul Rudolph's Art and Architecture Building on Yale's campus. Eisenman, who was already teaching at the university under visiting status, will now enter into a five-year position there as was stipulated in the Gwathmey Professorship:

Eisenman said he is honored to be appointed the Charles Gwathmey. "I was always a Jiminy Cricket on Charles's shoulder, telling him 'Charlie do this' or 'Charlie don't do this,' Eisenman said. "But now that I'm carrying his name, he's sort of become my conscience."

Walking through the corridors of Loria Center, Eisenman said he felt at once sorrow and joy at the announcement of the position.

Speaking of Yale and architecture, we should mention another visiting professor, Leon Krier, might start popping up here and there. Krier, who has served as Prince Charles' right hand man in hating on modern architecture (he was also the master planner for the crumbling, dangerous Poundbury development), will be traveling to San Diego this week to apparently tell the city what it's doing wrong, likely complaining about all the modernism and skyscrapers. This is the first stop on what could become Krier hitting the lecture circuit, following the publication of his recent book The Architecture of Community. Could this the first step toward getting Prince Charles' over in the US to start messing with our architecture? Our paranoid xenophobia says "Yes."

Starting the week off, the biggest design-y conversations seem to be coming from the airline industry and so that is where we too must head. First comes the news that famous fashion designer and "Project Runway" and "Design Star" familiar, Cynthia Rowley, has been hired by United Airlines to redesign their employee uniforms, of which we're guessing there will be several dozen varieties, given that the company has over 40,000 employees working in numerous areas. The new outfits, according to the Chicago Tribune, will be unveiled in 2011 (assuming, of course, there's an airline industry left). Second in airline buzz comes this follow up from a story we posted back in early June, when an anonymous designer from American Airlines got in touch with writer/designer Dustin Curtis about how awful it was trying to get good design ideas through the gigantic company. Following up on the conversation, Curtis has posted news that just after his original post went live, American tracked down who had sent him the anonymous email and fired the designer for disclosing company information. Curtis sees this as yet another example of why the airline just doesn't get it, whereas others, like Joshua Blankenship, sees the whole thing as "creating controversy for its own sake."

Are you a die-hard Top Chef fan? Do you have strong views about "flavor profiles"? Were you able to enjoy Julie & Julia without becoming distracted by the ridiculously hideous costume choices for the Julie character? Then clear your plate for this job opportunity: Cooking.com is looking for a new cook—and by cook, we mean designer—to join its Marina del Rey, California headquarters. The culinary media and retail juggernaut is seeking a "creative production coordinator" to produce and assist in the design of online communications. Ingredients of a successful candidate include two cups of experience with web visuals, one cup of marketing savvy, and two heaping tablespoons of PowerPoint and PhotoShop expertise, all sprinkled with a serious interest in cooking. Got HTML, Dreamweaver, or Visio skills? That's icing on the cake.

Pack your knives and apply for this creative production coordinator, Cooking.com job or view all current mediabistro.com design/art/photo jobs.

Who knew that 2009 was going to be the year that modern art got high-profile political again? Just a few months back, we had Glenn Beck telling us about the evil communist indoctrination elements found within the exterior of Rockefeller Plaza and now we have the decision not to hang painter Alma Thomas' "Watusi (Hard Edge)" piece in Michelle Obama's office. Thomas' work had come under attack when it was mentioned that the First Lady would like to hang some of her work in the White House. According to the Washington Post, conservative sites started arguing that Thomas' work plagiarized Henri Matisse -- their point, we suppose, was that by hanging her work, Michelle Obama would therefor become pro-plagerism? Whatever the case, and not to exaggerate too much here, this is clearly the worst instance of pointless, partisan, arguing-just-to-argue ever in the history of universe. Unfortunately, the Post continues, the White House has decided to not hang the painting, claiming it just didn't work in the office after all, but perhaps they just wanted to quiet this absurdly focused pressure. And this apparently wasn't the only piece to catch heat. Does anyone have any info on obtaining Canadian citizenship? We're sick of this.

Back in early October, we told you about the death of Gourmet, the smartly designed magazine that always got our mouths a-watering. It's been a strange new world without it and although we have other magazines to turn to when we're feeling those foodie urges, we certainly still miss it. We were made all the more melancholy when we found former art director Kevin Demaria's Last Days of Gourmet. It's a heartbreaking collection of photographs from those final hours while employees cleaned out their desks, everything was boxed up, and the magazine was finally shuttered. Also, in this age of constant magazine deaths, the series helps paint a good picture of the real people and places involved in these closures.

