Big news in the extruded molten thermoplastic, layered photopolymer world of 3D printing: privately held MakerBot has agreed to merge with Stratasys in a stock-for-stock deal valued at $403 million (based on Stratasys’ stock price at yesterday’s market close). The deal is expected to close by October.

Founded in 2009, Brooklyn-based MakerBot is the most recognized name in desktop 3D printers–its Replicator 2 will be available on Amazon later this month–and Stratasys, formed last year by the merger of Stratasys and Objet, plans to preserve the MakerBot brand, management, and “spirit of collaboration it has built with its users and partners.” CEO and co-founder Bre Pettis will continue to lead MakerBot, which will operate as a separate subsidiary of Stratasys. “We have an aggressive model for growth, and partnering with Stratasys will allow us to supercharge our mission to empower individuals to make things using a MakerBot, and allow us to bring our 3D technology to more people,” said Pettis in a statement announcing the deal. MakerBot has sold approximately 22,000 3D printers to date. Next up for the company: the MakerBot digitizer desktop 3D scanner, which promises “a quick and easy way to turn the things in your world into 3D designs you can share and print.”

We love a sale, and some of our favorites take place at the handful of Taschen bookstores scattered about the globe. And Taschen “SuperSale” time is again upon us. The stateside sales (at the Taschen emporiums in Beverly Hills, Hollywood, Miami, and New York) begin tomorrow and run through Sunday, offering beautiful books of “art, anthropology, and aphrodesia” at 50% to 75% off their retail prices. Come early and wear your game face, because we may look sweet, but we will totally jump you for the last discounted display copy of that smashing Neo Rauch monograph. Can’t get to a Taschen store? Check out the just-posted sale offerings online.

Martha Stewart recently sat down with Bravo’s Andy Cohen for an on-stage chat at New York’s 92nd Street Y. We sent Nancy Lazarus to glean lifestyle lessons from the indefatigable 71-year-old, whose latest book, Living the Good Long Life (Clarkson Potter), is “a practical guide to caring for yourself and others.”

Martha Stewart has been called a lifestyle mogul, domestic guru, and design maven. Whether making a stylish court appearance to testify in the contentious Macy’s-versus-JCPenney case or dishing about her recent foray into online dating, she creates intrigue wherever she goes.

She didn’t disappoint her devotees attending New York’s 92Y event last week. Andy Cohen, Bravo’s development and talent EVP, interviewed Stewart on assorted topics and fielded several audience queries. Below are selected “mottos” that Martha lives and works by. Since she’s so organized, we’ve outlined them as a numbered list (print, laminate, and save!). While the principles are straightforward, adopting them for one’s everyday life might be another matter entirely.

1. “Use your homes as your laboratories.” She brought back hanging nasturtiums from the Himalayas to reproduce in her greenhouse. Her favorite residence is Skylands, a 1925 Mission-style granite house in Maine.

2. For decorating, “edit and put together a home that reflects your own style.” Conversely, she warned not to “over-reach and copy others’ designs, or you may miss the point.”

3. When entertaining, “plan ahead and stay in your comfort zone.” Make place cards and menu cards with unique typefaces for guests to take home. Ask about food intolerances and serve familiar recipes. Her favorite is borscht made with beets from her garden.

4. Be conscious of the environment. For example, she uses white birch logs when making a fire, since they burn cleanly.

5. Embrace social media, which means updating Facebook pages, Instagram photos, Pinterest pins, and tweets. Not that anyone’s counting, but she has 2.8 million Twitter followers to Cohen’s 1.1 million.

6. Have multiple electronic devices, and be adept at using them. How does she define multiple? She has two Blackberries, one iPhone, two iPads, and a Sony tablet.
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Code and Theory is a creative agency behind publishing websites like “The Verge,” and “Interview” magazine. They also have an odd fondness for the Dewey Decimal System.

Managing partners Steve Baer and Mike Treff took the mediabistroTV crew on an Olde Timey New York meets modern design tour of their fifth floor offices on the corner of Prince and Broadway. The guys showed how they added wide open spaces, planned randomness and hip wood floors to the windows, the wood and the brick that originally came with the building built by the Astor family in 1886. Then there were the books, the many, many, many books.

You can view our other MediabistroTV productions on our YouTube Channel.

Susan Sellers, founding partner and creative director of New York-based design consultancy 2×4, is moving on up, to the East Side, where on Monday, June 24, she’ll begin her new role as head of design at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In overseeing the museum’s department of design, Sellers will lead a cadre of specialists–in installation, graphic, and lighting design–that attend to everything from signage and printed materials to exhibitions and gallery installations.

Sellers, who is also senior critic in graphic design at Yale School of Art, comes to the Met with extensive experience working with museums. 2×4 has developed graphic identities for the likes of PS1 and the Brooklyn Museum, and Sellers has cultivated the studio’s approach to brand identity for museums and public institutions including the Guggenheim, Longwood Gardens, and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. She has also designed exhibitions for clients such the Guggenheim and the Storefront for Art and Architecture–as well as Nike and Prada. “Her design work is both elegant and strategic,” noted Metropolitan Museum director Thomas Campbell in a statement announcing Sellers’ appointment, “and I look forward to having her develop a design vision for the Met that speaks to the museum’s diverse collections and audiences.”

The UnBeige summer cottage lacks a proximal beach, pool, swimming hole, pond, or water feature of any sort, and yet we’ve long craved this inner tube in the form of a donut (complete with sprinkles and a notched “bite”) for its resemblance to a work by Kenny Scharf. And so imagine our delight upon learning that the Whitney Museum was cooking up some summer treats with the artist himself. With this pair of exclusive-to-the-Whitney-Shop products, art lovers can float their cares away on a whimsical yet possibly demonic inflatable pool toy–inspired by a Scharfian scheme for an unrealized public art project–and then dry off with the beach towel, nearly six feet of colorful cotton printed with Scharf’s 2008 painting “Introducing…. The Hot Dog.”

Don’t mess with a man who has cyclonic suction on his side. James Dyson‘s global empire of highly engineered, sleekly designed sucking and blowing devices is taking on its chief competitor for the U.S. marketplace–in court. Dyson Inc. claims that Grand Rapids, Michigan-based Bissell Homecare Inc. has been falsely advertising its range of (less expensive) upright vacuums as containing technology that “captures over 99.9 percent” of allergens. Dyson has long boasted that its machines are singular in their “constant powerful suction, high dust removal, the ability to capture allergens, expel cleaner air, do not have dusty bags to empty and are certified asthma & allergy friendly by the Asthma & Allergy Foundation of America.” The company has gone so far as to trademark the phrase “asthma & allergy friendly.”

Dyson commissioned independent lab testing of the rival vacs and surveyed watery-eyed, sniffling consumers, while Bissell tried to clear the air by affixing stickers to its machines in an attempt to clarify that the ragweed and pollen trapping was actually done by filters, not the machines themselves. Dyson didn’t blink (or sneeze, for that matter) and is pressing its case in U.S. district court in Illinois. Judge Samuel Der-Yeghiayan cleared the way for the case to proceed in a summary judgment issued Friday. Will Dyson’s lawyers blow away the defense team? Will Bissell choke on its promises of wallet-friendly vacuums that improve respiratory health? Will the arguments of both sides suck? Stay tuned, floorcare fans.

This week, Medallion Retail is hiring an art director, while KTVU needs a design director. Agora, Inc. is seeking a graphic designer, and the Children’s Tumor Foundation is on the hunt for a graphic designer, as well. Get the scoop on these openings and more below, and find additional just-posted gigs on Mediabistro.

• Art Director Medallion Retail (New York, NY)
• Design Director KTVU (Oakland, CA)
• Graphic Designer Agora, Inc. (Delray Beach, FL)
• Graphic Designer Children’s Tumor Foundation (New York, NY)
• Photography Producer Wonderful Machine (Conshohocken, PA)

Find more great design jobs on the UnBeige job board. Looking to hire? Tap into our network of talented UnBeige pros and post a risk-free job listing. For real-time openings and employment news, follow @MBJobPost.

The competition that spotted Stefan Sagmeister, James Victore, and Mike Mills when they were but wee design/art powerhouses-to-be is back. Behold Young Guns 11, 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.
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(Photo: NYC Department of Transportation)

• How can design of the built environment create opportunities for increasing physical activity and access to healthier food and beverages? Find out on June 24th as architects, planners, designers, landscape architects, developers, and public health professionals come together for the eighth annual Fit City conference at the Center for Architecture. Not in NYC? Watch the livestream (while jogging in place).

• MJ is getting into the makeup game with Marc Jacobs Beauty. The color cosmetics collection, created in collaboration with Sephora, is set to launch in September with 122 products, including a blush called “Shameless” (a nod to one of the designer’s many tattoos). So how does it compare to working on a fragrance? “I think color is easier,” he told WWD. “Fragrance is even more like, sort of ephemeral in a way. But [color] is closer to the process of making a collection. Formulas are like fabrics, fibers, each fiber, whether silk or cashmere or whatever, they have natural properties. They have a certain look, they give you a certain feeling.”

• Martha Stewart‘s latest redesign goes beyond the pages of Living (look for the overhauled magazine to hit newsstands next week), according to an article in today’s New York Times. A new Martha website will be geared toward visitors with shorter attention spans–a two-minute glitter tutorial? How to frost a cake in 60 seconds or less?
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