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Sagmeister & Walsh’s “Now is Better” project, seen here installed at the Jewish Museum, will be included in the 51st D&AD Annual and is up for a Yellow Pencil. (Photo: David Heald)

• On Monday a 192-member jury of leading creatives and designers began the business of judging the 51st D&AD Awards. As you await today’s installment of nominations and “in-books” in categories such as branding, graphic design, and art direction, page through the first five decades of excellence in visual thinking with D&AD 50, new from Taschen.

• The Tribeca Film Festival organizers recently announced its first six-second film competition, challenging amateur and pro filmmakers alike to make cinemagic with the bold, new, yet Super 8ish medium of Vine. The festival’s director of programming has narrowed down the approximately 400 entries to this shortlist. A jury consisting of director Penny Marshall, Vine-loving actor Adam Goldberg, and the team from 5 Second Films will have the final say on the winners, which will be announced next Friday.

• Transform the leather jacket languishing in the back of your closet into something that doesn’t scream “Wilsons Leather circa 1998″ with Remade USA, designer Shannon South‘s freshly relaunched custom service that repurposes individual vintage leather jackets into new one-of-a-kind handbags, through redesign and reconstruction.

• And speaking of textile innovation, on May 1, New York’s Eyebeam presents “Smart Textiles: Fashion That Responds,” a panel that will bring together a diverse group of designers and scientists working in cutting-edge textile research and production–think nanoparticles, circuit boards, and clothing that’s more responsive to changing needs and conditions.

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Two of of the seven 2013 Time 100 covers, which feature portraits by Mark Seliger.

Today Time revealed its annual selection of the 100 most influential people in the world, and while we remain suspicious of any list that includes both Christina Aguilera and Elena Kagan, it’s difficult not to enjoy the logistical wonder that is the Time 100 issue. On newsstands tomorrow, the massive editorial effort commissions a diverse group of notable figures—many of them Time 100 alumna—to write a paragraph or two about the chosen influencers. And so this year we get Richard “I know a thing or two about building spaceships” Branson on SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk, Claire Danes‘s clear-eyed look at the uniquely vanity-free and shameless (and hilarious) Lena Dunham, and Michael Bloomberg‘s cliché-ridden paen to Jay-Z, who emerges as a 21st century Gatsby who gets the girl (she also made the Time 100) and the American Dream.

Notable art and design world figures that made it onto this year’s Time 100 include Apple’s Jony Ive, Michael Kors, who joins the likes of Uniqlo honcho Tadashi Yanai and Facebook Queen of Lean Sheryl Sandberg in the “Titans” category; artist Ed Ruscha, who Richard Lacayo likens here to “a SoCal Magritte;” 2012 Pritzker laureate Wang Shu; and Jenna Lyons, executive creative director of J. Crew. “Whe has made fashion relatable,” writes fashion designer Prabal Gurung of Lyons. “Being fashionable doesn’t mean being trendy; it means having a sense of style. Jenna has made J. Crew more than a brand or a company–it’s a philosophy that believes in style.”

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Mere months stand between you and Dwell on Design, a veritable feast of modern design in the form of thousands of products, oodles of presentations, modern home tours, and demonstrations galore. This year’s ideas- and inspiration-fest takes place June 21-23 at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Among the highlights in store for the eighth Dwell on Design is a keynote address by architect and product designer Michael Graves (have you tried his tweezers?), who will share his insights on universal design and design’s direct influence on quality of life, and a series of panels featuring speakers from organizations such as the Getty Conservation Institute, MOCA, LACMA, and Architecture for Humanity will tackle issues in the areas of design innovation, sustainable design, and the business of design. This year’s show also features the first ever Dwell on Design artist in residence, Tanya Aguiñiga. The Los Angeles-based furniture designer, craftsperson, and community activist will create a living exhibition of upcycled furnishings that after being displayed on the show floor will be donated to local shelters.

