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In probing interviews, she reminds the world just how much design matters. She wrote the book on how to think like a great graphic designer. And now, it's official: UnBeige favorite Debbie Millman is the president of AIGA. She replaces outgoing president Sean Adams, who will remain involved in an ex officio role. Millman's three-year term begins today, as do those of four other newly elected AIGA board members: Julie Beeler (Second Story Interactive Studios), AIGA treasurer Zia Khan (Lucid Partners), James Koval (VSA Partners), and Angela Shen-Hsieh (Visual i|o). Additionally, three board members will begin positions to finish the incomplete terms of former directors: Shelley Evenson (Carnegie Mellon University), Louise Sandhaus (California Institute of the Arts), and Lynda Weinman (lynda.com). They'll all be working toward AIGA's new mandate—"to advance designing as a professional craft, strategic tool, and vital cultural force"—as the organization approaches its centennial in 2014. Check out the below video from last month's AIGA Leadership Retreat in Portland, where Adams passed the baton to Millman. Note that the baton was metaphorical, but were it literal, it would be one well-designed baton.

After this writer's wife introduced him to the work of radio/podcasting genius Jesse Thorne, we've been completely enamored with every piece of programing under the umbrella of his Maximum Fun empire (most specifically the Jordan Jesse, Go! program, which is indescribable and indescribably fun). So it was a beautiful thing to see this writer's worlds colliding as Thorne recently dipped his journalistic toes into the design world in this interview with Design Museum director, Deyan Sudjic. Per usual with his Sound of Young America interviews, it's both a loose conversation, but a very informative one none the less. Listen and enjoy:

The Sound of Young America

You may recall that last week, in the throes of our summer-long case of Frank Lloyd Wright fever, we alluded to Gloria Vanderbilt's new novel, Obsession (Ecco), the tale of a Wright-like architect and his steamy life away from the drawing board. Aside from the Wright angle (and Frank himself detested nothing more) of the "erotic tale," we detected a distinct mastery in the book's cover, and we can now confirm that yup, it's a Kidd! Graphic designer, writer, and budding rock star Chip Kidd designed the stunning cover and elegant interiors of Obsession, creating a cool foil for the hot plot that Joyce Carol Oates described as "a remarkable tapestry of human passion." Interestingly, the mannequin heads, photographed by Geoff Spear, are from Vanderbilt's own collection—and yet they could totally pass for the haughty aunts of the moonfaced Eishi Takaoka sculpture on the Kidd-designed cover of Kafka on the Shore! Read on for the first page of Obsession.

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Flair was a commercial bomb. Backed by the wealthy husband of its founding editor, the magazine lost millions before folding after a year. That was almost 60 years ago, yet Flair—all twelve issues of it—remains influential and highly coveted for the unique blend of art, literature, fashion, and design that it wrapped in an innovative and expensively produced package. It was the Visionaire of 1950. To thank for that is Fleur Cowles (née Florence Freidman), who died on Friday at—as best anyone can tell—age 101.

Cowles' post-Flair life included, by her own description, stints as "an American president's personal representative, decorated by six governments; as a writer of thirteen books and contributor to six others; as a painter, with fifty-one one-man exhibitions throughout the world; patron of the arts and sciences, irrepressible traveller and, more importantly, friend-gatherer." But it was for her magazine, which featured works by the likes of W.H. Auden and Salvador Dali, that she will be remembered. That, too, is by design. "I want Flair magazine to be considered my obit. And that's what I want to be remembered by forever," she told the Associated Press in 1996. "Nevermind any other thing I may have done. It's Flair that really reflects me."

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A fun, quick interview/piece for the NY Times with everyone's favorite British mimic, Tracey Ullman, about her love of clothing design and preparing to host the upcoming Council of Fashion Designers of America Awards on the 15th of this month. We had no idea she was so well schooled in the world of looks, but apparently she's a regular clothes horse and is somewhat buddy-buddy with the top designers, including Diane Von Furstenberg, who invited Ullman to host the annual event. Here's a bit:

The crowd can be tough, as Simon Doonan of Barneys New York can attest after insulting Andre Leon Talley's turban last year. But Ms. Ullman was not yet sure if she would be taking aim at designers who might be in the room. She was more tempted, she said, by exploring how those designers familiar with the fading era of New York society are adapting to the modern world of invented celebrities.

"You can imagine," Ms. Ullman said, "Oscar de la Rentabeing shown a picture of Lauren Conrad, and saying, 'Oh, if only we can get her to hold our purse!'"

