The good people at Men's Vogue were kind enough to pass word along to us of one of their newest features, which they've just launched on their site. It's called "Design Inspirations" and they talked to famous design folk, from Michael Bierut to Yves Behar to Bentley's head of interior design, Robin Page, and asked them to name five things that inspire them. It's not one of those types of pieces that are going to give you a tremendous rush of insight about anything, but it's certainly kind of fun to read the random things they picked. And without much explanation beyond just their choices, it sort of becomes something of a game, trying to figure out just why they picked what they did, like #3 from designer Marcel Wanders:

Johannes Vermeer's "Girl with the Pearl Earring"

This 17th century work by Johannes Vermeer is often referred to as the "Mona Lisa of the North," a classic work which has inspired both a novel and a film.

Um...and?

Last month, we told you about the new and improved Interview, as editorial directors Fabien Baron and Glenn O'Brien marshal the Warhol-founded magazine toward a full-scale revamp. Now we point you to the May issue to highlight Vince Aletti's interview with photographer and filmmaker Jerry Schatzberg, whose photos of the 1962 Paris couture shows are the subject of a book published last week by Rizzoli. Aletti talks with Schatzberg about the book, how he got into fashion photography, and his work with famed Vogue art director Alexander Liberman, before ending the Q&A with a question about the other Alex. Did Schatzberg ever work with Alexey Brodovitch (pictured at right), former art director at Harper's Bazaar?

No, but I took his course at the New School. He taught me something that I've always remembered: After we did the initial assignment, he contradicted what he said the first week, and I said, "Okay." The next week, he contradicted what he said the second week. We went through 10 weeks of contradicting, and I thought maybe he was drunk. At the end, he said, "You may think I've contradicted myself, but there's no one way to do anything."

We're still pretty worn out from just having returned to semi-normalcy, so here's just a little bit of interesting to end this writer's day upon. Making the rounds lately is Pixar's Brad Bird talking to The McKinsey Quarterly, discussing how he manages such gigantic teams of designers, engineers, tech people, etc. and still retaining a quality product. Although the McKinsey site itself requires registration and all that, Gigaom has a nice rundown/synopsis of the whole thing, hitting on nine key lessons Bird brings to the table. Even if you don't care a lick about management stuff, it's a really interesting take on how things work at the mother of all animation studios. Here's one part about working for Steve Jobs:

Then there's our building. Steve Jobs basically designed this building. In the center, he created this big atrium area, which seems initially like a waste of space. The reason he did it was that everybody goes off and works in their individual areas. People who work on software code are here, people who animate are there, and people who do designs are over there. Steve put the mailboxes, the meetings rooms, the cafeteria, and, most insidiously and brilliantly, the bathrooms in the center -- which initially drove us crazy -- so that you run into everybody during the course of a day. [Jobs] realized that when people run into each other, when they make eye contact, things happen. So he made it impossible for you not to run into the rest of the company.

Artist, designer, blogger, and AIGA/NY Fresh Dialogue speaker Andrew Kuo was on Charlie Rose earlier this year, and while that show isn't available online, Mr. Rose's website offers up the below pre-show interview with Kuo, filmed at his recent exhibition at 33 Bond Gallery in New York City. In the video, Kuo talks about art, living in his studio, blogging, and getting over the fear of feedback. Among our favorite "Kuotes": "In high school school, one of my art school teachers thought I was colorblind, but I was just lazy. I just didn't want to mix colors, because I felt like as soon as I started mixing colors I would lose control." Makes us think about Mondrian's psyche in a whole new way.

One of our favorite movie moments of all time is when Good Will Hunting's Will (Matt Damon) pulls out a historiographical can of whoop-ass on a snide young scholar looking for a scuffle. ("You're a first year grad student. You just got finished reading some Marxian historian, Pete Garrison probably....next year, you're gonna be in here regurgitating Gordon Wood, talking about ya know, the Pre-Revolutionary utopia and the capital-forming effects of military mobilization.") Although the film may have sold a few books for Wood, we suspect it was better at moving copies of another tome mentioned in the film: A People's History of the United States, written by Damon's childhood neighbor, Howard Zinn. Since its publication in 1980, the book has sold more than 1.7 million copies, but what about those who prefer comics to dense pages of text? Well, now they have their own version.

A People's History of American Empire is the classic told "in comic form," created by Zinn in collaboration with historian Paul Buhle and cartoonist Mike Konopacki. Published this month by Macmillan, the book "opens with the events of 9/11 and then jumps back to explore the cycles of U.S. expansionism from Wounded Knee to Iraq, stopping along the way at World War I, Central America, Vietnam, and the Iranian revolution," according to the publisher. And this being a comic book, there's an added hero angle:

The book also follows the story of Zinn, the son of poor Jewish immigrants, from his childhood in the Brooklyn slums to his role as one of America's leading historians.

Last Friday, New York's Museum of Modern Art opened its exhibition of Esquire covers designed by George Lois. On view through March of next year, the show features 32 of the 92 covers Lois created for Esquire from 1962 to 1972. "I have always seen myself as an artist. And this is the Museum of Modern Art. And I am an artist," said Lois in an interview with the Associated Press.

