Famed literary critic Lionel Trilling once described Henry James as a “social twitterer.” Sure, he meant it as an insult, but it makes us feel better about having signed up to twitter ourselves. Look to the official UnBeige Twitter feed, for up-to-the-minute newsbites, event snippets, links of interest, design trivia, and free candy (OK, we’re still working on the physics of that last one). The mediabistro.com tech wizards have added to the sidebar at right a handful of our most recent word bursts (limited to 140 characters), but you can sign up to follow all of our twittering, and start twittering yourself at twitter.com.

Buy design. Goods for sale at the new online home of the Shop at Cooper-Hewittt.

Whether you’re in the market for a hollowed-out half dollar, a megaphone-shaped iPhone speaker, a “living necklace,” a magazine designed to double as stunning wrapping paper, or a silicone-filled ostrich egg (Father’s Day gift alert!), the new Shop at Cooper-Hewitt has something for you. With its physical home in the throes of a $64 million renovation, the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum is expanding into new realms, from Governor’s Island (where on Saturday, it will open the highly anticipated “Graphic Design—Now in Production” exhibition) to cyberspace. It’s the digital realm where the museum has relaunched its famously well-curated shop, overseen by newly appointed director of retail Robert Nachman. The Cooper-Hewitt tapped Marque Creative to design the new site, which features seamless checkout, integrated member discounting, and enhanced search capabilities. “A true design destination for online consumers, the Shop offers a selection of works by established and emerging designers that will surprise, delight, and inspire,” said associate director Caroline Baumann in a statement announcing the relaunch. Plus, shop purchases are sales-tax exempt and all proceeds go to support the museum’s educational goals and mission—as if you needed more reasons to splurge on a hand-beaded Hella Jongerius bowl.

“Ladies and gentlemen, design is a popular subject today. No wonder, because in the face of increasing competition, design is often the only product differentiation that is truly discernible to the buyer.” That this sentiment came from Dieter Rams comes as no surprise. What’s striking is the date of his remarks, delivered to an audience at Jack Lenor Larsen‘s New York showroom in December 1976. He ended on a cautionary note: “I imagine our current situation will cause future generations to shudder at the thoughtlessness in the way in which we today fill our homes, our cities, and our landscape with a chaos of assorted junk,” said Rams. “What a fatalistic apathy we have towards the effect of such things. What atrocities we have to tolerate. Yet we are only half aware of them.” The full transcript of this disturbingly prescient speech is now available online thanks to Vitsœ, for whom Rams designed the eminently modular 606 Universal Shelving System in 1960. The big occasion is the legendary designer’s birthday: he was born 80 years ago today in Wiesbaden, Germany. Celebrate by treating yourself to Sophie Lovell‘s masterful monograph Dieter Rams: As Little Design As Possible (published last year by Phaidon) or a gorgeous poster of Rams’ famous “Ten Principles for Good Design,” available exclusively from Fab.com.

“I don’t pull [a Chado Ralph Rucci collection] together until very late, because I keep on adding—and editing. It doesn’t all come together until the fittings are finished, and then I line up for the show, because I don’t work with a stylist. I don’t understand how I possibly could, for two reasons. Part of my work, after I design the clothes for consumption—for the buyers to pull apart and buy for their locations—is also to make a presentation that tells a story for the press and for the history of our profession. And so how could a stylist know what’s in my psyche? And after having this huge period of solitude of just working with my friends [to design, construct, and edit the collection], how could I sit down with a stylist and talk about all of that? Perhaps a psychiatrist that I’ve worked with, but not a stylist to put together clothes! The other part of that is that I find that the formula that has occurred in our industry in the past however many years while I’ve been in this business, where a stylist prepares it for the press so that all the messages read somewhat the same, I can’t do that. I would choke.”

-Fashion designer Ralph Rucci, in an interview with modaCYCLE (video below). Rucci will receive the André Leon Talley Lifetime Achievement Award this evening at the Savannah College of Art and Design’s annual fashion show. An exhibit of his work opens today at the SCAD Museum of Art.
Read more

With its Nick at Nite orgins, TV Land has long been associated with classic sitcoms such as Bewitched, Mister Ed, and the infectious, toe-tapping opening credits of My Three Sons. The network’s stylized logo (at left), evoking the technicolor geo-whimsy of the zippy 1950s, was a perfect fit for that programming, but when the TV Land line-up evolved to include more modern syndicated shows (Everybody Loves Raymond, Boston Legal) and orginal programming devoid of nuclear families and happy homemaker-witches in prim dresses (Hot in Cleveland, The Exes), its branding remained tied to the atomic age. Enter Trollbäck + Company, which in its latest branding project for the network has undertaken the first logo reinvention in the 16-year history of TV Land.

