As the go-to guide for seven-day snapshots of local arts and events listings, Time Out Chicago boasts service-oriented stories that help urban explorers find the best ways to spend their free time.

And if you’re a freelance photographer, TimeOutChicago.com is wide open for those looking to add to their portfolios. The site gets over 3 million page views a month and features lots of photo galleries that speak to the mag’s cultural core.

“We have the broadest, most in-depth cultural coverage of Chicago of any media outlet and the largest cultural reporting team in the city, so if it’s about Chicago culture, we’d like to hear about it,” said editor-in-chief Frank Sennett. “Our target readership is anybody who actively consumes culture in the city of Chicago, people who are going out and doing things. They tend to be people in the city, but it could be anybody who wants to go out and do something fun.”

For editor contacts and more details on breaking in, read How To Pitch: Time Out Chicago.

This article is one of several mediabistro.com features exclusively available to AvantGuild subscribers. If you’re not a member yet, you can register for as little as $55 a year and get access to these articles, discounts on seminars and workshops, and more.

Here’s another piece to help you enjoy these quiet, somber moments we’re temporarily having away from you. Design writer extraordinare, Steven Heller, who seems to do more in a morning than anyone does in their most productive week, recently appeared on The Faith Middleton Show, talking about his book, Pop: How Graphic Design Shapes Popular Culture. How do the two influence one another? What is the effect of design on culture? If you have 18 minutes and 30 seconds, the esteemed Mr. Heller will fill your brain with all sorts of answers. Here’s from the introduction to his book:

Pop culture is often maligned as fleeting, but history shows that sometimes what is pop in one culture has time-honored resonance in later ones. This book is an attempt to show that pop culture, especially as seen through the lenses of design, illustration, satiric and political art (and other things), is integral to a broader understanding of who we are and where we are going.

If you live in Chicago like this writer, or even just visiting every once in a while, you’re probably constantly saying to yourself, “I should really get out and see architecture stuff.” There’s so many tours and exhibits here, but unfortunately one always returns to, “But who has the time?” The answer to that question is Jennifer Lucente, who works for the Chicago Architecture Foundation and has decided to attempt to take all 85 of the tours offered by her organization within the year. It all falls under the banner, “Around Chicago in 85 Tours Challenge,” and Lucente will be documenting all of it on all the major outlets, from a (not yet very busy) blog to her (thus far very active) Twitter feed. Here’s a quick description:

From January through December 2010, I have challenged myself to take all of the Chicago Architecture Foundation’s 85 tours. I’ll be walking, biking, busing, boating, and Segway-ing all around the city and surrounding areas learning about the rich architectural history of Chicago. All of the tours I’m taking are open to the public so come on out and join me!

Brazen Careerist author Penelope Trunk is known for all sorts of well, lively remarks on her blogs. Some of them seem a little too personal. Her divorce. Her love life. Her battle with bulimia. Somehow it makes all of career advice make sense. This writer isn’t sure why. So today she lectures the artists out there, who probably are already taking her advice without reading her online. She says keep your day job. Check. You don’t need to starve to make art. Double-check. “Art emanating from a hole is a choice,” she says. “There’s a reason that Jean-Michel Basquiat‘s paintings look like horror films: Because his life was a crack-house horror film.” We know. Another check on the list. Finally, real artists work no matter what. We knew that already, but it’s good to match with reality. She didn’t mention that it might be worthwhile reading her book, but it repeats a lot of the advice already on her site.

Apparently there’s no dearth of craft-related blogs, and this new one is basically a re-invention of the late and great Besewstylish.com blog, which was essentially all about sewing. Craftstylish still has a lot about that with input and posts from Ann Stevens, a Threads Magazine contributor. If stitching on a sewing machine isn’t enough for you, Jennifer Stern can tell you about the joys of embroidery; Tina Holton, knitting; Mary Ray, quilting; Linda Permann, crocheting and finally, Susan Beal, jewelry-making. We’re certain we’ve left somebody out, but it’s not intentional. In any event, this is a great round-up site that’s easy to navigate and updated frequently. So go ahead, find yourself a new hobby.

Four out of five people in our official UnBeige survey didn’t get worked up when shown Target’s now-famous spread eagle ad in Times Square. “It’s obvious to me she’s doing a snow angel,” one astute reader told us. Although AdRants noted some compositional synergy a few weeks ago, we didn’t think much of it at all since we’ve seen, oh, we don’t know, bare asses in Times Square before.