And Lois has had some experience dealing with artists whose work adorns the walls of MoMA. In Charles McGrath's piece on Lois and the exhibition in yesterday's New York Times, the writer discusses the remarkable ability of Lois' typically text-free Esquire covers to convey a single idea through an image. "Some were untouched photographs, but, in an era before Photoshop, some were created by the primitive technique of cutting and pasting, using photographs, clip art, and sometimes hand-drawn elements," writes McGrath, before extracting from Lois this gem of an anecdote about Esquire's May 1969 cover (pictured above), which featured Andy Warhol drowning in a can of Campbell's tomato soup.

"I remember when we were doing the Warhol cover," Mr. Lois recalled. "I explained to Andy what I had in mind, and he said, 'Oh, will you have to build a very big can?'"

Interesting report from the field over at Michael Surtees' DesignNotes site. Surtees recently attended a lecture by industry icon and all-around great guy, Roger Black, over at Frog and put together by AIGA. From the post, we learn that Black wound up talking some about the web and the ongoing conversation a designer has to have with his or her audience therein to really make things work. He also got into talking about his own work and how he did things for clients like Rolling Stone and Newsweek. But our favorite part of Michael's great quick report are the snippets he included from his notes:

Here's some of my notes from the talk:
"People don't remember the bad layouts, people back then tried things - they took risks"
"Playing against the expectation"
"Weight, stage and push forward"
"Web = blurry"
"Narrative design; YouTube vs. documnetry, Iraq vs. Vietnam"
"Web 2.0 - open it up"

Isn't it nice when your out somewhere with a bunch of pals and you see your friends who've just met each other getting along famously? That's probably a bit of stretch for this occasion, since we figure the two parties already knew each other, but it was a quick intro into this piece and we're going with it. Anyway, Eric Karjaluoto over at Ideas on Ideas has met up with our old pal Debbie Millman for an interview. Debbie, who many of our readers probably already know quite well, is the brains behind Sterling Brands and the popular podcast Design Matters. And beyond those two outlets, as well as her blog, if you still can't get enough of her, or you're just getting to know her, this should provide a nice little excursion for you. Here's a bit:

I think that packaging and brand design are not just about design anymore. There is no more "mass market" in which to target a product. There is no one demographic picture of the planet. I recently saw cultural anthropologist Grant McCracken speak, and he discussed how while lifestyle typologies expanded to first 3, then 6, then 9 and then 12 typologies-there is now too much variation and we have reached categorical exhaustion. As a result, I have come to believe that the term brand design ultimately undermines the job we do as brand consultants, marketers, designers and strategists. Brand design is not only about design. It is the perfect, meticulously crafted balance of cultural anthropology, behavioral psychology, commerce and creativity.

We're not exactly sure why Philippe Starck is starting up a new publicity tour for himself (maybe he's going to run for office somewhere?), but he's popped up again, this time in Men's Vogue, for a lengthy feature on him, his work, and the various things that come out of his mouth. And per usual, the later is why you should read anything that is about Starck, because it's always a blast to hear or read his words. Is it because of the language barrier or is the man slightly insane? We'd accept both without hesitation, were you to provide us with the truth about either. So go forth and enjoy. Oh, and hey, here's more about his gigantic earth-friendly yacht:

Tapping his inner volcano allows Starck to finish an entire hotel -- right down to the screws on the doors -- in just two or three days. "I've never seen a man work harder than him," his agent, Michele Caniato, says. In less than an hour, Starck recently designed a 525-foot eco-friendly mega-yacht with a hull that barely makes a wake. It probably helped that he was basking in an endorphic afterglow. As [his wife, Jasmine Abdellatif] recalls: "I was falling asleep, and he was drawing, and after 40 minutes he said, 'Oh, look.' And I'm like, 'Yeah!'"

Every day it's Zaha this and Zaha that, largely because we believe Zaha Hadid to be some sort of super productive robot from the future who doesn't need any of our silly human sleep. But maybe we've either been wrong about our hypothesis all along or she just invested in a new robot publicist, as this piece in the Times yesterday, "Inside Zaha Hadid's East London Apartment" takes a look at the starchitect at home and how arguably one of the biggest names in architecture and design at the moment likes to decorate. Strangely, while it's a great piece with lots of interesting detail, not a single photo is included (at least online), which is sort of a let down. But maybe that adds a little bit to our conspiracy, because when they say "her East London apartment" maybe they're talking about the East London in space, where robots come from. Anyway, here's a bit:

The use of glass and transparent materials also features in Hadid's buildings, but her own collection of glass objects is unexpectedly colourful. Arranged on top of a clear glass table and on the floor around it is an array of Fifties and Sixties Italian, Scandinavian and Bohemian glass. "I used to go to Church Street in West London to search for them; some are presents from friends," she says. The vibrant, erratically shaped bowls and vases have something in common with her buildings in that their flowing arcs and organic shapes allow the onlooker to look through as well as around them.