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Tag this one #HabitatFail. The United Kingdom-based homegoods retailer founded in 1964 by Terence Conran stirred up a social media scandal by using popular Twitter search terms in an attempt to draw viewers to its newly launched Twitter feed. Habitat's controversial tweets, which have since been deleted, prefaced news of a sale on the retailer's spring collection and a contest to win a gift card with popular searchable hashtags such as #Apple, #iPhone, and #MOUSAWI, the latter apparently to target that savvy demographic seeking news of the Iranian elections and a discounted shower curtain (in a fetching ersatz Eames print), fondue set, or David Adjaye-designed rug. After an Australian blog called attention to the opportunistic tweeting in a post entitled "How Not to Use Twitter," Habitat issued an apology, blaming "an overenthusiastic intern who did not fully understand the ramifications of his actions," according to a spokesman. "He is no longer associated with Habitat."

Famed literary critic Lionel Trilling once described Henry James as a "social twitterer." Sure, he meant it as an insult, but it makes us feel better about having signed up to twitter ourselves. Look to the official UnBeige Twitter feed, for up-to-the-minute newsbites, event snippets, links of interest, design trivia, and free candy (OK, we're still working on the physics of that last one). The mediabistro.com tech wizards have added to the sidebar at right a handful of our most recent word bursts (limited to 140 characters), but you can sign up to follow all of our twittering, and start twittering yourself at twitter.com. A few other twitterers we suggest following: Pentagram (@pentagramdesign), Frog Design (@frogdesign), Paper's Kim Hastreiter (@kimpaper) and Mickey Boardman (@AskMrMickey), fashion designers Paul Smith (@PaulSmithDesign) and Norma Kamali (@nkcollection), RISD president John Maeda (@johnmaeda), and of course, Karl Lagerfeld (@karl_lagerfeld).

Just in time for the release of Gloria Vanderbilt's steamy novel about the widow of a Frank Lloyd Wright-like architect (warning: it involves a discovered cache of letters wrapped with a magenta ribbon), the Guggenheim today launched an online forum that will address the subject of how design can enhance or detract from everyday life. "Between the Over- and Underdesigned," which runs through July 2 on the museum's website, is the first in a series of moderated online discussions on the arts, architecture, and design. Leading the inaugural forum is journalist and critic Aric Chen, who is virtually joined by panelists Sarah Herda, executive director of the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts; Arjo Klamer, professor of the economics of art and culture at Erasmus University in Rotterdam; Ellen Lupton, curator of contemporary design at Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum; and David van der Leer, assistant curator of architecture and design at the Guggenheim. The forum encourages visitors from around the world to submit comments and questions for consideration by the panelists and to participate in two live chat sessions scheduled for this Thursday (with Chen) and next Tuesday (with van der Leer). Lupton has already gotten things off to a rousing start:

Imagine walking into a brand-new public building—let's say it's a museum, a campus student center, or a mental-health clinic. Every detail has been designed, from the drop ceiling to the polished floors. But taped to the security desk is a paper sign, printed out in all-caps Times Roman, that says Restrooms Are Downstairs in the Basement Behind the Boiler Room or Don't Even Think About Asking Me Where the Elevator Is. These homemade signs boil over with irritation, directed at a clueless public who don't know how the building works. What's happening here is not a failure of the public, however, but a failure of design.

If you have missed any of this season's Layer Tennis matches, then we just don't know what to do with you anymore. But fortunately for you, we have an opportunity for you to redeem yourself in the faces of us. That solution? Cancel all of your plans for the day and catch not one but two matches today, with the playoff season just now kicking off. First up today, at 10am Central, it's a David and Goliath battle as the venerable Chris Glass faces off against the voter-selected winner of one of the qualifying matches, Gregory Hubacek. Will it be a moping of the floor or an incredible defeat for the ages? Second, it's something of the main event, with mega-designer Sam Potts waring against the also-a-mega-designer, Aaron Draplin. That match kicks off at 2pm. So there's your day, all planned out for you. You're welcome.

Polaroid's decision last year to discontinue its instant photography products has led to more than widespread film hoarding. We've also detected a swell of nostalgia for the distinctive look of the company's photos, tucked inside their invariable white frames and immune to the magic of Photoshop. Even the digital realm that sped the death of instant photography is getting into the act, with a range of standalone tools that allow users to "Polaroidize" any photo. We like Poladroid, an easy-to-use application that transforms digital photos into high-resolution pseudoPolaroids. The program comes complete with Polaroid sound effects and quirks: sessions are limited to ten images (just like a Polaroid film cassette), virtually shaking the photos seems to hasten their development, and the resulting images contain "random and realistic Polaroid-like color variation." Picture imperfect.

(Poladroid photo by Flickr user bawtrees)

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Lucida Sky with Diamonds. Bauhaus (in the Middle of Our Street). Rock the Caslon. I Wanna Bold Your Sans. Nope, this isn't the set list from designer/rock star Chip Kidd's latest Artbreak gig, they're fontsongs, a Twitter thread (#fontsongs) that challenges pun-loving design types to insert typeface names into popular song titles. Call it Textual Healing. The typographical phenomenon is going strong with recent gems such as Goudy My Dreams, Get into my Car and Garamond (My Wayward Son), but don't delay in tweeting a fontsong of your own today, before the trend changes cultural course. One Twitter user is advocating a switch to fontfilms. First on the list? Back to the Futura.

