Welcome back to the internet. We hoped you've regained your vision after gorging yourself up to your eyeballs in food yesterday. We are finding it difficult to type, finding ourselves running out of breath just from hitting these few keys to write these sentences. But here we are, back on the job for you. And since it's Black Friday today, we thought we'd make this post about buying stuff. First up, A Daily Dose of Architecture is back at it again with one of our favorite things of the season: their Holiday Gift Books guide. It's one book selection from 50 separate publishers and if you haven't completely maxed out all your credit cards by the end and forgotten to buy gifts for anyone else but yourself, then we don't know who you are anymore. We think you'll also find it's a great resource to send to those family members who never know what to get you, thus sparing them them search and you another incorrectly-sized bit of wardrobe. And speaking of ill-sized, we turn to number two in this special consumer-focused post. Millions of dollars and man hours were presumably spent designing Motorola's attempted-iPhone-killer Droid phone, but the one thing the gadget's box "don't do" is actually hold the product well. Consumerist reports that the packaging design is atrocious, leading the phone to fall to the ground and possibly being damaged as soon as its unpacked. And it's reportedly happened to lots of people. So while it may seem like such a minor thing, packaging isn't something to take lightly.

On the heels of relaunching its website (have you noticed the background changes from white to black according to the New York City sunset?), the Whitney Museum of American Art has announced two curatorial appointments. The whipsmart and charming Scott Rothkopf will join the museum on December 1 as curator, while Dana Miller has been promoted to curator of the permanent collection. Miller, who co-curated last year's stellar Buckminster Fuller exhibition, has been the Whitney's associate curator of the permanent collection for the past seven years.

Rothkopf comes to the Whitney from Artforum, where he has served as senior editor since 2004. Don't miss his "Best of 2009" picks in the magazine's December issue. Among Charles Ray, MoMA's Joan Miró exhibition, and the collected writings of Herbert Muschamp is a shout-out to Aretha Franklin's bowtastic inauguration hat, designed by Detroit milliner Luke Song. "Although it threatened to overshadow her face (and everyone else on the dais), Aretha's exuberant headgear is the enduring emblem of a high point in our nation's optimism and pride," notes Rothkopf.

Farmers are the new hedge fund managers, but neither group has had much use for highly skilled Flash developers—until now. The Concept Farm, an independent ad agency, production company, and entertainment development group, is looking to harvest one prize flash developer for its New York City office. The position entails collaborating with product managers, interaction designers, and other members of the project team on everything from requirements specification and feasibility analysis to detailed engineering analysis and launch planning for Flash animation and applications. Bring your object-oriented programming skills, and be a sartorial stand-out by wearing overalls and/or gingham to the interview.

Apply for this senior flash developer, Concept Farm position or see what other design, art, and photo gigs have cropped up on the Mediabistro job board.

Visionaire is always among the things we're most thankful for, so what better time to tell you about the new issue? The fifty-seventh edition of the art-meets-fashion triannual brings together images from 365 artists in the format of an electronic 2010 calendar. The works that light up the sleek HD screen were selected by 52 influential figures from the worlds of art, design, fashion, and film. Curators including Zaha Hadid, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Louise Bourgeois, and Rei Kawakubo, chose works by artists from Richard Artschwager to Andrea Zittel. Among some of our favorite curator/artist pairings: Pharrell Williams (who we hear is starring in a film by artist Yi Zhou that will debut next week at Art Asia in Miami) selected an image of a Marc Newson-designed aircraft, MoMA's Klaus Biesenbach opted for an ethereal work by Marlene Dumas, and Mario Testino got in the holiday spirit with a Steven Shearer photocollage of inverted Christmas trees. The issue was produced in collaboration with smart, the lower-cased Daimler division that is launching an electric version of its pint-sized fortwo, thus the smart car-shaped plug on the rechargeable display console. And it's a bargain at a mere 80 cents per artwork (or $295).

Previously on UnBeige:

"Have I ever been horrified to see someone in my clothes? Many times, but I close my eyes and look the other way. That happens to everyone. What can you do? Go and tell her, 'Don't wear that dress again'? We designers always have fantasies in our heads, but the difficult task is to make them reality. Because you can be the best designer, but designing in your own place and with nobody wearing [your clothes], then what happens? You're nowhere."
-Carolina Herrera, in WWD

They may no longer have Gijs Bakker at the helm, but Droog is pushing forward, now into residential housing design. For next week's Design Miami, the collective will be unveiling the Droog Townhouse, which they didn't exactly build (the architecture stuff was created by Tokyo's Atelier Bow-Wow) but will feature a 100% Droog interior, from the lighting to the furniture to everything in between. The whole project was commissioned by an Amsterdam housing association and will be on display from the 1st to the 5th.

Imagined for a single, a contemporary family or as a VIP guesthouse, the one-of-a-kind layout is essentially a seamless flow of spaces, each with its own functionality merging with circulation space. Private rooms such as the master and optional guest bed, the bath, the balcony and a sound-proof refuse are amply separated by shared space, creating a unique combination of contact and independence, spaciousness and intimacy.

We call first dibs if they decide they don't want it after the 5th.

