If you’re anything like us, you’re sitting with your coffee this morning wondering, what in the world will any of those designers do after their star-making turns on Top Design? Well, if you’re Todd Oldham you join Old Navy as creative director to boost sagging sales. You’ll remember that Oldham did some fairly well-received work for La-Z-Boy and Target, so we suppose Old Navy comes next in the mass-market continuum, but…really?

Although this does open up the door for one awesome possibility: Charley Harper t-shirts.

We know, you thought that we forgot how to read, what with our erratic drug-addled posting and avowance to swear off words for life. But a stack just landed on our desk and they’re good ones. Just in time for you grab ‘em on your way to the beach this weekend.

We second Speak Up’s good review of The Anatomy of Design. This is one of those books you see and say, man, why didn’t I think of that first? Which is exactly what the book is all about. Steven Heller and Mirko Ilic strip pieces of graphic design down to their inspirations and influences, tracing from whence they came. They also categorize visual trends so specifically that you never realized “fake dripping spray paint” or “fascination with skills” were so damn prevalent. Also, the cover is puffy.

Todd Oldham has long been a champion of the artist Charley Harper: Oldham designed an exhibition of Harper’s work and also created some textile designs with his distinctive illustrations. Now Oldham’s literally written the book on Harper, with Charley Harper: An Illustrated Life a gorgeous 420-page monograph that includes huge pretty pictures of his work in Ford Times magazine, The Giant Golden Book of Biology, and hundreds of paintings, murals and drawings.

Through some magical process, AIGA NY’s Fresh Dialogue events turn into books published by Princeton Architectural Press. We don’t know how it happens, but Making Magazines is the latest to emerge. This conversation by the founders of super-smart, super-beautiful indie mags Topic, Esopus and Bidoun includes the text of the talk and full-color photos of whatever they were talking about, inserted appropriately. The conversation was probably really captivating in person because we sat down to quickly page through this book and ended up reading it all in one sitting.

And that’s it for this editon of UnBeige Can Read. Wear your sunblock, and remember, you don’t have to take our word for it.

Our sometime-Midwest stringer Emily Burton alerts us to “Graphic Content: Contemporary and Modern/Art and Design,” a huge show currently being mounted by the Contemporary Art Center in Cincinnati. Rotating galleries will devote serious space to Ohio-based midcentury designers and painters, contrasting them with works and installations by contemporary artists. The current show is apparently a winner: Charley Harper and Malcolm Grear vs. Ryan McGinness. Since you’ll remember Harper (above) for his collaboration with Todd Oldham (scroll down) for the textile patterns in Oldham’s signature La-Z Boy line, you’ll see it’s fitting, then, that Oldham designed the exhibition. The current combo’s up through February 26, 2007.