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“It all began at Graham Hill Elementary School in southeast Seattle, when my third-grade teacher, Ms. Horita, told my parents at a parent-teacher conference that I was good at two things: math and art. My father, a Japanese immigrant, owned and operated a tofu store for 27 years in the Chinatown International District. The day after the meeting, he proudly announced to one of his tofu customers: ‘John is good at math.’

At the time, it signaled something to me that he left out the art part; I just didn’t know what. In hindsight, it was my first experience of the prejudices that cling to accomplishments in the arts, and a catalyst for me to push for the power of interdisciplinary thinking.”

-Rhode Island School of Design president John Maeda, writing in his recent Seattle Times op-ed on the RISD-led “STEM to STEAM” initiative to add Art and Design to the national agenda of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) education and research in America. Maeda and the initiative will be honored next Friday in NYC with a Tribeca Disruptive Innovation Award.

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Put on your rapidly prototyped dress (the one pictured is the work of fashion designer Iris van Herpen) and get the inside scoop on the technology that Wired editor-turned-robotics entrepreneur Chris Anderson recently described as having the world-changing potential of the first desktop publishing tools at Inside 3D Printing, the first business to business conference and expo to delve into the present and future impact of 3D printing. The two-day confab gets underway on Monday, April 22 in NYC, with tutorials and seminars that will give you a blueprint for how to invest and utilize 3D printing in the coming years. Score a DIY discount of 20% off the Gold Passport by entering UnBeige3D at registration–purchase by Sunday to get an additional $200 in savings.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

If we’ve heard it once, we’ve heard it a thousand times: “I could tell you this Big Design News, but then I’d have to kill you.” Now you can give us the scoop and skip the messy task of plotting murder, thanks to our handy “Anonymous Tips” box nestled in the menu bar at right, just below the search box. Simply type in your news—design happenings, movements of the Revolving Door, a bit of gossip, a designer’s hidden talent, or any newsy, design-y morsel—and click “Send.” And for those not inclined to clandestine tipping, we’re still just an e-mail away.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

This week, The Boston Globe is hiring a digital designer, while KGTV needs a chief photojournalist. Pyramid Consulting Group needs a graphic design coordinator, and Morris Media Network is on the hunt for an assistant art director. Get the scoop on these openings and more below, and find additional just-posted gigs on Mediabistro.

Find more great design jobs on the UnBeige job board. Looking to hire? Tap into our network of talented UnBeige pros and post a risk-free job listing. For real-time openings and employment news, follow @MBJobPost.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

How can technology reinvent and deepen the museum experience? New York’s 92Y recently convened a panel of forward-thinking museum pros to tackle the question, and we sent writer Nancy Lazarus to report back on what the future of museums may look–and sound and feel–like.

A visitor gets in touch with the Cleveland Museum of Art’s “Collection Wall,” a 40-foot, interactive, microtile wall featuring over 3,500 works of art from the permanent collection.

King Tut may finally have met his match: interactive technology. “Digital technology is as much a game-changer now for museums as blockbuster shows” were in the late 1970s, said Cara McCarty, curatorial director of New York’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. The Metropolitan Museum’s 1976 Tutankhamen exhibit was a pioneer of the blockbuster, and now many of the Met’s ancient treasures are also viewable on interactive touchscreens.

McCarty moderated a recent 92Y panel about technology trends and the future of museums. When she said, “Technology is hitting us all like a tidal wave,” she wasn’t lamenting, but referring to the overwhelming options. The panelists agreed, including Mark Robbins, director at New York’s International Center of Photography. “Nineteenth-century museums were comprised of a privileged set of objects,” he said. “Now museums offer more immersive experiences without walls.”

“Technology is a tool shaping museums’ future,” added Seb Chan, Cooper-Hewitt’s director of digital and emerging media. Interactive options enrich visitors’ experience, especially for storytelling. Chan described the mobile app at Australia’s Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery. \It senses where gallery visitors are and delivers custom content, thereby eliminating wall labels. London’s Tate Museum has a similar app, the Magic Tate Ball, which promises, “It’s like having the Tate in your pocket.”

