Mars Inc. has created a powerful new weapon for student council campaigns in wealthier school districts, now allowing customers to customize their M&M's chocolate candies with not only messages in one of three typefaces (alas, one is Comic Sans) and 22 different colors, but also photos. That's right, now you can upload your favorite glamour shot and have it transferred in black food-grade ink onto massive quantities of M&M's. As the printing area is but a wee centimeter of candy-coated shell, the company's website recommends that photos be high-resolution, shadowless, and lacking in both glasses and hats. Unfortunately, the official rules put the kibosh on our plan to create M&M's printed with a simple "w" (or is that a contrarian "m"?). "We take great pride in the history of M&M's products," notes the website. "So the only single letter we print on our candy is the letter 'm.'" Also verboten: pseudodrugs. "To avoid any confusion and keep everyone safe, we will not print any reference to drugs or prescription items, especially those that are in pill or capsule form." We're hoping that this doesn't doom our Albert Hofmann memorial M&M's idea.

To end this writer's day on a fun note, we pull a one-eighty on this week's Jean Nouvel love fest with this "Letter of the Day" from the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune: "Nouvel's 'Joke Architecture' Wows Parisians." Turns out that Nouvel doesn't have a fan in one home in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, the one owned by Bob Pratt. In his letter, he tears into the starchitect and his winning plans for the Signal Tower in Paris. But it's not just funny because he's angry (angry people are always funny, unless they're writing mean letters to poor lil' ol' us UnBeige editors), it's because he has some pretty solid critiques of Nouvel's work (at least from the A.M. Stern perspective). And he's funny about it, too. Here's a couple of our favorite quotes from the vitriolic onslaught:

Nouvel, whose whimsical Darth Vader vacation-fortress exterior sketch dazzled the Guthrie brain trust into shrugging off the dimly lit, often dysfunctional interior, has produced a stacked cube design seemingly inspired by astutely observing the creative frenzy of 2-year-old children at LEGO Land.

...The French committee clearly conceived the selection process as a vehicle to choose a design that would deflect attention from the vulgar Pompidou Center. Mission accomplished.

Artist and web-savvy prankster/provacateur Yazmany Arboleda welcomes visitors to his primary website with a disclaimer that it is "not a statement, definitive or otherwise, but rather an exploration—a web of wonderlust, of musings and misadventures." This morning in Manhattan, Arboleda got another misadventure to add to the mix when police shut down his planned day-long, two-pronged art show provocatively titled "The Assassination of Hillary Clinton" and "The Assassination of Barack Obama." (Unless of course, those cops were actors hired by Arboleda, and we wouldn't put it past him.)

Set to open tomorrow (here's the YouTube invite), the show was allegedly sponsored by An Available Space, "an alternative arts organization" that looks to be Arboleda's creation, complete with a website that emulates that of the nonprofit arts organization Creative Time. Earlier this year, Arboleda crafted elaborate press releases, exhibition websites (complete with PhotoShopped installation shots), and even fake Chelsea art galleries where his Clinton and Obama shows were allegedly installed and hastily censored (Michael Musto fell for it, as did the news team at a Univision affiliate).

Always thinking, Arboleda chose to stage this "24-hour resurrection" of his assassination shows in a vacant storefront across from an entrance to The New York Times building on West 40th Street. This proved effective, and the NYT's City Room blog picked up the story this morning, noting that, "By 9:30 a.m., New York City police detectives and Secret Service agents had shut down the exhibition, and building workers quickly covered over the inflammatory title with large sheets of brown paper and blue masking tape." Arboleda was detained, questioned, and released. "It's art. It's not supposed to be harmful," he told the Times. "It's about character assassination—about how Obama and Hillary have been portrayed by the media." He added, presumably with a straight face, "It's about the media."

Absolutely nothing to do with anything of vital importance, but something we'd found interesting and often thought about in those few moments each month that we're allowed to use our brains for something other than work. It's Noisy Decent Graphics asking if designers are more or less apt to have tattoos. There's really not much more to their post than that question, as they want their many commentors to chime in and offer up a decisive opinion. And it's certainly interesting to read through the large batch they've received. Personally, we'd say that yes, designers are more likely to have tattoos than people other professions, like doctors and lawyers. But within the design community, we think web design people are at the tops of tattoo-having list and we dull bloggers who just write about design are at the very bottom (Stephanie being the exception, having 58 tattoos on her left arm alone).

Following yesterday's completely un-fun story about the Flight 93 Memorial controversy, here's a far more lighthearted one that follows that same pattern of us hearing about it a long while back and then, strangely, having it come back and scattered around within the big media outlets. It's the story of John Jessop, an architect who had to go through a whole slew of inane bureaucracy to explain a "design access statement" to the UK government about a small shed he had on his property. He passed along his smarmy reply and over the course of a couple of years, that e-mail reply has made its rounds through a million in boxes. It's a cute story and is sort of like reading the whole story behind one of those joke e-mails your friends and family are always forwarding you, much to your great distaste.