But when the blog ShapingYouth called the model’s placement on the bullseye “sexualized ad slop” and demanded an explanation from Target, the focus quickly turned from crotch-placement to the blogosphere. We’ll let the NY Times explain:

Early this month, the blog’s founder, Amy Jussel, called Target, complaining about a new advertising campaign that depicted a woman splayed across a big target pattern–the retailer’s emblem–with the bull’s-eye at her crotch.

“Targeting crotches with a bull’s-eye is not the message we should be putting out there,” she said in an e-mail interview.

Target offered an e-mail response:

“Unfortunately we are unable to respond to your inquiry because Target does not participate with nontraditional media outlets,” a public relations person wrote to ShapingYouth.

“This practice,” the public relations person added, “is in place to allow us to focus on publications that reach our core guest,” as Target refers to its shoppers.

The notion that Target doesn’t work with “non-traditional media outlets” is pure bullseye bullcrap, since we’re pretty sure if we posted something like “Target powers their Design for All website with the blood of 300 freshly-slaughtered adorable baby kittens a day,” they’d be all over us like Deborah Adler‘s ClearRx design.

Of course, we, being the naive non-traditional media outlet we are, just assumed that Target, being ahead-of-the-curve Target, was a pioneer of the new vajayjay trend that is currently sweeping the nation (haven’t you noticed our header?). But at least one person we surveyed even saw Target’s V-sign as empowering. “I don’t get how that could convey women as inferior. You could interpret that it’s the opposite,” says one liberated female. “That vaginas are the center of the universe.”

As soon as we trained ourselves not to look at the header (why, why do they want to make us cry?), Gawker‘s new sci-fi blog io9 lured us in with what is pretty much all design-related content. The blog, which debuted yesterday, is edited by Annalee Newitz, who used to work at Wired and also wrote a lovely children’s book.

Just a little further down on the masthead you’ll see BLDGBLOGger Geoff Manaugh, who gets to flex the icky creature and time travel writing muscles that are probably not so welcome at Dwell. He writes the longer think pieces like this tome on artificial skin. Let the nightmares begin anew.

Once an underpaid web designer, now resigned to her role as an ace Layer Tennis commentator, Heather Armstrong also sometimes manages to crank out a sentence or two on Dooce, a blog you’ve probably never heard of.

Dooce recently underwent a redesign, which Armstrong has explained in much detail. But our ears perked up at this part:

I wanted to start a Daily Style section, some place to store my thoughts and photographs on the design of things in everyday life. When brainstorming ways to incorporate that into the site it made sense to make it a feature like the Daily Photo and Daily Chuck, mainly because I wanted it to include a photograph I’d taken of the object myself to emphasize the fact that these are things I use, these are things in my home.

Dooce Style has all the ingredients for a wildly popular design blog: luscious, unapologetic photography, links to buy things, and Armstrong’s hearty endorsement (endoocement?)—which might actually be the only thing that this design blog really needs.

Over the weekend, blogging empress Grace Bonney premiered a revamped URL (www.designspongeonline.com) that includes an incredible site redesign with yummy little textural details that truly delight the crafty corners of our brain.

To sweeten the deal, Bonney streamlined navigational features and is adding more guest bloggers, an event calendar, and a job board. And to placate the hordes of fans who keep asking what her place looks like, Bonney also posted a long-awaited sneak peek inside the d*s home. Predictably, it’s a beauty.

After a decade existing as potentially marked-for-death printed matter, Mimi Zeiger‘s zine loud paper has finally succumbed to its more natural blog form. But bringing the potent blend of architecture, pop culture, design, art, and music to the world wide web wasn’t an easy call, sayz Miz Z:

Since the zine is a proto-blog of sorts, it seems inevitable that loud paper would end up in this format. I tried to resist, I had my excuses, but the call of the keyboard was too great.

In this new incarnation loud paper is part per-zine, travelogue, marketing machine, and wunderkammer, but it will also remain true to the original mission to provide a forum for multiple voices. This summer I resurrected the nearly-forgotten Boring Issue from obscurity, posting several essays and updates from a few contributors. More installments to come. Also, get ready for a new call for submissions later this fall.

An archive has interviews with people like Doug Aitken, Jorge Pardo and Shepard Fairey, but you’d do well to stick closely to the new stuff: Zeiger definitely knows how to make herself heard.