Another proponent of technology’s narrative power is Jake Barton, founder of Local Projects, a firm that designs media installations for museums. One client is New York’s 9/11 Memorial Museum, slated to open next year. He previewed an exhibit where visitors will use interactive maps to pinpoint their locations when they learned of the 9/11 news. Then they record messages about that moment, and their voices will play in the background as visitors view the exhibit.
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Twenty years on, Andre the Giant still Has a Posse, and now the subversive sticker campaign that ignited Shepard Fairey‘s worldwide propaganda delivery system gets its cinematic due in Obey the Giant, a narrative film that makes it online debut today (watch it above). Director Julian Marshall is fresh out of the Rhode Island School of Design, Fairey’s alma mater and the setting for the 23-minute film. Based on the true story of Fairey’s first act of street art, Obey the Giant is something of a portrait of the artist as a young skate punk–challenging a big-city mayor (the oleaginous Buddy Cianci, played by Keith Jochim) and the powers that be at art school.

“We moved heaven and earth to make this film,” Marshall (pictured below) told us of the ambitious project, for which he raised $65,000 through Kickstarter last spring. “Pre-production was about six weeks. We had to build an army of people, elaborate sets, a 27,000-pound billboard, and pull together an insane amount of props from the 1990s. It was an amazing time though. My crew and I truly became a family.” The Washington, D.C. native, now based in NYC and at the helm of his own film production company, told us more about how Obey the Giant came to be and the hot-button issue he’s planning to tackle next.

How and when did you first encounter Shepard Fairey’s work?
I first encountered Shep’s work on my first skateboard back in the 90s. I had just bought a World Industries deck and the shop owner slapped an “Andre the Giant Has a Posse” sticker on it.

What compelled you to make a film about him?
One morning, I was lying in bed, staring at the OBEY icon poster on my wall that Shep had given me when I interned for him, and I thought: Well, what better story to tell as a RISD student than a story of a RISD student? I had the connection to Shep having worked for him, so I emailed his wife, Amanda, pitched her the project, and a week later I heard back and she said, “Okay, Shepard’s really excited about the project, come out to L.A. and let’s talk about it.”

How did you decide on the format of this project, in terms of making it a narrative film rather than a documentary?
Documentaries don’t particularly interest me from a directorial standpoint. I love the intensity and edginess of the process of making motion pictures. So naturally, when I first thought of this story, I conceived of it in narrative terms.
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(Photo: Erik Smits)

“Ten years of slow days / ten years of wakeful nights / till what was to come would be disclosed,” wrote Remco Campert in a poem commissioned as part of today’s reopening of the Rijksmuseum, the national art museum of the Netherlands. The long-awaited occasion was celebrated with a spectacular opening ceremony during which the soon-to-abdicate Queen Beatrix, wearing a large black chapeau that made her resemble a Playmobil figure or one of Rembrandt‘s beloved gang of Staalmeesters, followed her private preview of the renovated museum with a trip down the orange carpet to turn a giant golden key before an audience of thousands. Fireworks and free admission (’til midnight) followed.

Designed by Renaissance revivalist Pierre Cuypers and completed in 1885, the Rijksmuseum has been closed since 2003. “It’s a kind of Harry Potter castle. It’s a crazy building, a sort of neo-gothic Arts and Crafts building covered in images. It’s a comic strip,” said director Wim Pijbes in a recent interview with Apollo magazine. “It’s the last hooray for neo-gothic–just a year later, the Eiffel Tower was built, welcoming a new age.” The decade-long overhaul, which cost nearly $500 million, half of which was supplied by the Dutch government, includes the integrative building renovation of Cruz y Ortiz, who burrowed underground to link the museum’s two separate halves and add an atrium, a fresh installation (of some 8,000 objects) masterminded by Jean-Michel Wilmotte, and Copijn’s redesign of the surrounding garden. “What is the new Rijksmuseum about in one word? It is time, time embodied in taste or fashion, however you like,” said Pijbes. “We are a time machine.”

