Amidst the fruitless efforts of a nine-member entity known only as “R. Deer LLC” to swap out Santa‘s rickety old sleigh with a Tesla Model S, engineers at GE have taken it upon themselves to reimagine the jolly old elf’s ride. The souped-up sleigh draws upon a range of technologies to offer a greener, faster, and more efficient Christmas Eve journey. Among the new features are a thin cooling solution that can improve jet engine aerodynamics, air traffic management technology to help Santa and the reindeer steer clear of planes, 3-D-printed sleigh blades for greater lift and maneuverability, and a rugged new battery that can function under extreme conditions.

The sleigh frame, sprayed with water- and ice-repellant coatings, has been upgraded with GE’s high-temperature ceramic composites–enabling flight into outer space and back. Santa is on board with the extraterrestrial upgrade. “I am looking forward to flying into outer space,” he said in a statement issued by GE. “This will really save time by helping me get to destinations in different parts of the world much faster.” And the reindeer couldn’t be more pleased with the redesign, which features an electric traction motor that can take over when Dasher, Dancer, and the gang need a breather. Noted Rudolph, “Covering the entire globe can be pretty exhausting, and having the opportunity to rest along the way will help us remain in peak condition.”
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You can keep your five golden rings and arboreally ensconced partridge. We’ll take eleven exotic writing utensils, ten action figures a-leaping, and a Sesame Street screen saver. All of these wonders and more await you in Laurence King‘s “Twelve Desks of Christmas.” The London-based publisher behind covetable and creative titles such as Angus Hyland and Steven Bateman‘s Symbol and 100 Ideas that Changed Graphic Design by Steven Heller and Veronique Vienne engaged in a little office voyeurism this holiday season, posting photos of 12 mystery desks and inviting the world to guess whose was whose. Here are a few (recently de-identified) highlights, from our desk to yours:

See those books? He wrote all of them! This is the desk of Steve Heller.
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This week a team of sharp-eyed astrophysicists announced their discovery of a new planet: a young, cold, and roguish type that refuses to orbit any star. They’ve named the sunless planet…CFBDSIR2149. While this is an improvement over “Uranus,” it doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. An astronomy- and space-focused startup is seeking to end this squandering of planet-naming opportunities with its first commercial project. Uwingu–”sky” in Swahili–is challenging the people of Earth to create a “baby book of planet names” for the 160 billion or more planets astronomers now estimate inhabit our galaxy, the Milky Way (cut to image of delicious candy bars).

“You can nominate planet names for your favorite town, state, or country, your favorite sports team, music artist, or hero, your favorite author or book, your school, your company, for your loved ones and friends, or even for yourself,” suggests Uwingu founder and CEO Alan Stern, an aerospace consultant and researcher who formerly directed all science program and missions at NASA. Each nomination costs 99 cents, with proceeds going to create a private sector fund for space projects. Names can be up to 50 characters (latin letters only), from any language or culture, and “can be anything the average grandmother would be proud to hear her grandchild say.” A contest will determine the 1,000 most popular planet names in the database, which will be communicated to planet-hunting astronomers for consideration. Voting is now open (votes also cost 99 cents each). Among the early leaders are “Pale Blue Dot,” “Heinlein,” and “Ron Paul.”

In 1948, John Cage paid a visit to the anechoic chamber at Harvard University, an echo-free room that had recently been built for the purpose of physics research. Surrounded by foot-thick concrete walls that bristled with sound-absorbing wedges, he had an epiphany: “I heard that silence was not the absence of sound but was the unintended operation of my nervous system and the circulation of my blood,” wrote Cage. He credited that experience, along with the white paintings of his Black Mountain College chum Robert Rauschenberg, with leading him to compose 4’33”. The composition, divided into three sections, consists of four minutes and thirty-three seconds in which the performer plays nothing. On the occasion of Cage’s 100th birthday, his most famous work gets a graphic design twist from Nicholas Blechman (art director of The New York Times Book Review), Irene Bacchi, and Leonardo Sonnoli. The trio created “Heidelberg Speedmaster” (below), an offset print interpretation of 4’33” and named for the industrial printing machine at work in the video, recorded last Friday at La Pieve Poligrafica in Rimini, Italy. Each of the composition’s three parts are also interpreted in posters designed by Blechman, Bacchi, and Sonnoli (two of the posters are pictured above). And now, your moment(s) of Zen:

“Italian architect Gio Ponti‘s ‘Parete Organizzata’ illuminated wall organizer would ordinarily be categorized as Design, primarily due to the fact it has an obvious function, whereas, curiously, Kasimir Malevich‘s design for a ceiling, in spite of the fact that it too has a function, is normally categorized as Art. Flat Art is normally hung on the wall; Design rarely is. Yet in our installation of these two works at Phillips, the Ponti is mounted on the wall, and the Malevich is placed on an easel, in space. As a result, are they both ‘re-departmentalized’? Do we allow the wall to become a determining factor in establishing what is Art and what is not?”

