We've been expecting this announcement for a while now, but sort of couldn't believe when it all came down. You remember all of the trouble guru James Dyson was going through in trying to get his design and engineering school built in the UK? Well, he's finally said "enough is enough" and has pulled the plug on the whole $50 million dollar endeavor, saying he hates to do it, but that's the way it goes. Here's a bit:

"I'm sad and very disappointed that it has had to end this way," he told The Daily Telegraph. "Engineering is vitally important to this country but it doesn't get the recognition it deserves.

"Britain will be the loser but I'm particularly disappointed for the hundreds of youngsters who would have been able to enjoy an introduction to an engineering career.

"I've no option but to pull the plug. I appealed to the Prime Minister for help in the summer but all I've had is an acknowledgment. We're being left behind by all our competitors."

Last we heard, Dyson was considering moving the whole thing to the US. Or was that just a threat to the local officials? If it's still up in the air, James, you should consider Chicago. We're totally cool with whatever and we've got really good food and stuff around here, promise.

Our good pal Steven Heller dropped us a line to let us know that the place he spends a lot of his time, the School of Visual Arts, has launched a brand new MFA program that we wish we could drop out of working life and move to NY to attend. It's the two-year Master of Fine Arts Degree in Social Documentary Film, which will begin in the fall of 2009 and will feature a roster of instructors that make our hearts skip a beat. Maro Chermayeff, the producer and director of the PBS series, Carrier is set to chair the program and other instructors include Michael Epstein, Susan Froemke, and fantastic cinematographer, Bob Richman. If you're in the market for a graduate film program, it sounds just spectacular. And might we suggest that one of the first projects the SVA's new students in the program work on be UnBeige: The Untold Story, so we can be involved to? Because, really, you wouldn't believe the skeletons we have in our closets, especially in Stephanie's.

Earlier this month, the Rhode Island School of Design inaugurated computer scientist, artist, author, designer, and overall shape shifter John Maeda as its 16th president in a streamlined swearing-in ceremony that The Providence Journal described as "notable both for its brevity—the entire event lasted less than two hours—and for its roster of A-list guest speakers." Those speakers included Congressmen, the mayor of Providence, keynote speaker Nicholas Negroponte of MIT, and Brown University President Ruth Simmons, who alluded to Maeda's fondness for casualwear, quipping, "We're all wondering what you'll wear to your first meeting with your fellow college presidents." The ProJo also commented on the "Maeda-esque touches" to the inauguration festivities:

During the ceremony, dozens of cloth banners—some printed with the phrase "Start Here," others decorated with drawings and paintings—hung from the church's second-story balcony. Organizers said the banners were meant to evoke both ship's sails, a reference to Providence's maritime past, and Tibetan prayer flags, a symbol of good luck.

Previously on UnBeige:

This just in: Design writer and innovation guru Bruce Nussbaum has been appointed Visiting Professor of Innovation and Design at The New School, where he'll be based in the School of Design Strategies at Parsons The New School for Design. "Bruce will work across the university to catalyze new areas of research, study, and other forms of engagement that bring together design and social research, as well as management, urban policy, environmental studies, and sustainability," said New School President Bob Kerrey in a press release issued today. Nussbaum, a finalist for this year's Cooper-Hewitt National Design Awards Design Mind Award, has been at BusinessWeek since 1977 and will continue to write, edit, and blog about design for the magazine in his continuing role as contributing editor for innovation.

Admit it, your six-year-old nephew could out-HTML tag you any day and you think that a Cascading Style Sheet is something with a thread count. That's where the mediabistro.com mothership comes in. They've asked us to tell you about next weekend's crash course in HTML Fundamentals: Over two information-stuffed days in New York City, artist, designer, and interactive developer David Tristman will teach you the basic structure of HTML and many commonly used tags as well as the role of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) in HTML pages and current recommendations such as XHTML. By Sunday night, you'll be creating fully functional web pages and geeky birthday cakes like the one pictured above. Register here to get cooking with HTML.

Are your photos worth thousands of words? Thousands of dollars? Thousands more photos? Pulitzer Prize-winning photo editor Stella Kramer will help you get the picture (and figure out where to sell it) at mediabistro.com's one-night photography portfolio review this Wednesday in New York City. Students will get their books critiqued and edited by Kramer while picking up important tips, a fresh eye, and a new perspective on their own work. Here's your chance to learn what photo editors are looking for when they review portfolios; applying is just a click away.

An interesting point/counter-point between architect Tim Ronalds and architecture school head, Richard Hayward called "Are Architecture Schools Turning Into Factory Farms?" over at Building Design. The point of the piece is obvious, based off the title, of course. Ronalds says yes, explaining that there are more students, fewer teachers, and instruction so rigid as to not allow for much originality. Hayward says no, saying that schools still do foster creativity, but does accept that there's a problem within the industry as a whole. Beyond just their talk, it's an interesting discussion considering all of the financial woes the architecture business has found itself in, and in reading reports like in yesterday's Irish Business News that thousands of architects are expected to lose their jobs this year. And if that's just in Ireland, which is just now coming out of one the biggest economic booms in the whole of Europe, you can imagine the dire situation all over.

Enhance your resume and your cousin's wedding photos with the mediabistro.com mothership's weekend crash course in Adobe Photoshop for Mac users. This Saturday and Sunday in New York City, you can get up and running on the program of programs under the guidance of professional photo retoucher Mara Sachs, who has a blackbelt in Photoshop (or at least is an Adobe Certified Expert in the program). Learn more and register here.

Our friends over at the learnin' side of mediabistro have just let us know about a valuable class running out there on the east coast in NY that should help increase your smarts by at least a factor of ten. It's the Fundamentals of Photoshop for Mac workshop, aimed for beginners and it runs for two days, Saturday, September 6th and Sunday, September 7th. They'll go over all the things you'll need to learn to get up and running with Photoshop, so you can start inserting your family members into old Soviet era photographs (or perhaps something more practical, but that's really up to you, isn't it?). What's more, if you enroll in any mediabistro class in September, you'll get a free one-year AvantGuild membership, which is beyond worth it (just hurry because that promo runs out on August 31st). All the details on the class can be found here.

Back in March, you might recall that we were reporting on James Dyson finally, after months and months of government intervention, getting the okay to open his Dyson School of Design Innovation in the UK. Well, it looks like we spoke too fast, as it's being reported now by the local Bath Chronicle that the scheduled building has been put back on hold pending additional investigation as to whether or not the school will be safe where it will be constructed (next to a river) and if the town still even wants him there to begin with, pushing the building back to at least 2012. Dyson has said that he wants to keep the school in the UK, but he's been approached by investors to move the planning over to the US and build it over here. Whether or not that's for real or is simply a maneuver to scare the local government to hurry up and give him a more solid okay is anyone's guess, but clearly no one in the Dyson camp is very happy at the moment. We'll keep an eye out and let you know what goes down when we pick up any more news.