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Spring has finally sprung, and so it’s possibly to gaze upon snowflakes–or at least images of snowflakes–without shivering. These fine specimens were photographed in 3-D as they fell by a high-speed camera system developed by researchers at the University of Utah and its spinoff company, Fallgatter Technologies. “Until our device, there was no good instrument for automatically photographing the shapes and sizes of snowflakes in free-fall,” says Tim Garrett, an associate professor of atmospheric sciences. “We are photographing these snowflakes completely untouched by any device, as they exist naturally in the air.” In addition to taking the first automated, high-resolution photos of snowflakes, Fallgatter’s Multi Angle Snowflake Camera measures how fast the flakes fall and according to Garrett, “collects vast amounts of data that can be used to come up with more accurate and more representative characterizations of snow in clouds” for improved weather forecasting.

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Get your sketch on with Trace, a simple and beautiful yet incredibly useful iPad app created by the architects of the Morpholio Project. Free to download, the sketch utility allows users to instantly draw on top of imported images or background templates, layering comments or ideas to generate immediate, intelligent sketches that are easy to circulate. “Tracing over something is absolutely the foundation of the app,” says co-creator Toru Hasegawa. “Layers of trace paper are not the same as ‘layers’ in Photoshop or other tools. Here, they are the stacking of ideas, as opposed to the organizing of files.”

Got an app we should know about? Drop us a line at unbeige [at] mediabistro.com

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• Visit St. Petersburg, Shanghai, Mumbai, and Dubai without leaving your home in journalist Daniel Brook‘s A History of Future Cities, new from Norton. Stop by Brooklyn’s powerHouse Arena on Thursday, April 18, for a discussion with Brook.

• Elsewhere in far-flung reading material, don’t miss the dreamy (if envy-inducing) Designers Abroad, in which Michele Keith peeks inside the vacation homes of the likes of Mica Ertegun, Juan Pablo Molyneux, and Juan Montoya. The envy-inducing tome, a follow-up to Keith’s 2010 Designers Here and There, is out next week from Monacelli.

• When in doubt, ask yourself: What would Jacques Derrida do? Deconstruct the possibilities with the help of a recently translated biography by Benoît Peeters.

• “Some people become cops because they want to make the world a better place,” Banksy has said. “Some people become vandals because they want to make the world a better looking place.” Steep yourself in the street art superstar with reporter Will Ellsworth-Jones‘s Banksy: The Man Behind the Wall (St. Martin’s Press), an unauthorized biography that tries to piece together Banksy’s path from vandalism to international stardom and an Oscar nomination.
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“It used to be that design was all about industry and it was very geographically anchored to the means of production. Then it became more dependent on the tertiary sector of design, on showrooms and fairs. In my opinion, the geography of design is now set by schools. You can’t talk about Italian design or British design—it’s old-fashioned. It really is about whether someone comes from [the Design Academy of] Eindhoven or the Royal College of Art in London. In this kind of scenario, meetings like the Salone are still very important because they are great business opportunities. The problem is that design has spread out in many directions and I think it’s important for the Salone to attract corollary events that are about interaction design and interface design.”

-Paola Antonelli, director of research and development and senior curator of architecture and design at MoMA, in an interview with Ermanno Rivetti for The Art Newspaper

Watch Antonelli’s recent appearance on The Colbert Report:

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These days, fashion designers rarely align on seasonal trends such as hemlines and skirt shapes, but runway watchers remain abuzz over statement shoes, even if they are all but invisible to those without front-row seats. Even Celine’s minimaluxe ready-to-wear and steady stream of hit handbags was recently outshined by the house’s furry stilettos and sandals, including a Meret Oppenheim-gone-grandpa style that is flying off store shelves. The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York has seized the moment to present an exhibition that highlights the extreme, lavish, and imaginative styles that have made shoes central to fashion. We asked writer Nancy Lazarus to put on her reporting shoes and size up the show, on view through Saturday.

