Thanks for the invitations, New York design community (or in some cases, not having a list at the door). Here’s where we found ourselves drinking free toddies this week…

Rockwell Group
Address: Bowlmor Lanes
Crowd: Rockwell Group employees
Specialty Cocktail: Bullshot, served by “celebrity bartender” Laurie Rosenwald
Big Sightings: Maira Kalman, Tucker Viemeister wearing a Santa hat
Just Missed: Chee Pearlman
Highlight (pictured here): A video kaleidoscope created by James Tichenor and Joshua Walton that projected snowflakes cut by partygoers onto huge screens around the room. No word on how many Bullshots were served before bare butts were also projected around the room.

Debbie Millman’s SVA Class
Address: Millman’s swank pad
Crowd: Students, former “Design Matters” guests
Specialty Cocktail: Champagne (for those of age), as double-fisted by Felix Sockwell
Big Sightings: Chip Kidd, James Victore, Tobias Frere-Jones
Just Missed: Joyce Rutter Kaye
Highlight: Millman giving signed copies of 100% Evil to her students, which were doodled on more by Christoph Niemann and Nicholas Blechman, both in attendance.

The Architect’s Newspaper
Address: The well-appointed loft of William Menking and Diana Darling
Crowd: Architects, writers, architect-writers
Specialty Cocktail: Real egg nog, with fresh grated nutmeg
Big Sightings: The lady design journalist power trio of Julie Lasky, Julie Iovine and Eve Kahn
Just Missed: Teddy Cruz
Highlight: The view.

Good Design Party
Address: Good pop-up store
Crowd: Green design consultants, graphic designers, Mr. T fans
Specialty Cocktail: Organic wheat vodka with Izze sparkling clementine juice in biodegradable cups made from corn
Big Sightings: Emily Oberman, supercute young’un Jonathan Harris presenting the Whale Hunt
Just Missed: Bobby Martin giving his slam-dunk presentation again
Highlight: Mike Essl showing off his world’s largest Mr. T memorabilia collection, including a clip from VH1′s “Totally Obsessed” where he and his co-collector eat a 20-year-old box of Mr. T cereal.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

We are in no way taking sides in preparation for tonight’s National Magazine Awards (you’ll want to call them the Ellies, too) since Metropolis, I.D. and Print are all competing against each other in the same General Excellence category. But we couldn’t resist hearing from the editor of the oft-nominated Print, Joyce Rutter Kaye, especially since the magazine has been nominated in the General Excellence category nine times. Plus, it’s the third time the mag has been nominated during Kaye’s four years as editor–and they won in 2005–so you know she must be doing something right. Check out our interview with Kaye which includes time-tested award show fashion dos and don’ts.

Stay tuned to find out if a design mag takes the category tonight. Hey, they’re up against The Virginia Quarterly Review and Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists…come on, how hard could it be?

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Although we were nearly deterred by the swamplike streets of Little Italy (don’t tell us to get over it, we’re from Los Angeles), many braved the overflowing gutters to check out Print’s New Visual Artists last Thursday night in NY. The roster of 20 very international artists–all under 30–and hundreds of their new best friends packed into the superskinny Groupe space on Elizabeth Street and toasted each other with two flavors of vodka–huckleberry (pretty good) or peach caffeinated (dangerous).

Among the wet and well-dressed were Print editor Joyce Rutter Kaye looking glamorous in a blue silky top, Leif Parsons, looking tall, and bespectacled Debbie Millman (heading home to prep for her show with Barbara Kruger the next day). Print staffers Emily Gordon and Lindsay Ballant were both busy playing hostess. We congratulated 2007 inductee Kevin Smith and past honoree Rob Giampietro, who informed us that Rudy VanderLans was in town for a photo show at Park Avenue Armory.

Print contributors Alice Twemlow and David Womack nodded their heads to the strains of almost-too-old school hip hop, although, really, how can you go wrong with “Cool It Now“? We gazed at Jane art director Jeff Glendenning‘s t-shirt but couldn’t quite place it until he told us he used to work at the NYT Magazine…oh yeah, that one. Afterwards we ducked around the corner for fresh-n-fruity drinks at Cafe Habana with Khoi Vinh, Aviva Michaelov and Brian Rea, and we were later joined by the delightfully-bookish Rodrigo Corral.

It was much drier the next evening when we gathered around the koi ponds and cocaine-fabulous decor of Chinatown Brasserie (Seriously, mirrored club chairs? No.) for the mediabistro.com party, where more than a few mai tais were tossed back by familiar faces that included Adam Greenfield, Liz Danzico, Rachel Abrams, Sam Potts and Louise Ma (later we collected Allan Chochinov and Emma Presler). Man-of-the-hour was a toss up between a jovial Craig Newmark (of List fame) or Jesse Kirshbaum, who is now the proud owner of the first-ever UnBeige shirt. Even though he had absolutely no idea what we wrote about.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.