Dropping in on the recent start-studded opening of the LACMA's new Broad Contemporary Art Museum in LA was The Independent's Karen Wright who was more interested in telling the tale of Renzo Piano and his newest creation than rubbing elbows with the likes of Tom Cruise, Cindy Sherman and Jeff Koons. Wright is clearly not a student of James S. Russell, as she oohs and ahhs over all the specifics of the architect's latest flashy museum. And without any of that hostility or worry that Piano has lost his edge, the piece provides a nice tour of the new building, which should be valuable until you get a chance to check it out for yourself. Plus, if anything, it's always fun to hear Piano talk:

The building was completed in a speedy three years. One triumph during construction was the closure of a street and removal of a garage, which was replaced underground. As Piano said, "In LA, to take away a street is a miracle, to take away a garage is like destroying the Colosseum in Rome!".

As New York City--nay, the world--gears up for the International Contemporary Furniture Fair, our friends at the American Craft Council (the organization behind American Craft magazine, among other beautifully made initiatives) are hosting the first in a summer series of conversations "in craft and beyond" in the council's historic library in SoHo. Kicking off the series this Thursday will be Tyler Hays of the New York- and Philadelphia-based furniture company BDDW, who will discuss "the beginnings of his company, his unique and often awe-inducing designs, and the company's relationship with industry and the handmade," according to Monica Hampton, director of education for the American Craft Council. The talk is entitled "The Industrial Complex," which makes us think of Dwight D. Eisenhower, if Ike had been less less enamored with the military and more with heirloom-quality handmade furniture and hand-rubbed dark oil finishes.

Later this summer, jeweler, educator, writer, and provocateur Bruce Metcalf and crafty graphic designer and artist Chanel Kennebrew will chat about the complicated relationships between the broad spectrum of craft makers. Come September, things get political, when Murketing's Rob Walker leads a conversation with makers Sabrina Gschwandtner and Liz Collins on craft's relationship to politics, strange bedfellows to be sure, but beneath a lovingly hand-embroidered duvet. The talks, and the wine and (we suspect) artisanal cheese receptions that follow them are free, but you've got to RSVP, and fast. American Craft editor-in-chief Andrew Wagner tells us that spots are going fast.

PSFK has this great post up about the mother of all street art events, The Cans Festival, which went on this past weekend in an old, abandoned train terminal in London. Although the writing is brief, just giving some of the few details about the event, you're really in it for the paintings, right? And that's exactly what they deliver, with a handful of links to dozens and dozens (thousands?) of photos of both the event itself and the work that came from it. Here's the short scoop:

Last weekend, Tristan Manco invited a number of A-List street artists to come down and paint up a tunnel under the old Eurostar terminal in London. Then they invited the public to add their stencils. Then the rest of us took photos of the vast collection of modern contemporary art

Apologies for the sudden disappearance by this writer. While we'd like to claim it was due to some kind of mysterious circumstances, filled to the brim with excitement, danger and in no short supply of massive explosions, the truth is actually quite bland. He was moving into a new house on Monday and Tuesday and then he was off to Atlanta for general visiting and a wedding. But such things don't always have to be non-design-y. Case in point, we visited Richard Meier's High Museum of Art, which, no offense to the good people of Atlanta, nor the fine curators who live in that city, is much more worth visiting for its architecture than the artifacts therein. Though we did enjoy the turn of the century modernist furniture on the top floor. Also, this writer got a chance to have lunch with the fine folk at Armchair Media, who were hard at work in putting together all the materials for the currently-running Modern Atlanta, a week full of all things super modern and in the right zip codes. Seriously, if you're anywhere near Atlanta by, say, four thousand miles, we highly recommend that you attend, even if just for the Armchair-designed booklet of information. The whole thing looks to be just incredible. And with saying that, we get back into the swing of things, even though we still don't have our desk put together and we'll probably be writing for the rest of the week from the floor of our new place.

As the world has worked up a voracious appetite for information graphics, the designer's role has grown from one of executor to that of editorial arbiter. But what about the expanded ethical responsibilities for these designers? How do their choices affect the integrity of the data being portrayed? These issues form the basis of this year's Fresh Dialogue design forum, hosted by the New York chapter of AIGA on May 23 at the TimesCenter. Designer and Rhode Island School of Design president-to-be John Maeda will lead "IN/VISIBLE: Graphic Data Revealed," a discussion with three designers who specialize in visualizing information: Steve Duenes, Andrew Kuo, and Fernanda Viégas. Look for them to discuss everything from the ascendency of judicious simplicity over seductive complexity to the increasing demand for dynamic versus static information design.

Co-chairing this year's Fresh Dialogue forum are graphic designers Laura Forde and Emma Presler, both board members of AIGA/NY. "While information graphics and data visualization aren't new, its practitioners are, to some degree. Designers that deal with information graphics have remained relatively anonymous," Presler tell us. "We felt it was time to put some names and faces to the designers behind all the graphs, charts and diagrams you ingest every day." And the topic is particularly appropriate for this, an election year. "The visualization of election data permeates all media, directly influencing the public's perception of political candidates," says Presler. "The designer's role in this process is crucial and we felt it was worth examining in this forum."