Roger Vivier’s Eyelash Heel pump, designed by Bruno Frisoni for the fall 2012 “Rendez-Vous” limited edition collection. (Photo: Stephane Garrigues, courtesy Roger Vivier)

“Everything here is wearable, it’s just not walkable”, said Colleen Hill, co-curator of the Museum at FIT’s “Shoe Obsession” exhibit. Leading a tour of the show during its final week on display, she explained that the focus was extreme, extravagant 21st-century shoes and boots. Hill and co-curator Valerie Steele included not only fan favorites like Blahnik and Louboutin, but also the latest experimental prototypes.

The exhibit’s selections represent a commentary on an era rather than a reflection on wearability, Hill noted. “The inspiration for these shoes is sculpture and architecture. Some are shoe objects, one-of-a-kind or limited editions,” Hill said. Three styles are on display: single-sole stilettos, platforms, and more avant-garde heel-less shoes favored by the likes of Daphne Guinness and Lady Gaga.

Recent shoe designs tend to rely more on manmade materials. A few prototypes utilized 3-D printing processes. One experimental design was made of resin, while a pair of slippers was glass. A pair of Pierre Hardy heels sported neoprene, more often associated with athletic wear.

“Women now are building their shoe wardrobes, and the average number of shoes women own has doubled to twenty,” according to Hill. And even designer flats come with high price tags. “$458 now is the cost of just one pair on sale,” she noted. Of course, not everyone shops at Saks (an exhibit sponsor that lent the museum several pairs of shoes), where shoppers can speed to the eighth-floor footwear paradise–the famously expansive 10022-SHOE–via a designated express elevator.

While some designers’ attitudes toward shoes remain static, others are evolving. Hill credits Manolo Blahnik and Christian Louboutin as the two most important shoe designers of this century. Blahnik, the stiletto master whose name is linked with the democratization of high-fashion shoes thanks to Sex and the City, considers platforms “inelegant.” Louboutin, famous for his red soles, was inspired by showgirls and fetish shoes. “He’s unapologetic that his shoes aren’t more comfortable,” Hill said. On a positive note, the increase in female designers means that more are wearing their own shoes, so they’re making them more comfortable–in other words, walking the talk.

Nancy Lazarus has covered media and marketing for mediabistro.com’s PRNewser. Her last contribution to UnBeige explored terraces in Manhattan. Learn more about her at www.NL3Media.com.

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This week, Shutterstock is hiring an illustration/vector reviewer, while Spontaneous needs a creative director. Landor is seeking a senior designer, and RedNova Learning is on the hunt for a managing designer. Get the scoop on these openings and more below, and find additional just-posted gigs on Mediabistro.

Find more great design jobs on the UnBeige job board. Looking to hire? Tap into our network of talented UnBeige pros and post a risk-free job listing. For real-time openings and employment news, follow @MBJobPost.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Cornell seniors Katie McDonald and Kyle Schumann’s “Twofold” is among the semifinalists in Design Museum Boston¹s Street Seats International Design Challenge.

• Design Museum Boston‘s Street Seats International Design Challenge, a competition launched last fall, will culminate with an exhibition of the 20 benches selected as semifinalists. Fabricated out of environmentally-friendly, sustainable materials, the benches were chosen by a jury out of more than 170 submissions by designers, professional teams, and artists representing 22 states and 23 countries. The grand prize winner and runner-up will be selected at an opening celebration on April 27, when the public will pick their favorite to receive the people’s choice award.

• Yesterday marked the 183rd anniversary of Eadweard Muybridge‘s birth. Alexis Madrigal of the Atlantic pens a birthday message to the grandfather of the animated GIF.

• Better living through cars? Consider the possibilities on Thursday, when our friends at Inhabitat host a live webcast of “Design with a Conscience,” a conference where leading California architects and automotive designers will be discussing the intersection of car and building design and how conscious design can spur innovation.

