Booooo, summer’s over! Ouch. That hurt so much to say, how about another one for good measure: Booooo!

Never fear the ebbing daylight and dropping temperatures; when it comes to resuming your scholarly pursuits, Core77 has got you covered. Their Hack-2-School Guide is a voluminous cache of advice, tips, lists and tricks for the bleary-eyed student. Especially valuable is the Represent section where you can learn the proper way to promote yourself to blogs and get your stuff in stores.

But what we really love are some of the longer, more provocative essays like Sam Montague’s “Don’t Hang Out With Industrial Design Students,” Jessica Helfand‘s suggestion that you do something unspeakable to your computer and grab a pen (4th item down), Alice Twemlow‘s design writing overview and Steve Portigal‘s ideas for design research that’s fun. Heck, they even let us chime in with some networking tips that we can swear to you were field-tested over the course of many, many, many, many late nights spent at hotel bars during design conferences around the globe. Just promise us you’ll steer clear of the Jager Red Bulls.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

We were excited before about the highly-developed design sensibility of Good, the little magazine that has fully lodged itself into our temporal lobes. In this month’s issue–which just arrived for West Coast subscribers, a full week after those in NY, what is up with that?–the entire mag is not only filled with good design but is about good design, with cameos by Steven Heller, Luke Hayman, Tucker Viemeister, Jessica Helfand, a wonderful intro essay by Alice Twemlow, and many more familiar faces.

But it was the introduction to the feature well that really blew our UnBeige minds:

Over the past century, the word design has slowly assumed the role of a proper noun. Stores sell Design. Companies market luxurious lifestyles filled with Design. But the word is much more potent and exciting as a verb, the act of tackling real problems and finding elegant solutions.

Never before have we heard the difference between that design and that design so eloquently outlined. It’s as simple as nouns vs. verbs.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The Designer As Author MFAs at SVA have their next podcast up and this time it’s a two-parter with Jessica Helfand and William Drenttel of Design Observer, Winterhouse and the New Yorker website redesign. Indulge this Friday afternoon with some witty repartee from this rooster comb-devouring husband-and-wife design team.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

You asked for it, you got it! A high-flying design scandal that’s front page news! The question is, what does this really mean for anyone? We’re not sure! But we sure are excited! So excited that we’re feeling really dizzy!

London Olympic Logo Flap Recap
Once again, the epilepsy report from Reuters; over 50,000 people simultaneously puke; Mayor Ken Livingstone says don’t pay Wolff Olins; but Wolff Olins didn’t make the video, they swear; but Armin Vit likes the video; Daily Mail readers can do better; CNN viewers can do better; even–gasp–the SUN can do better!; Adrian Shaughnessy bemoans the loss of his hamster; Lord Coe cries into his shepherd’s pie.

Critic Recap
Peter Saville: “cheesy”, “brave and confrontational”
Stephen Bayley: “puerile mess, an artistic flop and a commercial scandal”
Michael Johnson: “I’m sure a lot of people will hate it”
Jessica Helfand (on the BBC!): “destructive, abrasive”
Adrian Shaughnessy (also on BBC!): “ghastly, dreadful, impoverished, bad, unmemorable, trying to be trendy…”

You know, after looking at it so much today, it almost feels like an old friend. An old friend who used to be really big back in the ’80s until he started doing a lot of blow and and hanging out behind this pub in Brixton wearing the same hot pink jumpsuit from the ’80s instead now it’s covered in razors and broken glass and you accidentally make eye contact and he starts reaching out towards you screaming “Please, please! Just a few pence! I don’t got no one else! I ain’t got nowhere else to go!”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Tomorrow night, at the Galleria at Lafayette Centre in Washington, DC, hundreds of designers will be watching the clocks. Not just any old clocks, oh no, these are designer clocks, made by the finest clockmakers in the country: Marian Bantjes (above), Jessica Helfand, Ed Fella, Debbie Millman, and we could go on and on. The clocks will be auctioned off, and the event, Design For the Fun of It 14, will benefit AIGA DC. If you have time, check out all the clocks on this Flickr set. The one below is by Modern Dog (of course).

