Shepard Fairey does Dallas! The street artist is making his mark on The Big D with a series of murals that will be unveiled tomorrow. The citywide project is sponsored by Dallas Contemporary, which is celebrating with an “over-the-top, neon-inspired” Saturday night dance party (fingers crossed for glowsticks!). Fairey will balance DJing duties with signing merch from the on-site OBEY pop-up shop. Meanwhile, the Contemporary Art Dealers of Dallas are organizing an art bus tour for next Saturday, February 11. Stops include the current Rob Pruitt, David Jablonowski, and Failure exhibitions at Dallas Contemporary, several of the Fairey murals, and a studio visit with Dallas-based graffiti crew Sour Grapes. Don’t miss the bus: tickets are going fast here.

Lately we’ve been sleeping with a copy of Todd Oldham and Kiera Coffee’ wondrous Alexander Girard mega-monograph under our pillow, and next Tuesday, February 14, Pratt Institute welcomes the delightful Oldham for a lecture on all things Girard, from his iconic textile designs for Herman Miller and branding and environmental design for Braniff International Airways to his celebrated retail store Textiles and Objects and folk art-stuffed Girard Foundation. The 6 p.m. lecture is free and open to the public, but Pratt students get first dibs on seats.

As part of its burgeoning “Fashion at FIAF” programming, our friends at the French Institute Alliance Francaise here in New York have invited fashion designer agnès b. (née Agnès Andrée Marguerite Troublé) to curate a month-long series of films that have most influenced her life and career as a designer, photographer, and more recently as a film producer and director. Among her picks are Godard‘s Vivre Sa Vie and Pierrot le Fou, while Valentine’s Day revelers can be transported to St. Tropez at one of one of three V-Day screenings of …And God Created Woman, starring Brigitte Bardot. The fashionable French fun kicks off on Tuesday, when agnès b. will appear in person to present the first film in the series, The Crime of Monsieur Lange, directed by Jean “Yes, he’s my dad” Renoir. Buy your tickets here.

Create a social media strategy, launch your campaign, and track the results in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. The online event and workshop will feature speakers including Morin Oluwole (Facebook), Michael Brito (Edelman Digital), and Tim Devane (bitly). Register now.

Cosabella is on the hunt for a new graphic designer to join its Miami-based team. Here, you’ll conceptualize and design artwork that reflects the intimate apparel brand’s aesthetic and identity.

In this role you’ll design assets for the company’s sales, marketing and public relations teams, and create images for catalogs, promotional flyers, posters, advertising, hang tags, video presentations and more. You’ll also be involved in photo shoots, retouching images for look books, editorial, product flats and web galleries. Read more

Philip Johnson‘s Glass House will soon have a new leader manning the transparent and modern ship. Today, the National Trust for Historic Preservation announced that Henry Urbach will be taking over as director of the historic architectural landmark in New Canaan, Connecticut. Urbach most recently served as curator of architecture and design at SFMOMA, having taken leave from the position last spring to work independently, which included research work at the Glass House itself. Previously, he’d also run a popular gallery in New York for nearly a decade, the eponymous Henry Urbach Architecture. It is currently planned that he will take on the roll at the Glass House on April 2, replacing its current interim director, Rena Zurofsky, who had this to say about his selection:

I met Henry last spring and was struck by his energy and enthusiasm for the site. He seems to me ideal to lead the dedicated Glass House team into even more innovative and exciting programmatic terrain, and to push restoration programs on track. I congratulate Henry, and also Estevan Rael-Galvez, Vice President of Sites at the National Trust for Historic Preservation, on his astute choice.

Unless you’re reading this in another country, and even then it still might apply, it’s highly likely that you’ve at one point at least seen, if not purchased, something that features the now-iconic “Made the USA” brand certification mark (the one with the hand). The California-based design consultancy firm RKS is now taking a page from that “Made in the…” concept originally developed and designed by another design firm, Conrad Phillips Vutech, with the unveiling of their own brand mark, “Designed in the USA.” The intention, of course, is not only displaying pride and a sense of unity for American craftsmanship (or “designmanship”), as well as helping to win over consumers for whom homegrown design is important. And as an offshoot, we’re betting that, like Conrad Phillips Vutech before them, RKS wouldn’t mind at all if a brand mark they created became as familiar an institution. Here’s a bit from their press release:

Why use it? This logo can enhance your brand and expand customer attraction, differentiate you from competitors, influence sales or usage/adoption, and/or strengthen an export position. It will also raise the bar for all, while branding the contributions from the creative and ingenious talents that come together in the United States from all corners of the globe.

And here are the specifics of who can use the logo and where.

Businesses are invited to use the logo which design all, or virtually all, aspects of their offerings in the U.S.; have been operating domestically for 12 months, and are not the subject of any unsatisfactory rating from an applicable product/service rating company or government agency; and retain evidence to substantiate that designs are domestically produced with no, or negligible, foreign contribution.

MediabistroTV debuts a new series today, “My First Big Break” where we talk to media heavyweights about that break that got them to where they are today. Our first episode features Brian Williams, the anchor and managing editor of “NBC Nightly News.” You know what he’s doing now, and you may know a bit about his past. But did you know he went bankrupt, that he maxed out his credit cards and that he worked in technical operations after failing in small market TV? Williams tells us who gave him his First Big Break, and how it changed the course of his career.

For more videos, check out our YouTube channel and follow us on Twitter: @mediabistroTV

David Stark has made a name for himself with design that is simultaneously innovative and playful, monumentally scaled yet welcoming and thoughtfully customized. His Brooklyn-based firm’s events, for clients ranging from Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum and New Yorkers for Children to West Elm and discerning brides often transform quotidian materials—Post-Its, paint chips, bundled newspapers—into one-night wonderlands. Guests have been known to marvel, look closer, and then ask, “Why didn’t I think of that?”