• Someone at the New York Post has been watching the Rachel Zoe Project, prompting the paper to crown Nicholas Kirkwood “the new Manolo.” The widely lauded yet humble Brit knows a good kicker. “I was in two hip-hop songs,” he told the Post. “It was awhile ago. It was a Rick Ross and a Foxy Brown song. Kirkwood apparently rhymes with ’hood!’ ”

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This 1999 photo taken on the shores of Italy’s Lake Garda will be shown in “Martin Parr: Life’s a Beach,” an exhibition that opens May 2 at Aperture Gallery. (Photo: Martin Parr/Magnum Photos)

Last week, a man arrived at a Manhattan federal building to apply for a passport, became agitated, and ended up trying to hide from authorities–in the ceiling. Securing a passport to the arts is much easier–and comes with minimal risk of being arrested and taken to Bellevue for psychiatric evaluation–thanks to The New Yorker. The magazine and its promotions department are gearing up for the eighth annual Passport to the Arts gallery crawl, evening cocktail party, and silent auction (to benefit Creative Time) on Saturday, May 4. A $55 ticket gets you a “limited-edition passport” that each of the 19 SoHo and Chelsea galleries on the self-guided tour will stamp with a replica of a featured work of art. And with a list of participating galleries that includes Jack Shainman, Aperture Gallery, and ClampArt, this year’s Passport to the Arts promises to be quite a trip.

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Now approaching 50, Rolling Stone still rocks, and the storied bimonthly is in want of design assistance. The search is on for a crackerjack freelance designer to complete design and production work on front and back pages and a range of editorial design assignments, on a part-time basis. Bring your “expertise in typography and sophisticated design sensibility,” ability to make “a variety of record and movie review pages visually fresh and lively,” and pop culture passion. Got CS5 prowess, problem-solving skills, and a knack for working collaboratively? That’s music to their ears.

Learn more about and apply for this freelance designer, Rolling Stone job or view all of the current Mediabistro design, art, and photo jobs.

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Casa Lever is a feast for the senses. Tucked inside Gordon Bunshaft‘s eternally modern Lever House in midtown Manhattan, the restaurant features a beehive-gone-nautical interior dreamed up by Marc Newson, a fit-for-Fellini brand identity by Matteo Bologna and the gang at Mucca Design (don’t miss the wine list–it includes lovely maps!), and, for dessert, a mind-blowing gianduia that suggests Nutella as reimagined by a band of pastry-loving cherubs. And then there are the Warhols.

Thanks to a lending arrangement with Lever House owner Aby Rosen and his Lever House Art Collection, Casa Lever patrons dine with a wall of Warhol portraits: a pair of Hitchcocks profiles here, twin Jerry Halls there, the sassy Aretha that covered Ms. Franklin’s eponymous 1986 album and proved to be Warhol’s last work eyeing the exit. It’s always fun to play a round of “Which would you like to own?” while waiting for your ravioli di brasoto (or your third gianduia, as the case may be) to arrive, in which case one’s eyes are inevitably pulled to the rear of the restaurant, where the private room–aglow with the best Warhols of the bunch–floats above the scene from behind a Newsonian rounded rectangle of glass. Until recently, that’s where they kept the pair of pastel Dennis Hoppers from 1971, which stared down a couple of Giorgio Armani portraits in which the blue-eyed designer resembles a debonair Siberian husky.

As of today, there’s a new girl in town: Judy Garland. Warhol’s pair of Judys, executed in 1978 and circa 1979, debuted today in the Casa Lever private dining room. They are best admired in the company of a newly created “Judy Garland,” Casa Lever “mixologist” Cristina Bini‘s commemorative cocktail blend of bourbon whisky, barolo chinato, mint essence, and absinthe, and sure to take you somewhere over the rainbow in no time. “Edie [Sedgwick] and Judy had something in common–a way of getting everyone totally involved in their problems. When you were around them, you forgot you had problems of your own, you got so involved in theirs,” Warhol once said. “They had dramas going right around the clock, and everybody loved to help them through it all. Their problems made them even more attractive.”

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