We are headed to the airport in just a second to head home for the holidays and while we want to smack our heads and ask "What were you thinking?!" we also don't want to be put on some kind of watch list which would make travel today even more impossible, so we'll just stick to the facts, if you please. The head smacking culprit here is the airline easyJet, who for a fashion spread their in-flight magazine decided that a good locale would be the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin. Designed by new Yale professor Peter Eisenman, the concrete monument also goes by the name, Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, which makes it seem that much more incredible that somehow everyone involved in the photo shoot, from the photographer (the chief suspect in our book) to the models, would find going in to take some moody shots in any way appropriate. But so they did and so easyJet is now apologizing profusely and pulling copies of the magazine from all of its aircraft.

In a statement to the New Statesman, the airline said:

"easyJet profusely apologizes to anyone who may be offended by the inappropriate fashion photo shoot at the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin featured in this month's issue of the in-flight magazine."

"The magazine is produced by INK -- an external publishing house, and easyJet were not aware of the images until they appeared in print. As a consequence we are now reviewing our relationship with the publisher and are withdrawing this month's issue from all flights."

INK has also issued an apology on their site.

Is it nudity week here at UnBeige? Sure, why not. We talked about Kim Cattrall getting naked to save art yesterday. And there was Terry Richardson's Pirelli calendar. And now here's a third. The AP is reporting that two artists who staged a nude photography session at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a museum full of nude painting and sculptures, have been let off the hook by a New York City judge. Here's how they pulled it off (semi-pun only semi-intended):

Defense lawyer Thomas J. Hillgardner says [model Kathleen "K.C." Neill] did nothing indecent while posing in an institution full of depictions of nudes. He says she was making art and he noted court rulings saying public nakedness isn't necessarily lewd.

Prosecutors say they aren't sure they could prove the charges beyond reasonable doubt.

You may recall that photographer Terry Richardson welcomed 2009 with a racy calendar for Vogue Paris that celebrated the joys of Louis Vuitton lingerie. The high-profile project, styled by Carine Roitfeld, led to the ultimate calendar gig: the much anticipated Pirelli calendar, now in its forty-sixth year of delighting corporate tire buyers worldwide. Richardson shot the 2010 edition, which debuted last week in London, on the beaches of Trancoso, Brazil. In contrast to the collaged exoticism of Peter Beard's 2009 Pirelli calendar, Richardson went for an old-school vibe in steamy shots that conjure the '70s and are free of retouching. Among the props bandied about by models such as Lily Cole and Miranda Kerr are tires and Brazilian wildlife, including some very happy sloths. For Richardson, less is always more. "My technique is the absence of technique," he has said.

Previously on UnBeige:

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), designer Constantin Boym (@OhBoym), RISD president John Maeda (@johnmaeda), and of course, Karl Lagerfeld (@karl_lagerfeld).

After a rocky nine-year marriage, AOL and Time Warner are ready to go their separate ways. The divorce is final on December 9, when AOL will return to the single life with a fresh look from branding firm Wolff Olins. The new identity dispenses with the blue AOL triangle (too square), swaps out the uppercase "OL" for lowercase letters, and adds a period. It all feels a bit Apple-icious. At the heart of the new identity are hundreds of colorful images (here a goldfish and an abstract painting, there a hip-hop dance trio and a cheeky cardboard camera) that serve as backgrounds for the white Aol., which Top Chef fans should be careful not to confuse with a certain garlic and olive oil emulsion—that's aioli. Stuart Elliott of The New York Times breaks down the new identity:

[AOL Chairman and CEO Tim] Armstrong said he liked to describe the period as "the AOL dot" because "the dot is the pivot point for what comes after AOL," whether it is e-mail, Web sites, or coming offerings that will "surprise people."

The constantly changing images behind the logo are also intended to elicit surprise, said [Sam Wilson, managing director at the Wolff Olins New York office] and Jordan Crane, creative director at Wolff Olins New York. "It's a mix of do-it-yourself and high production values, crazy stuff and elegant stuff," Mr. Crane said, "simple and engaging and bizarre—all the things the Internet is."

Read on for a mesmerizing video of the new identity in motion.

continued...

Here we were, after all the hubbub about kicking Frank Gehry off the Atlantic Yards project and Ellerbe Beckett stepping in, that everything was finished and going to move forward on the New Jersey Nets' new arena from here on out. But apparently there's still one big hurdle to jump. Bloomberg's James Russell reports that the developer, Forest City Ratner, is facing two lawsuits which it must win before construction can begin. One is from a Brooklyn-based activist group (who we discussed here when Gehry was still involved) who are trying to stop the project from moving forward and the other demands to know how the company has updated their environmental planning since they've made numerous changes to the original building plans. Should either one not go the developer's way, there's a healthy chance that none of it will happen at all (something Russel seems like he wouldn't mind too terribly -- we know his fellow critic over at the Times wouldn't be left unhappy either). Here's a bit:

If the judge in either case rules for the plaintiff, the resultant delay would make it almost impossible for Ratner to obtain financing through tax-exempt bonds that must be issued before the end of the year. An adverse ruling in either case also would give Barclays Plc the right to withdraw from a deal in which it would provide $400 million for naming rights on the arena.