We've seen, and even reported on (when they were exceptionally interesting), designers creating new layouts for websites without having been commissioned or even asked by the companies they were redesigning for. Usually spawned from some big experienced frustration or sheer embarrassment over how lousy a site is, these designers feel the need to get in there and show their web team how it should be done. Though none, to date, have been as interesting as Dustin Curtis' recent run-in with American Airlines. After struggling to navigate within their clumsy site, Curtis, a talented user experience designer by trade, spent a couple of hours putting together how he thought the airline's site should look and function and then sent them the comps. While he likely expected no feedback, he was surprised to hear back, anonymously, from one of the members of American's designers. In a lengthy, very sad note, he explains what it's like to work there, from too many hands in the pot to forever design by committee. In short: endless meetings, much too large to function efficiently and, one might argue, with less focus on the end user. But then the letter switches gears into a more hopeful note, saying that it's always difficult steering ships that large and that American is slowly but steadily making improvements as quickly as they can. It's a great read from both sides, showing that there are problems with sites like these, but it's not always as simple as just throwing together a comp over a couple hours of free time.

(Photo: Steve Bartel)

Brandishing a whip and clad in gold lame pants, mediabistro.com founder Laurel Touby reprised her ringmistress role as she welcomed hundreds of media types to the second annual Mediabistro Circus, which kicked off today at the TimesCenter in New York City. The theme of this year's media-meets-technology confab, explained Touby, is "Extraordinary Impact: Do More with Less." The focus of the doing? Data, data, and more data, according to many of the day's speakers. But don't count out design.

"Data is king," said self-promoter extraordinaire Timothy Ferriss, who lives to generate buzz and deduce ways to prolong visitors' stays on his many websites. "The big idea, the one big bet favored by Madison Avenue, is not only irrational, it's also expensive." For Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Workweek (now in its forty-first printing in the United States, he noted), technology and social media offer ways to constantly analyze, adjust, and re-analyze everything, from how to create a successful blog post (aim for evergreen content, omit dates, people enjoy watching short and ideally incomplete videos about how to peel hard-boiled eggs) to how to sell a book (try for the least crowded-channel: face-to-face communication). Thanks to Google analytics, crowdsourcing, and click patterns, life is one long beta-test.

Where does this leave publishing? In flux, according to "From Gutenberg to Movable Type," a panel discussion ably moderated by Dan Costa, executive editor of PCMag.com. Panelist Eileen Gittins, founder and CEO of Blurb, the self-publishing company, is a believer in the power of branding to best communicate with niche markets. "Gone are the days when you have to guess who your audience is," she said of Blurb's print-on-demand model, which eliminates warehousing and adds a new agility to publishing. "Books no longer need to be static things, where you print one—kerplunk—and then maybe come back later with a second edition. Books can now be the starting point of communication."

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When it comes to web design, is the customer always right? [Cut to Jenny Holzer's "Protect Me From What I Want"] It depends on who you ask. Google is a believer in crowdsourcing, constantly tweaking its interface based on user behavior. The company's allegiance to this model was a key factor in designer Douglas Bowman's decision to leave Google earlier this year for Twitter, where he is now creative director. Miguel Helft sized up the data-driven design debate in a recent New York Times piece that also highlights a hybrid approach that aims to go deeper: "It is more from engaging with users, watching what they do, understanding their pain points, that you get big leaps in design," Debra Dunn, an associate professor at the Stanford Institute of Design, told Helft.

That approach informed a redesign at Cooliris, a start-up whose software offers a way to view pictures and videos on a three-dimensional virtual wall of thumbnail images. In the new version, which Ms. Dunn helped design, the company includes headlines and other text next to images.

"Even though it changes the visual impact, it is critical that people have access to that information as they are scanning the wall," Ms. Dunn said. "Now that it is out there, we can do the kind of micro-testing that Google talks about. But the broad design decision was not made that way."

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Michael Bierut, Steven Heller, Ellen Lupton, Clement Mok, and the rest of the esteemed judging panel have spoken, and Texas sixth grader Christin Engelberth's "A New Beginning" (pictured above) is the big winner in the annual Doodle 4 Google contest, which challenges kids from around the country to redesign the Google logo according to a designated theme (this year's: What I wish for the world). "My doodle expresses my wish that in the current crisis discoveries will be made," wrote Engleberth in her contest entry. "That in these discoveries solutions will be found to help the Earth prosper once more. That those solutions will help the world get back on its feet, and create a better place for everyone." Engleberth's winning doodle will adorn Google's U.S. homepage tomorrow (today, meanwhile, it sports a fun fossil theme to highlight the discovery of humanity's long lost lemur link), and she will receive a $15,000 college scholarship as well as a $25,000 technology grant for her San Antonio junior high school.

Between May 11 and 18, the public cast nearly 6 million online votes to select the National Finalist doodles: "Friendship Around the World" by five-year-old Miriam Elizabeth Lowery, "Stop to Smell the Flowers" by Blakely Linz, age 13, and "From the Ashes" by Emerald Lu, also 13, whose symbol-stuffed design includes a phoenix, lotus blossoms, wheat, a circling pair of koi fish, a clock, and a butterfly. All of the regional finalists' designs will go on view tomorrow at the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, where the "Doodle 4 Google: What I Wish for the World" exhibition will be up through July 5 in the museum's design education center.

Previously on UnBeige: