Theodore Roosevelt once said that "The first requisite of a good citizen in this Republic of ours is that he shall be able and willing to pull his weight." The second requirement? That he not filch walrus tusks. But that's just what some not-so-good citizen has done! UnBeige has learned that a walrus tusk belonging to the twenty-sixth president was stolen last month from Sagamore Hill, Roosevelt's historic home in Oyster Bay, New York. The 15-inch-long tusk—one of a pair—was apparently removed from the fireplace mantel in the second-floor guest room of the house sometime between February 9th and February 22nd. The National Park Service (NPS), which manages the national historic site, is working with local authorities to investigate the tusk-snatching and has requested that the tusk be added to the FBI's national stolen art list.

Meanwhile, you good citizens can pull your weight by keeping an eye out for anyone who speaks softly and carries a big tusk. Teddy's is 15 inches long with a circumference of 5.5 inches. Look for a rough outer surface that has been polished and a tip that has been carved and sharpened. A reward of $1,000 is being offered to anyone with information leading to the tusk's return. If you have information on the whereabouts of the tusk, contact NPS special agent Jeffrey Pascale at 215-597-9978.

The competition that spotted Stefan Sagmeister, James Victore, and Mike Mills when they were but wee design/art powerhouses-to-be is back for its eighth go-round. Behold the imminent launch of Young Guns 8, the Art Directors Club's international, cross-disciplinary, portfolio-based competition to identify the young creative vanguard. By "young," they mean 30 or under, and by "creatives," they mean those doing great things in graphic design, photography, illustration, advertising and art direction, environmental design, film, animation, video, interactive design, object design, and/or typography. What's so special about Young Guns? It recognizes an individual, and considers a body of work, not a single ad or design. Also, you get a really cool cube if you win.

Beginning next Wednesday, Young Guns 8 will be open to ADC members and non-members worldwide (last year's saw entrants from 84 countries). A jury of past ADC Young Guns including Rodrigo Corral, Jason Fulford, and Julia Hoffman will select the 50 winners. You have until May 12 to take your shot, but earlybirds will be rewarded with a free copy of the ADC Young Guns 7 Annual. Get your entry off to a good start by attending Wednesday's launch party at the ADC Gallery in New York City. We hear the walls will be covered with blank paper for attendees to draw on and express their creativity about what they think the ADC Young Guns award is, is not, and should be. This could get competitive. Bring your Copic markers and fire away.

A sign that the high-end auction world is coming back up for some air after being stuck with every other company well below the surface due to the global financial meltdown? Or just some last minute shaving to appear much more profitable? Reports say that Sotheby's has returned to profitability, jumping from big losses to big gains in just one year, and that its head, William Ruprecht, has returned to his former salary, having taken a voluntary cut last summer. The stock market took a liking to the news and gave a nice healthy bump to their listing, but before you start celebrating that the recession has left the land of art and auctions, it's probably important to know that Sotheby's also "eliminated about one-fifth of its staff" as well as removing "most money-losing guarantees to sellers." So that bump certainly came at a price and we'd say it's still probably a bit premature to start breaking out the champagne just yet (unless you're willing to share it with us and it's just drinking for drinking's sake).

On Tuesday, we posted about writer Ben Greenman's very funny McSweeney's piece wherein he explained his solution for how to save print: 3D. Wearing special glasses, the words popping off the page to push emphasis, it's clearly an absurd, totally ridiculous concept, right? Not so quick. Just hours before Greenman's piece was published, the Belgian newspaper Derniere Heure released the fruits of two months of their labor: a special 3D edition ("complete with viewing glasses" says the BBC). Although only the ads were transformed to leap at the reader (and reportedly didn't often work all that well) and it's only a one-off edition, what odd timing shared between humor and reality. Greenman swears it's all coincidence and that his piece had begun making the rounds as a submission since early February (so maybe it was the Belgians who copied him?!). If you speak French or can stumble your way through the interface, the whole 3D issue is available here.

Rouse yourself from your iPad-coveting daydreams and check out the just-released list of finalists for the National Magazine Awards, bestowed annually by the American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME). Below we've listed the finalists in the design and photo categories, including a nod for Platon's extraordinary "Portaits of Power" portfolio, published in the December 7 issue of The New Yorker, and Inez Van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin's work in the October issue of W. Meanwhile, after winning two consecutive National Magazine Awards for general excellence in its circulation category (under 100,000), Print was not nominated this year, but another design book—Architect, edited by Ned Cramer—snuck in to the group, where it will compete against Aperture, Military History, The Paris Review, and San Francisco. We've denoted last year's category winners (all have been nominated again) with an asterisk. The 2010 winners will be announced and presented with Alexander Calder-designed "Elephant" trophies at a ceremony on April 22 in New York.

DESIGN (print): The award honors the effectiveness of design, typography and artwork in support of the editorial mission of the magazine.
Esquire | GQ | Martha Stewart Living | New York | Wired*

PHOTOGRAPHY (print): The award honors the effectiveness of photography, photojournalism, and photo-illustration in support of the editorial mission of the magazine.
GQ* | National Geographic | The New York Times Magazine | Vanity Fair | Vogue

PHOTOJOURNALISM: This category recognizes the informative photographic documentation of an event or subject.
Foreign Policy | National Geographic* (2) | New York | Virginia Quarterly Review

PHOTO PORTFOLIO: This category honors creative photography and photo illustration, including portraiture.
National Geographic | New York | The New Yorker* | Out | W

Click here for the complete list of finalists.

(Photo: Annie Leibovitz)

Following up on our story from Monday about designer Jason Wu's Michelle Obama inauguration gown being donated to the Smithsonian, which helped kick off a new First Lady-focused exhibition at the National Museum of American History, the good people at the Institution were kind enough to pass along this behind-the-scenes video of preparing the collection for the public.

The exhibition opens today. More info can be found here.

Back in mid-December, New York's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene kicked off a competition to find a companion for Yves Behar's original NYC Condom wrapper design. Last month, we gave you the list of the finalists, and now we return to tell you that a winner has been selected. It's the 29-year old designer Luis Acosta, who picked up the win with his computer power button-like, red and yellow design. Personally speaking, it wasn't our favorite of the five shortlisted out of close to 600 entries, but it was also far superior to some of the others. Here's a bit from the NY Daily News about the winner and the stats behind his win:

Acosta, who lives in Kew Gardens, Queens, has a day job with the marketing department of Weidlinger Associates, an engineering company in downtown Manhattan. He created the edgy logo in his free time.

His limited-edition design won 23% of the vote, with others running close. A top hat earned 21%; a colorful circle design won 20%. A manhole cover and a train design got 19% and 17%, respectively.

Back in November, we told you that the seemingly always troubled Atlantic Yards project was still on wobbly legs, with lawsuits threatening to shut down the new home of the New Jersey Nets. But now it looks like another hurdle has been overcome, with the news that Thursday will see an official groundbreaking ceremony to kick the development off. Along with that news came the release of a handful of renderings by Ellerbe Becket and SHoP Architects of both the interior of the new arena, and some of its signage. Said images have gotten people riled up about the poor sightlines and have resulted in pre-construction poor reviews. But those quiet bits of criticism are not likely to compare at all to the yelling the protesters are going to be doing, as those against the Yards plan to also be in attendance for Thursday's launch event. You'll recall that the groups, against both the project and also developer Bruce Ratner himself, were out in full force way back in 2008 when Frank Gehry was still working on the building, but now after flying under the radar since the project's had its high-profile ups and downs, they're sure to be fired up again and ready to get themselves heard.

News of two architect deaths have hit about the same time this week, which would be nothing exceptionally unusual, except they were both important figures in one particular type of architecture: skyscrapers. The first was the news about Frank Williams' passing. Williams was responsible for a large number of significant New York buildings, from Trump Palace, "the tallest building on the East Side," to the 57th Street Four Seasons, which he designed with I.M. Pei (and which you might recall got a big thumbs up from CEOs in their picks for best hotels, ever). The second, and closer to this writer's heart, was the passing of Bruce Graham, the architect behind Chicago's two most iconic towers, the John Hancock Building and the Willis/Sears Tower, still the nation's tallest tower. While Dennis Hevesi files a very fitting tribute to Williams in the NY Times, local critic Blair Kamin pours himself into his obituary for Graham, filling it with loads of stories about the famous architect who helped build Skidmore, Owings & Merrill into the gigantic powerhouse it now is with his brilliant buildings. Here's one such story we enjoyed:

As Graham, a smoker, related the story of Sears Tower's beginning, he went to lunch with [engineer Fazlur Khan] at the Chicago Club. At the table, he grabbed a handful of cigarettes, cupped some in his hands and placed a smaller group on top, demonstrating what came to be called the "bundled tube" concept. Khan, who is credited with developing the idea, later said that it "constituted a whole new architectural vocabulary."

The 75-foot square tubes rose together until two dropped off at the 50th floor, two more stopped at the 66th, and three more at the 90, leaving only two to rise to a summit that frequently disappears in low-lying clouds.

More than one iPad-based Cultural Studies Reader of the future will remember these, the early 2010s, as the golden age of the tote bag. Once the province of PBS pledge drives and your spinster piano teacher (hers had piano keys and told the world "Music is my bag!"), totes are taking the world by storm. UnBeige HQ is so full of colorful, eco-friendly alternatives to plastic bags that we have totes for our totes.

A pioneer in the tote craze has been New York's Strand Book Store, which does a brisk business in classic Strand totes (we like the toile version) as well as an artist series that features illustrations by the likes of Art Spiegelman, David Hockney, and Adrian Tomine. Now the Strand has teamed with the School of Visual Arts, TOON Books, Drawn & Quarterly, and Fantagraphics Books to host a tote bag design contest. Artists and designers from around the world are invited to submit original illustrations representing the Strand and compete for the chance to see their work slapped on a tote that will be sold in the store and online. Other prizes include an afternoon with Françoise Mouly and the gang at TOON Books. You have until March 31 to impress a panel of judges that includes Mouly, Spiegelman, Tomine, and Steven Heller, who knows a good tote bag when he sees one. Go here for more information and to size up the competition.

Those inclined to more philanthropic tote bag design contests can head over to Print, which recently invited a dozen top graphic designers to create totes to benefit the charities of their choice. Christoph Niemann opted for Doctors Without Borders, Deanne Cheuk chose Smile Train, and James Joyce went with the UK branch of Save the Children. You can follow in their charitable footsteps by choosing a favorite cause and creating a design for it that can be printed on a tote. Several designs will be featured in the magazine and one lucky winner's tote will be produced and sold alongside those of the commissioned designers. Draw fast, because the deadline (March 15) is tote-ally approaching.

Friends, we have seen the future of both typography and the whole print medium and we have to tell you, it is glorious. "Are you talking about the iPad or something?" you ask "Bah!" we scoff loudly (maybe too loudly, sorry). No, we are talking of the new 3*TYPE technology. Author and New Yorker editor Ben Greenman has taken on the roll of spokesperson for the company who is set to shake up all we know and completely revive the ailing medium of print, and made the big announcement on McSweeney's. You'll definitely want to read the whole thing, but here's just a taste of the future:

Powered by revolutionary stereoscopic typography developed exclusively, this new technology will usher in a heretofore unimagined era in reading. This piece, the first ever printed with our proprietary 3*TYPE process, should serve as both an introduction and a primer. You may notice that certain words words are printed twice twice, first in roman and then, immediately afterwards, in boldface. You may also notice the offer, at right, for a special pair of glasses glasses. Order them -- or, if you have them already, remove them from their plastic casing and put them on; you will notice that when viewed through these glasses, the doubly printed words appear to leap leap off the screen screen.