Furniture designer and craftsman Sam Maloof died late last month at the age of 93. A self-taught and self-described "woodworker," Maloof handcrafted sculptural furniture that was a humane foil to minimalist architecture of the post-World War II era. Henry Dreyfuss was an early fan. In 1951, the industrial designer commissioned Maloof to furnish his home and office in Pasadena, notes Maloof's New York Times obituary.

"I was working out of a one-car garage," Mr. Maloof told The New York Times in 2001. "I didn't have power tools—nothing. He called and said, 'You don't know who I am, but I know who you are.' I just about collapsed." Mr. Maloof designed and made 25 pieces for Dreyfuss, for a grand total of $1,800.

In ensuing years, Maloof turned down lucrative offers to mass produce his furniture. He preferred to work freehand with a bandsaw and was a stickler for both craftsmanship and joinery. He made furniture that was free of nails and metal hardware. According to the Los Angeles Times, Maloof once tested the strength of the joints for a set of chairs by dropping a prototype from the roof of his garage onto his driveway. The joints survived. "There's a lot of work being done today that doesn't have any soul in it," Maloof said. "The technique may be the utmost perfection, yet it is lifeless. It doesn't have a soul. I hope my furniture has a soul to it."

Want to learn how design idol and Pentagram partner Paula Scher functions with failure and compare it to how you yourself deal with it (read: alcohol, sobbing, and collecting those porcelain figurines you find in Parade Magazine -- at least that's the way we operate), you'll feel momentarily happy to learn that Scher was recently speaking to Psychology Today about just that. It's a bevy of interesting thoughts and quotes, with the designer's launching point being that familiar "you have to fail to succeed" mantra, but going off in some unique directions, like working with younger people who are failing in an effort to rebel against your work and how difficult it is to encourage that. She even talks a little about Randy Newman, which this writer is on record for having said he doesn't particularly care for the his work, but even that we let slide because the interview (and that section) is captivating. Well worth reading if you can take a break from your alcohol, sobs, and Parade browsing for just five minutes.

Canadian architect Arthur Erickson—best known for designing Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Vancouver's Robson Square, and Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto—died Wednesday in Vancouver at the age of 84. Los Angeles Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne sums up the contradictions that characterized Erickson's five-decade career: "He was a dedicated, widely traveled scholar of architectural history who found himself strangely out of step with the post-modern movement of the 1970s and '80s, which sought to reassert the value of historic styles," writes Hawthorne in today's LAT obituary of the Vancouver-born architect. "He was a fierce critic of the dehumanizing effects of what we now call globalization whose biggest projects—the sleek, mirrored-glass California Plaza certainly among them—can be faceless and alienating." And then there was his predilection for adding concrete to a part of the world where gray was already in abundance. Adds Hawthorne, "he was a Vancouver architect whose buildings tend to look terrible in the rain."

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Graphic design legend Milton Glaser has alerted us to the launch of his new website, MiltonGlaserWorks.com. An e-commerce-enabled companion to the designer's online home base, MiltonGlaser.com, the new site offers signed editions of Glaser's books and other works, including posters and a new range of giclée prints of assorted musicians and William Shakespeare. We'll take this collotype/silkscreen, "Mookie," which Glaser describes as "a loving portrait of a monstrous rabbit." Whether or not your budget allows for the acquisition of a signed "Beethoven with Eggplants" silkscreen, Glaser fans should be on the lookout for screenings of the documentary Milton Glaser: To Inform and Delight. Directed by Wendy Keys, the film has been making the festival rounds and premieres next Friday at New York's Cinema Village. We've posted the trailer after the jump.

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Former Metropolitan Museum of Art head honcho Philippe de Montebello showed up in an usual place this week, in a New York courtroom testifying as part of the ongoing legal battle surrounding the fortune of deceased socialite Brooke Astor. If you haven't been following the tabloids, the basic gist of the fight is over whether or not Astor's son, Anthony Marshall, swindled every dime he could from his mother before her passing in 2007, the question being whether or not she had her full mental capacities at the time he was having her change her will and hand him bundles of money. de Montebello was called to talk about an instance in 2004 when he had lunch with Astor to prove that she had already begun losing her facilities, saying that she did not recognize him at all, despite having constantly donated to the Met in the decades prior:

"She was basically looking at me and saying, 'Who are you?'" de Montebello testified.

Also introduced into evidence was a thank-you letter Astor sent to de Montebello in January 2001. She signed it, in a very shaky hand, "As always, your very devoted Brooke."

Below that, Astor scribbled, "My hand is awful -- hardly can hold a pen!!"

The note is potentially important evidence against [possible accomplice Francis Morrissey], who is charged with forging Astor's signature on a March 2004 will update that benefited Marshall.