mark your calendar

Are you in New York? How fast can you get here? While National Design Week is being celebrated from sea to shining sea, there are so many design-related events taking place within a few miles of UnBeige HQ that we decided to compile a to-do list for the Gotham-proximal among you:

National Design Week is here, which means that through Saturday, October 24, the country is awash in design-related happenings, many of them free. Here are five that caught our eye:

They may sound staid, but Cut&Paste's digital design tournaments are the creative world's equivalent of a monster truck rally. Having cut and pasted its way through 16 cities and 256 fearless competitors, the competition's global tour has narrowed the field to 48 designers who will battle it out on stage in the first ever Cut&Paste Global Championship this Friday, October 16, at New York City's Hammerstein Ballroom. Expect Layer Tennis times a hundred (and minus the tennis), with a tech setup that will register every mouse click and tapped command from the competing designers' workstations and project them live on large-scale displays in full view of the audience. DJ Cosmo Baker will provide the soundtrack (we're keeping our fingers crossed for lots of DEVO). Click to preview the portfolios and winning work of the contenders for the 2D, 3D, and motion design titles and prizes. Judging the proceedings will be an esteemed panel including Andrea Rosso (55DSL), Kevin Lyons (Anomaly), Allan Chochinov (Core77), and Stephen Price (Stash DVD Magazine). Can't make it to New York? Watch the live webcast here.

What with the sluggish economy and soaring airfare prices, our passport hasn't seen the light of day for some time and is now threatening to sell its Smythson case on eBay. Our heady days of 4 a.m. gift shopping sprees at Keflavik International Airport may be a thing of the past, but The New Yorker is helping us feel better about the passport atrophy. Tickets go on sale tomorrow for the magazine's fifth annual Passport to the Arts event. The art gallery crawl, evening cocktail reception, and silent auction benefitting Friends of the High Line takes place on Saturday, November 7. A ticket (yours for $45 here) gets you a "limited-edition passport" that each of the 24—and counting—Chelsea galleries on the self-guided tour will stamp with a replica of a featured work of art. And with a list of participating galleries that includes Lehmann Maupin, Mary Boone, and Zach Feuer, it promises to be quite a trip.

Forget that whole moon hitting your eye like a big pizza pie thing. Our idea of amore is a stage full of design legends whose surnames end in vowels chatting the night away with Museum of Modern Art curator Paola Antonelli, all under a glowing marquee designed by Milton Glaser. Our amici at the Type Directors Club (TDC) are making it happen on Thursday, October 15, when the newly Glaser-ified SVA Theatre will be the backdrop for "The Night of the Italians," a panel discussion featuring Louise Fili (Louise Fili Inc.), Francesco Cavalli (LeftLoft), Massimo Vignelli (Vignelli Associates), and Matteo Bologna (Mucca Design). Antonelli will moderate. We hear tickets are going fast, so register rapidamente (details here). We suggest gearing up for the big night by watching the below video of Antonelli's 2007 talk at the TED conference. Buon divertimento!

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Ah, the good life. It ain't what it used to be, but what does creative value mean in this, the 21st century? Author and Studio 360 host Kurt Andersen will address this very question tomorrow afternoon in Brooklyn, where Pratt Institute has assembled a outstanding group of innovative types for a syposium called "Redefining the Good Life." Following Andersen's keynote address, the audience will hear from speakers including architect Carlos Zapata, installation artist Jean Shin, environmentalist David de Rothschild, and Arun Chaudhary, who serves as President Obama's director of video field production. After what's sure to be a rousing question and answer session, Andersen will sign copies of his new book Reset: How This Crisis Can Restore Our Values and Renew America (Random House). If you're in the New York area and already have plans, might we suggest resetting your calendar to attend? The symposium is free and open to the public, but reservations are required due to limited seating. RSVP ASAP by e-mailing alumni@pratt.edu or calling 718-399-4447, and tell them UnBeige sent you.

All this talk of chess got us thinking of our favorite designer chess set: History Chess by Boym Partners. The oversized wooden pieces are hand-carved icons of the last century, from the Unabomber Cabin and the sinking Titantic to a VW Beetle and the distinctive swoop of a Panton chair, all easily assembled for battle on a four-foot-square chess board.

(Photo: Boym Partners)

Having celebrated Boym Partners' National Design Award win at the White House over the summer, Constantin and Laurene Leon Boym are gearing up for a busy fall. On the evening of Tuesday, September 22, our friends at Unicahome in Las Vegas will welcome the Boyms for a lecture and reception to celebrate an in-store exhibition of their work. In the neighborhood? Skip the casinos and invest in Recession Souvenirs, the designers' new line of "interrupted skyscrapers" that miniaturize stalled-on-the-boards buildings such as London's Leadenhall Tower ("The Cheesegrater") and the Norman Foster-designed Russia Tower into sturdy bronze conversation pieces. And while what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, what's sold there can be shipped worldwide.

Usually, we at UnBeige devote September 10th to celebrating the birthday of Georges Bataille (he would be 112 this year), but this year we'll dispense with the eye-shaped gâteau to take part in Fashion's Night Out, a Vogue-sponsored global initiative "to promote retail, restore consumer confidence, and celebrate fashion." Surely Bataille, who had much to say about consumption and festivals, would have approved.

"It was an idea that was generated during the [fall] Paris collections in response to the tidal wave of negativity and uncertainty that Anna Wintour perceived among people in the industry and among her colleagues in retail," explains Sally Singer, Vogue's director of fashion news and features. "She called a meeting of all the major editors of Vogue—for all the major editions of Vogue around the world, of which there are about a dozen—and said, 'Let's get people out and about, and if not shopping, then at least enjoying the pleasure of stores.'"

Stateside, the Fashion's Night Out fun will also usher in Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week, which will pause the opening-day Bryant Park action to allow for celebrations at stores throughout the city. The list of participating designers and retailers is vast, but among the events we're most looking forward to is the bash at Barneys, where Simon Doonan and his team have lined up events including a book signing with Ruben and Isabel Toledo, trunk shows from Barbara Tfank and Zero + Maria Cornejo, and appearances by Narciso Rodriguez, Thom Browne, and Jonathan Adler, who Doonan promises will actually be throwing pots in the store (live-action potting!). A few blocks away, Assouline is keeping its sublime bookstore at the Plaza open late, serving champagne, The American Fashion Cookbook, and a scavenger hunt based around the tasty tome. Down in Soho, Michael Kors has recruited Billy Norwich to draw caricatures of guests, while famed photographer Arthur Elgort will be snapping away at the Dior flagship on Fifth Avenue. Smile and say "Galliano!"

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If, like us, you're a sucker for architecture, design, film, and autumnal hues, you won't want to miss next month's Architecture & Design Film Festival, the glad tidings of which have just reached UnBeige HQ thanks to reader Carol. The festival runs from September 24-27 in Vermont's Mad River Valley—specifically, the picturesque town of Waitsfield and its Big Picture Theater. Among the many feature-length films, documentaries, and shorts to be screened are UnBeige favorites Objectified, Hella Jongerius: Contemporary Archetypes, A Man Named Pearl, and Sketches of Frank Gehry, charmingly directed by the late Sydney Pollack. And the best news of all? Proceeds from the festival will benefit the Yestermorrow Design/Build School in Warren, Vermont. One of the only schools of its kind in the country, Yestermorrow teaches design and construction skills to people of all ages and experience levels. While the full film festival program—which will include conversations with filmmakers, architects, and designers—is still in the works, tickets are now available for purchase online.

Have an event to suggest for our new "Mark Your Calendar" feature? Drop us a line at unbeige@mediabistro.com