In related John Hockenberry news, the sequel to one of his more entertaining moderator gigs just announced itself. The 2008 Art Center Conference will be May 5-7 in Pasadena, CA, with another curiously-named theme: Serious Play. Registration opens November 1.

Early confirmed speakers include IDEO’s Tim Brown; ball-master Michael Moschen; Elizabeth Diller; Paula Scher and John Maeda. Once again the conference is curated by the lovely Chee Pearlman. And once again, we’ll be there, compiling the highlights, for you.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

If you’ve already stopped being mad at Bruce Nussbaum let us reignite the fiery flames of fury by reminding you of his “designers are the enemy of design” speech (better known now as the Suck Manifesto, which was followed by the Spell Check Manifesto).

Okay, now calm down and listen. Editor GK VanPatter of NextD Journal has released a special issue called “Beautiful Diversion” wherein 50 designers have responded to the suckage. You can download the 60-page document, or watch as Nussbaum posts them one-by-one (it seems) on his site, which might get quite tedious, especially in another week when you’ve forgotten this completely. So, we pulled highlights for you. (Update: VanPatter has asked Nussbaum to stop posting and responding to his content, although we can’t really understand why. But we also can’t understand why anyone would make a 60-page PDF instead of making all the content readily linkable on a website. Or why anyone except us would be crazy enough to read the whole thing. But we digress.):

Tony Fry: Nussbaum reminds me of one of my grandmother’s favourite sayings–’empty vessels make the most noise.’ The guy sure is a dry pea in a tin can.

Tim Brown: While I applaud his personal efforts to champion Design Thinking perhaps the opening line for his next talk can be “design journalism sucks.”

John Thackara: Most of us suspect something unpleasant is about to happen, but we are confused over what to do about it. So–surprise surprise–we go into denial. But beating up on designers–or blubbing on a stage in Monterrey–is not going to move things forward one inch. So what to do? It’s simple: get out there and help the people who are already active.

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.