Stark’s latest production is WOOD SHOP, a “surprise ambush” of Nina Freudenberger‘s Haus Interior in New York. “For about a month, all of the product that Haus usually carries will be removed and replaced with our limited-edition WOOD SHOP collection that is inspired by the iconic wood worker’s atelier,” explains Stark of the collaborative concept store-cum-art gallery, which opens to the public on Friday at 11:00 a.m. (sneak a peek at some of the goods and buy them online here). “We’re excited to take the pop-up store to the next level.” Stark took time away from last-minute preparations to answer our seven questions about wooden must-haves, his start in event design, and how he created a “garden of Versailles” out of shredded paper.

1. What are a few of your favorite products in WOOD SHOP?
Oh, I love so, so many of them that it is hard to name one or two, but I am particularly happy with the hand-crocheted paint can and brush pillows, the turned poplar vases, and I do love the “Pining for You” poster/valentine. It’s a fantastic card to send in the mail, and it is also cool to frame and put on a wall. This pieces is the newest in our company tradition of newsprint cards that we have sent to friends and clients over the last couple of years. Those cards have become so popular that they are commonly saved and framed as wall art.

2. You went to art school at RISD. How did you get your start in event design?
Totally by accident! I didn’t even know there was a career called, “event design”! Back in the day, I worked with flowers and a partner, making arrangements for parties to support my fledgling painting career. Over time, I did more and more floral work than painting and got better and better at it. One day we were invited to interview for the job of designing the décor for New York City Opera’s fundraising gala. Carolyn Roehm, a noted florist in her own right, was the chair lady of the evening, and she took one look at our book and said, “Well, there is no question that you make the most beautiful flower arrangements, but this evening is not about flowers at all.”

All of a sudden a light bulb went off! It was a real a-ha moment. The revelation that flowers were not the only decorative tool for a party was mind-blowing. It seems real obvious of course, but at the time, it was radical. Now flowers are just one of the tools in my tool box, and the rest of the world of options is readily at my fingertips.
Read more

Jonathan Saunders, with models wearing looks from his spring 2012 collection, before his presentation to the BFC/Vogue Designer Fashion Fund judges in December.

Print- and color-loving Jonathan Saunders has sewn up the 2012 British Fashion Council/Vogue Designer Fashion Fund, the across-the-pond version of Anna Wintour and co.’s wildly successful initiative to boost young design talent. Now in its third year, the BFC/Vogue award provides the winner with £200,000 (at current exchange, just a few dollars over the stateside $300,000 purse) and access to industry mentors. Also shortlisted for the award were Marios Schwab, Mary Katrantzou, Meadham Kirchhoff (designed by Edward Meadham and Benjamin Kirchhoff), Nicholas Kirkwood, Peter Pilotto, Richard Nicoll, Roksanda Ilincic, and Zoe Jordan.

Saunders, who also made the 2011 shortlist, was selected as the winner based on the strength of his critically acclaimed catwalk and pre-collections over the past few seasons, his business plan, and a presentation to a judging committee chaired by Vogue UK editor-in-chief Alexandra Shulman. So what’s next for Saunders’ burgeoning label? “We have four womenswear and two menswear collections a year—so we’ll be expanding these collections and launching accessories,” says the Glasgow-born designer, who counts Rei Kawakubo, Miuccia Prada, Le Corbusier, and Charlotte Perriand among his design heroes. Meanwhile, his fall 2012 collection hits the runway on Sunday, February 19, during London Fashion Week.

Famed literary critic Lionel Trilling once described Henry James as a “social twitterer.” Sure, he meant it as an insult, but it makes us feel better about having signed up to twitter ourselves. Look to the official UnBeige Twitter feed, for up-to-the-minute newsbites, event snippets, links of interest, design trivia, and free candy (OK, we’re still working on the physics of that last one). The mediabistro.com tech wizards have added to the sidebar at right a handful of our most recent word bursts (limited to 140 characters), but you can sign up to follow all of our twittering, and start twittering yourself at twitter.com.

This week, Dan’s Papers is looking for an art director/department manager, while King.com is hiring a 3D artist. CQ Roll Call is in need of an art director, and NBC Universal is seeking an art director for its E! and G4 networks. Get the details on these jobs below, and find more just-posted gigs on mediabistro.com.

• Art Direct/Dept. Manager Dan’s Papers (Southampton, NY)
• 3D Artist King.com (Stockholm, Sweden)
• Art Director CQ Roll Call (Washington, DC)
• Art Director NBC Universal (Los Angeles, CA)
• Art Production Associate, Whole Living Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia (New York, NY)

For more job listings, go to the Mediabistro job board, and to post a job, visit our employer page. For real-time openings and employment news, follow @MBJobPost.

We’re not entirely sure how it’s played, and at least just a few days ago you’d have to travel to Amsterdam to buy a copy (and making sure to call first so they know you’re coming), but now that we know about it, we’re in desperate lust for NEXT Architects‘ “The Modern Architecture Game.” Launched earlier this month, it’s the second edition of the board game, first developed in 1999 between the partners at the firm and the Delft University of Technology. The most recent update includes a translation into English and spreads its questions more internationally, ranging “right across the breadth of modern world history.” For now it’s available from NEXT themselves, but only if you do that calling ahead first (they write that they’re not able to ship one off in the mail). We’ve also found it at Architectura & Natura Booksellers in the Netherlands, and it can be purchased here. Granted, it isn’t cheap, particularly with the dollar-to-euro difference, but how often do you get to play a board game with pieces like Koolhaus’ CCTV Tower, or Foster’s Gherkin? Here’s a short trailer.