popularity contest

The votes are in, and the winner of Nikon's annual Small World Photomicrography Competition is...Arabidopsis thaliana! You know, the thale cress anther? OK, it's the male sex organ of a small flowering plant, and enterprising Estonian Heiti Paves, a scientist at the Tallinn University of Technology who is probably of no relation to celebrity hairstylist Ken, managed to photograph a bunch of them under 20 times magnification (resulting in the photomicrograph pictured above). "As part of my work as a research scientist, I have been taking photographs through the microscope for almost 30 years to observe the processes in living cells," said Paves, whose winning image reminds us of a painfully inflamed devil strawberry. "I have spent a lot of time to capture nice pictures worthy of submission to the Nikon Small World Competition." Way to put that pricey confocal microscope to good use!

Always on the hunt for art historical allusions (however unintentional they may be), we particularly enjoyed the above top finishers. James Hayden of Philadelphia's Wistar Institute captured fourth place for his ultra-closeup of a swirly anglerfish ovary (above, at left)—or is it a pseudocolored overhead shot of Robert Smithson's "Spiral Jetty"? Meanwhile, New Zealander Lloyd Donaldson won eighth place for his Brice Marden-esque skeins of color (at right), which are in fact cotton fibers daubed with berberine sulphate and magnified a couple hundred times. Go and project your own frame of reference on all of the winners and honorable mentions here.

What about Tom Ford, Renzo Piano, Rem Koolhaas, Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio, Stella McCartney, or Takashi Murakami? They're all among the finalists for this year's Time 100 list, and the good people at Time have asked us to let you know that they've just launched the annual Time 100 Most Influential People poll, in which readers get a chance to vote on who they think should be on the 2009 TIME 100 list, which will be released later this year. Along with a nifty slider that you can use to rank the influence of Hirst, Ford, Piano, Koolhaas, Diller and Scofidio, McCartney, Murakami, and 196 others (from the Octomom to the Pope), Time has sprinkled in some pros and cons about each finalist. Ford's page quotes Kanye West—who once blogged, "Is it me or do Tom Ford sunglasses rule the world?"—before pointing out that those sunglasses lost a bit of luxury cred when they showed up for sale at Costco.

Weeks before the First Lady stepped out in that lemongrass Isabel Toledo ensemble, global color authority and paintmaker Pantone predicted that 2009 would be all about yellow, specifically "Mimosa" (Pantone #14-0848). It's the color of the year. "The color yellow exemplifies the warmth and nurturing quality of the sun, properties we as humans are naturally drawn to for reassurance," said Leatrice Eiseman, executive director of the Pantone Color Institute, in a press release. "Mimosa also speaks to enlightenment, as it is a hue that sparks imagination and innovation," not to mention our favorite way to start the day. (Plus, it sounds fresher and fizzier than "goldenrod.")

Given its versatility, Pantone predicts that 2009 will yield a bumper crop of Mimosa "women's accessories, home furnishings, active sportswear, and men's ties and shirts." Like last year's color of the year, the Yves Klein-esque "Blue Iris," the spring runways offered a preview of the year's hot hues. Yellows ranging from Sunflower and Aurora to Gold and Super Lemon popped from the collections of designers such as Carmen Marc Valvo, Reem Acra, Yigal Azrouel, and Christian Francis Roth, who created a print based upon a vintage grafitti-splashed subway car to which he matched Pantone colors, including Mimosa.

Bravo's Shear Genius, a Project Runway for hairstylists, is back for its second season. Heavy on the "cut"-related wordplay, the show puts vaguely menacing Danish hairstylist René Fris (who we could swear we once saw in a Mentos commercial) in the Tim Gunn role and is hosted by actress/Kmartist Jaclyn Smith. Shear Genius celebrated its season premiere on Tuesday with a pop-up salon in New York's Times Square and recruited students from the School of Visual Arts, under the guidance of SVA 3D Design Program chairperson Kevin O'Callaghan, to design the temporary salon as well as ten salon chairs that Bravo's "The Dish" blog describes as "pretty damn amazing."

Among the wacky hair chairs is the trio pictured above. Created by Sarah Nguyen, the "DJ" chair (at far right) is a stack of hair-themed record albums ready for playing on its giant turntable base while Kathleen Ugurlu's "Jock" (center) is for the hirsute baseball fan (we think the batting helmet is a nice touch). But we find ourselves unable to resist the garden gnome-accessorized "Backyard" chair designed by Kaori Sakai in a bold palette of green, red, and yellow. It comes with a grass-tufted seat backed by a garden gate, a hose, cooler, and a full grill setup, complete with ketchup, mustard, and corn on the cob. Check out all of the chairs and vote for your favorite here. The winner gets a $5,000 prize, which we're hoping is payable in cash rather than hair products.

Over at Nerve.com, they've assembled a list of the "50 greatest commercial parodies of all time," most of them drawn from the post-monologue slot on Saturday Night Live. The list includes many of our favorites, including the SNL spots for Crystal Gravy (#16) and Calvin Klein "Compulsion" (#29), but where is the classic Grayson Moorhead Securities parody? Dan Akroyd shilling for the Bass-o-matic takes the #1 ranking, and we're pleased to see that this ad for the First CityWide Change Bank came in at a respectable #7.

As summer comes to an official close, we closed the voting in our first poll. The designers who will never eat brunch in this town again took an early lead, and kept it:

Who were this summer's hottest design newsmakers?
new curators Bergdoll and Sudjic	10%	(4 votes)
Yves Behar, $100 laptop whiz	24%	(9 votes)
The NDA 5, brunch-boycotting designers	43%	(16 votes)
Adnan Hajj, former Reuters photographer	16%	(6 votes)
Tom Anjello, viral marketing celebrity	5%	(2 votes)
(Total: 37 votes)

Congratulations Michael Rock, Susan Sellars, Georgianna Stout, Paula Scher and Stefan Sagmeister, who will each receive a bottle of the coveted UnBeige Sunscreen For Design Newsmaker Hotness (SPF 45).

Thanks to all who voted, and don't forget to vote in our current poll, about how bloggers should reappropriate photos for their posts.

Since it's warmer this week, we're hot for your answers to our burning question: What design newsmaker made the biggest splash this summer?

Was it the fist-bumping leader of Agency.com? New hires at MoMA and the Design Museum? Beautiful Yves Behar? Clone Tool Adnan Hajj? Or the "Regrets Only" mentality of the NDA5?

Polls close Thursday, when we crown the winner with a special summer-edition UnBeige Asks award.

Okay, summer ain't over quite yet, but before your cognitive memory is hogged by the new season of "Lost," we wanted to take a little inventory. That's right: Mom and Dad gave us UnBeige kids keys to the polling privileges. Take a moment to reminisce about the past few months...and cast your vote.

Who were this summer's hottest design newsmakers?

  new curators Bergdoll and Sudjic
  Yves Behar, $100 laptop whiz
  The NDA 5, brunch-boycotting designers
  Adnan Hajj, former Reuters photographer
  Tom Anjello, viral marketing celebrity