Let's start this last day of the work week a little mean, shall we? Currently making the rounds in the ad agency world is Dan Neil's scathing review of modern ad icon Alex Bogusky's latest book (co-written with John Winsor), Baked In: Creating Products and Businesses That Market Themselves. While Neil admits there are the occasional useful thoughts in the very, very slim book, he spends most of his review tearing it apart, saying that most of it is either very obvious words of wisdom ("better products tend to sell better") or not entirely grounded in reality. He sums it all up nicely toward the beginning when he writes "perhaps Bogusky and Winsor never had an editor to challenge them on some of the most evident holes in their book." It's a great picking apart of the book (we've always been a little critical of Bogusky's literary work ourselves), but also seems to have a wide spread, speaking to the many other self/business-help books that follow that "well this is all great, but how does it apply to the real world?" model.

The Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA), which is currently exhibiting the ICP's Richard Avedon restrospective as well as a survey of photos from its own collection, is housed in a glorious 1927 Beaux-Arts building that recently underwent a seven-year renovation and reinstallation. Architecture buff Jim Garrett decided to pay tribute to the Paul Philippe Cret-designed museum by recreating it in LEGOs. He describes his "brickitecture" DIA as "selectively scaled down" (a scale model would be about three times wider and longer) but didn't sacrifice detail. For dramatic effect, a Thomas Crown Affair-style art heist is in progress on the roof. Garrett's other creations include LEGO versions of the Detroit Public Library and the Sphinx, as well as an eleven-foot tall model of Detroit's Penobscot Building.

Previously on UnBeige:

"He was not a great draftsman. In terms of what it means to draw beautifully, in terms of control, I don't think he was very notable....He had an enormous sense of style, and he could bring that burnished style to a product in way that enhanced its value. That was a very substanial gift. When you gave him a shoe to draw, the shoe became more sophisticated. You got something extra.

He was really not related to the field of illustration. He was an outsider who came in and proved that you could be an enormous personality, do an individual thing, and still be used successfully in commercial art."

-Milton Glaser on Andy Warhol, who he calls "the perfect commercial artist," in Tony Scherman and David Dalton's POP: The Genius of Andy Warhol (Harper)

(Photos: Journal of Popular Noise)

The Journal of Popular Noise, the audio magazine founded and edited by graphic designer Byron Kalet, is a treat for the senses, from its expertly curated musical selections (distributed as a twice-yearly trio of seven-inch vinyl records) to its letterpress-printed, hand-folded packaging. Just in time to impress the design-savvy music fan on your holiday shopping list comes JPN's fall/winter edition (above), which will feature the music of Seattle band Foscil. We interviewed Brooklyn-based Kalet before he got too tired from hand-folding all of the new issues, which ship next month. Read on for the tale of JPN's origins, how frugality was the mother of great design, and why he thinks of Foscil as "the Dick Avedon to my Alexey Brodovitch."

How did the Journal of Popular Noise come about?
There were a couple distinctly different signs that all pointed in the same direction for me. I had been doing some research and had long been interested in the intersection of music and design. As a musician and designer, I always felt very strongly that the same set of rules and functions were at work in the decision-making process when creating in either medium. Rhythm, contrast, tone, are among many of the words that are commonly used by both designers and musicians to describe what they're up to. I wanted to try and very directly apply the basic compositional conventions of pop music to the composition of a magazine, as it seemed to me they were already almost one and the same. I was particularly attracted to magazines, as they seemed to have not only a close formal relationship to music composition but also an almost symbiotic relationship with pop music. Maybe blogs have that role now, but imagine what pop music would be like without Rolling Stone in the 70's, Maximum RocknRoll in the 80's, Riot Grrrl zines in the 90's, and then, well...blogs.

How did you decide upon the three-records-tucked-in-a-lovely-package format?
Early in 2007, magazines were still flourishing—as the record industry was floundering trying to navigate the new business of ringtones and digital downloads. Magazines are great because they offer an experience that one could never get from the internets, which is why I chose the most tactile and physically impressive production techniques. So with all that on my mind, it seemed obvious that this was the way to do it. There's a long tradition of record clubs, serial composition, and music magazines, from Aspen to Flexidiscs. I don't think I'm really doing anything new, I'm just doing it my way for what's happening right now.

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