-Murray Moss, in the incredibly beautiful catalogue for “Moss, the Auction: Dialogues Between Art and Design,” on view through October 15 at Phillips de Pury & Company in New York

“Even fifteen years ago, the fashion houses were still houses. That is the most intimate of terms. Coca-Cola and Buick were brands. But there is such pressure now to brand-build and be global and have this sort of all-encompassing image and aura. That’s very difficult. Some designers use it as an opportunity to push their primary lines. I know that Jack [McCollough] and Lazaro [Hernandez, of Proenza Schouler] feel that way. I just saw Jason Wu at the launch of his Miss Wu collection, and he said that it just really gives him the opportunity to have a division between the two collections. But I do think that the brand building is a major difference. Have Christian Dior and Yves Saint Laurent been brands for a long time? Yes. Did both of those designers brand? Of course they did. But now you have a kid who has been in business for three seasons talking about his brand. When Alexander McQueen was starting out, he wasn’t the wild child in London talking about his brand—he was talking about his work and his craft and pouring all of that emotion into the clothes. I think it’s important not to lose that.”

-Bridget Foley, executive editor of Women’s Wear Daily, in an interview with Stephen Mooallem that appears in the September issue of Interview

With precious little summertime left and that daunting stack of books still awaiting your “summer reading” attention, we’ve compiled this list of ten quick yet delightful online reads that will keep you busy while we spend the holiday weekend in Fashion Week prep mode (i.e., napping, binge-watching obscure documentaries, and multiple visits to the Reed Krakoff store). Until Tuesday, design fans!

♦ Whimsically grim storylines? Check. Dour yet dancerly protagonists? Yup. Eve Bowen examines “A Treasure Trove of Edward Gorey” and lives to tell about it. (New York Review of Books)

♦ Galliera, the Paris Museum of Fashion, is closed for renovation until the fall of 2013. That didn’t stop Lynn Yaeger from paying a visit. (T: The New York Times Style Magazine)

♦ LACMA’s plan to open a show featuring Robert Mapplethorpe’s gay sadomasochistic photographs two weeks before Election Day proves we’ve come a long way—maybe, writes Robin Cembalest. (ARTnews)

♦ Meanwhile, LA cops have declared war on street artists. (LA Weekly)

♦ With his first solo exhibition in 12 years opening next week, Futura gets reflective. (Interview)

♦ Whatever happened to digital art? Claire Bishop discerns the “subterranean presence” of the digital in the analog-loving art world. (Artforum)

♦ “I prefer buying things and figuring out where to put them later than regretting not buying them,” says designer Christian Louboutin. Peek inside his barn-cum-shoe archive, which houses 8,000 pairs and counting. (WSJ. Magazine)
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Guzzle some creativity with your coffee by starting the day with CreativeMornings, a free breakfast lecture series for creative types. Founded in 2009 by New York-based designer and blogger Tina Roth Eisenberg, this “TED for the rest of us” takes place monthly in 29 cities around the globe, from Atlanta to Zurich. Throughout June, all CreativeMornings chapters are partnering with the Rhode Island School of Design to host events under a common theme: the intersection of arts and technology. “We’re honored to partner with RISD on this new effort to recognize the vital importance of art and design in the global economy,” says Eisenberg. “I am interested in the magic that happens when arts and technology come together.” Jessica Hische was a crowd-pleaser in Vancouver, and Rick Valicenti recently wowed ‘em in Chicago. Many chapters will convene tomorrow: San Francisco has nabbed Nathan Shedroff, who describes himself as an “Earth-based designer, educator, entrepreneur, author, and air-breather,” while Portland will hear from Nelson Lowry, winner of the National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Production Design for his work on Fantastic Mr. Fox. Get the latest information on CreativeMorning around the globe and watch past talks at any time of day here.

Less than a month after Dieter Rams‘ eightieth birthday, Pentagram will hit the big 4-0. (Coincidence? You be the judge.) To celebrate four decades of eye-popping work, Naresh Ramchandani and Tom Edmonds in the London office whipped up “The Forty Story” (below). The film tells the story of a boy born on the day Pentagram opened—June 12, 1972—and how his life has been tracked (and kerned) by four decades of Pentagram design. Here’s to forty more years.

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Three cheers for 22 vintage megaphones, which go on the block tomorrow at Wright in Chicago.

You don’t hear much about megaphone collecting. A cruel irony at a time when the world needs a bit of the old-fashioned boosterism that comes from holding a large cone to one’s mouth and yelling “Go Team!” Those that grimace at the sight of foam fingers (vulgar, shoddily made, soundless) won’t want to miss the rare opportunity to acquire an instant collection of megaphones that goes on the block tomorrow at Chicago’s Wright auction house as part of its Living Contemporary sale. Estimated to sell for between $3,000 and $5,000, the lot of 22 vintage bullhorns includes several handsome models designed to cheer on various mid-century squads of Spiders, Indians, and Macon Whoopies (“Georgia’s Finest”). The names of their original owners—Diane, Susan, Joan, Nancy, Lucy—are preserved in an interesting range of typefaces, while a wee brown one reads “Die Schnitzel Bunk Jug Band.” Set for speaking-trumpets? Cheer yourself with a few of the other offerings from tomorrow’s sale: Paco Rabanne space curtains, a delightful dozen of Dorothy Draper chairs, or a set of “Inflammatory Essays” by Jenny Holzer, who we suspect enjoys a good megaphone.