You know that the International Contemporary Furniture Fair takes over New York City May 17-20 and the inaugural New York Photo Festival kicks off just before that (May 14-18), and in our quest to plan your entire month of May, we bring you news of the sixth annual BKLYN DESIGNS, a juried exhibit of contemporary furnishings made in Brooklyn that this year expands to 68 exhibitors. The three-day show begins on Friday, May 9 with such events as Interior Design editor-in-chief Cindy Allen leading a panel discussion with up and coming Pratt Institute alumni and a keynote address by designer Sami Hayek. Other speakers throughout the festival include architect Rob Rogers, principal of Rogers Marvel Architect; interior designer Amy Lau; and curators for both the Brooklyn Museum and the Museum of Arts and Design. And if your mother is at all design-inclined, bring her along on Sunday, which will include a morning Mother's Day crafts session led by ReadyMade magazine (four words: laundromat-inspired modular bench) and a walking tour of sustainable furniture design led by Inhabitat.com's Jill Fehrenbacher and Abigail Doan. Can't make it to Brooklyn? Stay tuned to Dwell's website. Word is that the magazine's online editor, Mike Cannell, will be conducting live interviews with exhibitors from an Airstream trailer for the duration of the show.

The closest the kids on Project Runway have come to politics is that time they designed new uniforms for the United States Postal Service (whatever came of that? our carrier continues to rock the serge shorts n' knee socks look), but the students in the School of Visual Arts' Designer as Author program aren't afraid to jump into the political fray. And it's that very fray that members of the MFA Class of 2009 are now hunched over with pinking shears and flag appliqués as they prepare to put on "Model Citizen," a show and subsequent exhibition of "distinct fashion lines inspired by political points of view" that will take place on the evening of Monday, May 5 at the SVA Gallery.

Curated by Kevin O' Callaghan under the watchful, politically savvy eyes of program co-chairs Steven Heller and Lita Talarico, the show will feature the work of 19 students, and after parading down the catwalk (what better metaphor for the campaign trail?), the designs will be on display at the gallery through May 31. No word on whether they've enlisted Heller to walk the runway, but he does promise us that it will be "an amazing show," so we're keeping our fingers crossed. Also, we call first dibs on any dress with a superdelegates theme.

Unfortunately, due to rising fuel prices, we weren't able to borrow the mediabistro jet to attend the recently concluded Milan Design Week. Fortunately, the wide world of blogs is both wide and worldly, so we present you with a variety of sites whose coverage we've been using to follow the week's goings-ons. First up is Core77, who dishes out not just a bazillion great written posts about what they saw and who they talked to, but also have included more than a dozen videos from the event. Designboom, per usual, also had a ton of design-y people on the ground, collecting more than 1500 photos and dozens of short write-ups to boot (really, it'd take you about three weeks to go through all of it). And last, the always dependable MocoLoco has been spending their days offering up some swell coverage and links to other bits of miscellaneous sites talking about it all. So go forth and take in all that Milan has to offer from the comfort of your own desk, living room, or swimming pool (if you have a laptop that goes underwater or you live in a tiny, tiny submarine).

When we hear of an event that includes both "running commentary" and "witty asides," we don't ask questions, we just hop on Bembo, the UnBeige passenger llama, and go. So imagine our pleasure when we learned that the comments and asides in question will spring from the enchanted brain of Chip Kidd, one of the few people who can describe himself as a graphic designer / novelist / editor / rocker / / D.J / collector of superhero-related memorabilia. Tonight at New York's Fashion Institute of Technology, the Society of Publication Designers presents "The World According to Chip Kidd," during which he will read from his new novel and show examples of his best work (that's where the comments and asides come in). Doors open at 6:30pm for the 7pm lecture, but try telling that to the people with sleeping bags, stacks of Kidd-designed books, and distinctive eyeglasses who now line 27th Street.

As all of our friends jet off to Milan, we're pretending to be in London, where today Egyptian-flavored department store Harrods begins its "Design Icons" series of events, in-store displays, and great lectures. The all-around celebration of "the leading designers and their products which have burned an impression on the collective consciousness over the past half century" runs through May 24, and true to form, the store's operative question is, "How many of these infamous products do you own?"

The design objects making the icon cut include the Dyson vacuum, the yo-yo, the Castaglionis' Arco lamp, the Swiss Army Knife, and the Etch-a-Sketch (which coincidentally, is what we use to draft UnBeige posts). Then we noticed the curious Evian bottle designed by Christian Lacroix. Produced in a limited edition of 99, the "Lacroix Ice Queen" bottle was inspired by a red wedding dress worn by Madonna. "I gave the silhouette of a princess, a goddess, or a mythical creature, a sort of snow fairy in couture garb," muses Lacroix on the Harrods website. "Crowned with flowers, bejewelled with crystals, 'wearing' the familiar range of jagged peaks and ridges, like the flounces of a crinoline." This bottle (which will be auctioned for charity with a starting bid of £1000) might have been designed to hold Evian, but it reminds us of another liquid-filled lady, one available at your local supermarket, and for a considerably sweeter price: Mrs. Butterworth!