“Given our familiarity with the brand, we knew that the logo was due for an overhaul to shake off some old perceptions,” says executive creative director Jacob Trollbäck, whose New York-based firm has tweaked the network’s branding in three previous projects. The new look is rolling out this month, with a modern edge, bold colors, and a fresh tagline (“Laugh More”). “The new horizontal logo locks up with type neatly,” notes T+Co creative director Anna Minkkinen, “allowing us to constantly reinforce the brand connection between the network and the shows.” Check out a montage that features the new branding here.

If we’ve heard it once, we’ve heard it a thousand times: “I could tell you this Big Design News, but then I’d have to kill you.” Now you can give us the scoop and skip the messy murder plot, thanks to our “Anonymous Tips” box, which the mediabistro.com tech wizards have placed at the top right of this page. Your mission, should you choose to accept it? Type in your news—design happenings, gossip, movements of the Revolving Door, a designer’s hidden talent, or any newsy, design-y morsel—and click “send.” We’ll get the news, you’ll retain your air of mystery.

AIGA/NY 30th Anniversary posters designed by SpotCo, Bobby C. Martin Jr., and Paula Scher.

This year marks the thirtieth anniversary of AIGA/NY, tireless uniter of the New York City design community and booster of the design profession nationwide. The organization is marking the milestone with a series of jumbo birthday cards: commemorative posters created by design stars. Michael Bierut, Ivan Chermayeff, and Matteo Bologna are among the 30 designers who were up to the task. Debbie Millman contributed one of her signature text paintings that features the names of AIGA/NY board members—all 30 years worth of them. Meanwhile, Paula Scher was thinking pink in an Empire State of mind, Ken Carbone serves up a New York pizza slice with AIGA in pepperoni, and for dessert, there’s delicious cookies from SpotCo (mind the cookie rat). Check out of all of the 30th Anniversary Series posters on Etsy, where they are for sale in limited editions of 100. We suggest ponying up some birthday money to own of ten signed pieces per artist.

In this episode of “Cubes,” we tour the worldwide headquarters of IPG Mediabrands, the media holding company responsible for $34 billion in global revenue from advertising agencies such as Universal McCann. IPG’s work includes the Geico Gecko and Volkswagen’s pint-sized Darth Vader.

The IPG headquarters is home to a cutting edge media lab full of “Minority Report”-esque marketing technology, and the office includes a high-tech workspace dubbed “the desk of the future” and a skyway stretching 10 stories above the street that was once used by the Gimbels department story, the building’s previous tenant.

For more mediabistroTV videos, check out our YouTube channel, and be sure to follow us on Twitter: @mediabistroTV

Are you simultaneously comforted and excited by the sight of a bookshelf groaning with goldenrod-spined periodicals? Does your love of explorers and safaris transcend web browsers? Do you aspire to deploy your visual skills to inspire others to care about the planet? Then explore this: National Geographic is searching Earth for a visual communications coordinator to join its Washington, D.C. office, which we imagine as a rectangular golden structure teeming with exotic creatures (blind snakes, mutant penguins, Chris Johns). The full-time post involves “researching and writing intranet stories, producing and editing internal video, event management, and photographing internal events.” Our interview advice? Bone up on your baby animal terminology and try not to flinch when they bring in the giant sea beast.

Learn more about and apply for this National Geographic visual communications coordinator job or view all of the current mediabistro.com design, art, and photo jobs.

Sure, UnBeige is published online, but we actually compose all of our posts on a pair of candy apple red Olivetti typewriters before turning them over to Eero, our technology-savvy web monkey, who somehow beams them into cyberspace (he also handles all of our links). Now Eero tells us that UnBeige and the rest of the mediabistro.com blog family have joined the future with mobile-optimized sites that are easily browsable on your iPhone, Blackberry, or other smartphone. Should you routinely carry one of these gizmos on your person, you need only type unbeige.com into the browser to be automatically redirected to our mobile-friendly page. Problems reading UnBeige on the go? Drop us an e-mail.