There's a time in every child's life when the fruity, esterified scents of Mr. Sketch markers--even the heady mint of the green one--just don't cut it anymore. A tang of mediocrity emanates from that yellow box of Crayolas, the Marks-a-lots smell like grandpa, and the tinny, headache-inducing aroma of those slim Vis-a-Vis types is best left for one's teacher and the overhead projector. It's Sharpie time: quick-drying, permanent on most surfaces, and oh, that whiff of danger.

Given the rite of passage that is Sharpie use, we were appauled to learn that earlier this month, eight-year-old Eathan Harris was suspended from his Colorado elementary school for sniffing Sharpie fumes. The school's principal, Chris Benisch, said that he suspended Harris (or "Sharpie boy," as the Rocky Mountain News dubbed him) because he repeatedly sniffed his sweatshirt on which he'd drawn with the black marker. Benisch described the Sharpie in question as "enormous."

Harris' suspension was reduced from three days to one after his father complained. Meanwhile, Benisch sent out a warning to all students about solvents and "purged" the school of every last permanent marker. However, a glance at any Sharpie label reveals that the markers are non-toxic and according to toxicologists, cannot be used to get high. Harris is now back in his third-grade classroom, hoping that the incident won't derail his dreams of becoming a professional football player. Commenting on the Sharpie, Harris said, "It smelled good."

From this writer's posts thus far, you can probably tell that it's yet another rundown, worn-out Friday. So we'll keep that easy, light-reading momentum going with this post we enjoyed over at Logic+Emotion: "The Top 10 Made Up Words of Web 3.0." In it, writer David Armano creates ten words that are sure to enter the web-centric lexicon any day now. And then you can say you were here first when it all began and won't that be nice for you?

8. Twiggles
A spontaneous burst of laughter caused by interactions on Twitter. "Oh look who has a case of the Twiggles today."

The kinda weird and uncomfortable part is that while this is intended as humor (right? please say it is?), lord is there ever a big, hefty grain of reality embedded therein. But maybe we've just become bitter and grumpy after lo these many years of internet gibberish.

We love a good edifying obituary, and the Wall Street Journal weekend edition rarely disappoints. Over the past weekend, we learned that Herb Peterson, the enterprising McDonald's franchisee that in 1972 devised the Egg McMuffin, recently passed away at the age of 89. The story of Peterson's eggs Benedict-inspired menu addition (the secret? cooking the egg using a stainless steel, Teflon-coated ring that made it precisely fit the muffin) was impressive, but we were more interested in writer Stephen Miller's inclusion of one of Peterson's earlier achievements. While working as an advertising executive in Chicago in the 1960s, Peterson helped to design Ronald McDonald's clown costume.

He said he based it in part on NASA spacesuits. "It should be a flying-clown costume, with plenty of pockets so he could carry McDonald's food with him," Mr. Peterson recalled thinking. [McDonald's founder Ray] Kroc offered him the Santa Barbara franchise in 1968.

This writer is beat. Not only was it a long work week, but he also was busy trying to buy a house. And when you add those two things together, you get exhaustion. So when his fiancee sent him this piece from the cooking site YumSugar, dealing with the iHam, (or "iJam" in its native Spanish), we figured we had a post right there. We know it's a long since played out joke, but this seems to kick some life back into it a bit. Or maybe we're just suckers for deadpan in a foreign tongue. Whatever the case, this writer will say no more and before handing you over to Stephanie's afternoon shift, encourage you to read coverage linked above of and then watch the video below. It is truly a marvel of modern design:

Here at UnBeige, we try not to let a week go by without a fresh Michael Bierut story. What's the "renowned graphic artist," Pentagram partner, AIGA medalist, savvy interlocutor, and Saks' savior up to now? As if you needed further proof of Bierut's boundless talent, we can now confirm that he can both sing and (simultaneously) convey valuable information about the availability of graphic designer Joshua Levi!

Levi, you see, was the lucky bidder in the AIGA/NY Holiday Party auction for "Bierut's voice on your phone greeting." After paying up $251 (which benefited the AIGA/NY Mentoring Program), Levi decided upon a creative, collaborative approach. "Instead of scripting him, I thought it would be more fun to have him come up with something," Levi tells us. "I made some rules, he made content to fit the structure." His demands, which he concedes were "a bit ridiculous," were as follows:

• Sung a cappella to a melody of your choice
• Between 4-10 seconds
• No word minimum/max
• You may, but do not have to state your own name
• You must state my name at least once and indicate it is my greeting

The result? What Levi calls a "quick, clever, and comical" tune that he immediately made his default voicemail greeting. And what has been the response to Bierut's jingle? "Voicemail messages of suspended laughter," says Levi. "Many of them." But, like much of Bierut's oeuvre, it's proven to be a superior blend of form and function. "The greeting's normal enough that it doesn't interfere with business-type messages. It's more of an inside thing, either you get it or you don't," says Levi. "Prior to this, I had never had a caller disappointed that I answered my phone."

And now we are proud to present Bierut's snappy greeting, in its entirety (alas, there's no visual component, but we've provided the graphic at the top of this post to help get your imagination flowing). Note how Bierut artfully rhymes "ready" with "Levi." UnBeige readers, don't try this at home!