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

We heard that SVA would be starting a design criticism program about six months ago and now we’ve got the official word: “The Master of Fine Arts in Design Criticism will prepare graduates for careers as design critics, journalists, curators, educators and design managers, by providing the intellectual tools for researching, analyzing, evaluating and chronicling all aspects of design.”

The program will be launched in Fall of 2008 and will be chaired by UnBeige fave Alice Twemlow, with a pretty exciting thesis plan: An annual public conference dedicated to design criticism (could it be the first ever, too?), to be inaugurated in the spring of 2009.

And would you look at this faculty? Kurt Andersen, Paola Antonelli, Michael Bierut, Ralph Caplan, Peter Hall, Jessica Helfand, Steven Heller, Karrie Jacobs, Julie Lasky, Cathy Leff, and Phil Patton. We’d say those MFA candidates are definitely getting the best in the business.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Terry McCaffrey is chair of the Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee, of which the blogosphere’s fair Jessica Helfand is a member. She’s the latest in an illuminated list of design names like Bradbury Thompson and Meredith Davis who’ve served (apparently Steven Heller was on it once but attended two meetings, found the committee too bureaucratic and quit).

But with all those big names, 50,000 letters from the American public annually, and the collecting community clamoring for single color engraved designs–it seems like when it comes to stamps, everyone has their own agenda.

Until the Elvis stamp they didn’t do anything contemporary (remember the old or young Elvis contest?). The USPS was only allowed to start making a profit two years ago, but they made $26 million on Elvis–and that’s mostly from collectors. They’ve also made $53 million for breast cancer research from a 1999 stamp.

Here’s the crazy thing about stamps: When they make mistakes, people want them more. For example, McCaffrey learned today that in the Buckminster Fuller stamp based on that famous Time cover, the artist made a huge mistake and put six sides on his geodesic dome-head instead of five. Mirko Ilic was good enough to point that out from the audience. Whoops.

Maybe they should purposely make a mistake on the upcoming Star Wars series (available May 28) since McCaffrey predicts it will blow the lid off the USPS. At first the committee didn’t want it because it honored living people, which is against postal rules, but McCaffrey argued that it’s not Harrison Ford, it’s Han Solo. They’re printing 500 million, just to start.

Sagmeister and Kent Nichols (who are either brand new BFFs or old friends) manned the peanut gallery throughout the presentation, cheering “I love you, Stampy!” If that’s the official term of endearment for McCaffrey, then we say, Stampy, we love you, too.

More Y Conference coverage.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Rebel forces claimed a victory yesterday with the announcement that they will be stationing over 200 R2-D2 units in cities throughout the galaxy. These droids will be crucial to the relaying of messages between members of the Alliance over great distances, although their holographic projection capabilities will be disabled.

The R2 units will precede the highly-anticipated release of thousands of paper-thin devices encrypted with monentary value that are used to transport messages. The release is scheduled for March 28 to coincide with the 30th anniversary of the destruction of the Death Star.

We must rely on our embedded Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee member Ensign Jessica Helfand to keep us updated.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

We would love to write something, anything about Hugh Dubberly‘s presentation about service-craft taking place right now at the Schools of Thoughts conference.

But Design Observer founders William Drenttel, Jessica Helfand and Lorraine Wild are all right behind us–right behind us–and we’re suffering from a massive case of blogophobia. More when we’re not crippled by our own insecurities.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The powers that be have informed us that the 5th volume of Looking Closer, out this month, will be the last. Published since 1994, the essays in the Looking Closer series were basically the precursors of the design blogs we know and love today–a sturdy, highly-influential collection of critical writings on graphic design. But not too serious; some of the pieces were pretty damn hilarious, too. The editors throughout the years–Michael Bierut, William Drenttel, Steven Heller, DK Holland, Jessica Helfand, Rick Poynor–drew a hearty list of famous contributors, and launched the writing careers of many others. Looking Closer, we’ll miss you.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.