Our roots in the rusty husk that is Motown make us suckers for the boom in photo projects that document the city’s fading glory [cue "(Nothing But) Flowers"]. Leading the pack, in our view, is Julia Reyes Taubman‘s Detroit: 138 Square Miles, published last December by the city’s Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCAD), but for a perspective that tends more toward the hauntingly gorgeous and immersive, no one does it better than Andrew Moore. His 2008-2009 “Detroit Disassembled” photo series is the subject of an exhibition on view through February 13, 2013 at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. (running concurrently is “Detroit Is No Dry Bones,” a show of photos Camilo José Vergara). In this photo, Moore captures the Surrealist afterlife of a clock that once measured the days of students at Detroit’s Cass Tech High School.

Late Night with Jimmy Fallon‘s head blogger Cory Cavin (left) and co-producer Gavin Purcell will share their secrets on building a loyal fanbase in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp online conference and workshop starting October 18. Other speakers include Brian Ries (Newsweek), Jennifer Rubio (Warby Parker), and Frank Eliason (Citibank).  Register today.

The MediabistroTV crew headed over to Manhattan’s West Side recently to check out the gleaming Frank Gehry-designed IAC building which is home to Newsweek and The Daily Beast, among other IAC brands. NewsBeast’s Senior Columnist and CNN contributor John Avlon takes you into the belly of the Beast, which is home to the magazine, the website, a daily web series, and a lot of free food.

L.A.-based Studio Number One designed the identity for LA MOCA’s new YouTube channel.

Neither the ousting of a star chief curator, mutinying board members, nor the bad juju of John Baldessari shall keep the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles from its appointed multimedia presence. This week marks the debut of the institution’s YouTube channel, MOCAtv, promising a steady stream of “fresh contemporary art and culture programming.” And there’s plenty to choose from. Watch artist video projects in West Coast Video Art and MOCAtv Presents, two new series that will delve into the work of everyone from Martha Rosler to Assume Vivid Astro Focus. Pay a virtual visit to the workspaces of Sterling Ruby and Raymond Pettibon in The Artist’s Studio. And soak up the sounds of musical matchups such as Tracey Emin and Harper Simon in Art+Music Originals, which on November 13 premieres “Mutual Core,” a new music video by Björk directed by L.A.-based filmmaker Andrew Thomas Huang. Meanwhile, with Jeffrey Deitch at the helm, MOCAtv will continue where the museum’s “Art in Streets” blockbuster left off. Look for a mix of fresh work from Barry McGee, Retna, Swoon, and the gang along with historic footage of street art masters (surreptitiously) at work. A word to the wise: new subscribers to the channel receive a free three-month membership to LA MOCA.
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Whether you’re a design firm principal or just a wildly ambitious design star-in-the-making, you’ll find news you can use at HOW magazine’s Mind Your Own Business (MYOB) Conference. The three-day event, which kicks off on October 17 in Nashville, promises a program chock full of business advice geared to the challenges faced by creative-, design- and marketing-firm pros. Speakers such as David C. Baker (ReCourses), Julien Smith (Trust Agents), and Mark O’Brien (Newfangled) will fill you with ideas on “how to improve corporate positioning, grow the bottom line, and achieve your company’s full potential,” the organizers promise. UnBeige readers can save $100 on full-conference registration by entering discount code UB12 at checkout. See? You’re already saving money!

From jumbo carousels to high-gloss hoedowns, towering glaciers to undersea revelries, Karl Lagerfeld‘s mise-en-scene knows no bounds. Fortunately for him (and the fashion world), neither does Chanel‘s show budget. For the house’s spring 2013 ready-to-wear extravaganza, held yesterday in Paris, the Kaiser was feeling energy of the alternative sort, sending a whopping 80 looks down a runway studded with wind turbines and tiled in solar panels. The eco-friendly flourishes were echoed in several ensembles, including an intarsia knit ode to wind power (above), a series of dresses in photovoltaic checkboard motifs (below), and hats with Perspex brims (don’t forget the SPF). But there were plenty more alternatives on parade in this supersized collection, held together with gobs of gumball pearls that bubbled up as chokers, bracelets, brooches, buttons, and hair accessories. Along with the usual riffs on Chanel signatures (black and white, tweed, the skirt suit), Lagerfeld sent out some slouchy and oversized silhouettes that ixnayed Madame Chanel‘s obsession with a high-cut armhole. He also proved his mastery of the bolero, explored the Peter Pan-to-pilgrim collar continuum, and experimented with scattered blossoms in garments that called to mind, at their best, the floral garlands of Tord Boontje and, elsewhere, the fizzy, marabou-tufted stagewear of Phyllis Diller, may she rest in peace.

• Tuesday is the traditional day of rest for New York’s Museum of Modern Art, but not for long. Beginning May 1, 2013, the museum will open to the public seven days per week. MoMA’s move to a seven-day schedule on a year-round basis comes after some testing of the Tuesday opening waters during summer months and holiday periods. Look for the expanded schedule to bring in even more visitors. Since the 2004 reopening in its renovated and expanded building, MoMA’s annual attendance has nearly doubled—from approximately 1.5 million visitors per year to nearly 3 million.

• A forthcoming volume that’s likely to land on the MoMA store shelves is Sebastian Smee‘s look at friendship and rivalry among artists. The Boston Globe art critic and winner of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for criticism will focus on four pairs whose rivalries propelled them to greater achievements: Edgar Degas vs. Edouard Manet, Pablo Picasso vs. Henri Matisse (OK, you saw that one coming), Jackson Pollock vs. Willem de Kooning, and Lucian Freud vs. Francis Bacon. The title is slated for publication next year by Random House. Smee’s freshly inked book deal was announced by Publishers Lunch.

• VICE knows tattoos. The punk zine turned media juggernaut returns to the ink-slinging trenches for a new season of Tattoo Age. The hit web series scours the globe to profile the artists behind the most beautiful and interesting tattooing trends. The latest line-up consists of London-based Valerie Vargas and her eye-catching “lady head” tats, the versatile (and American-trained) Mutsuo of Osaka, Japan, and Thom deVita, who started tattooing in New York City in the 60s (when tattooing was illegal in all five boroughs), synthesizing his environment into his tattoos and creating quite possibly the most unique inking style of all time. Here’s a taste of the season two debut:

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.

(Courtesy of the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation)

Artist Uta Barth and photographer An-My Lê (pictured) are among this year’s MacArthur fellows, the annual mix of thinkers, writers, artists, geochemists, and pediatric neurosurgeons that are awarded $500,000 in no-strings-attached “genius grants” over five years. “These extraordinary individuals demonstrate the power of creativity,” said MacArthur President Robert Gallucci, in a press release issued today. “The MacArthur Fellowship is not only a recognition of their impressive past accomplishments but also, more importantly, an investment in their potential for the future. We believe in their creative instincts and hope the freedom the Fellowship provides will enable them to pursue unfettered their insights and ideas for the benefit of the world.” Other 2012 fellows include documentary filmmakers Laura Poitras and Natalia Almada, writer Junot Díaz, International Contemporary Ensemble founder and CEO Claire Chase, and Benoît Rolland, a master bow maker who is experimenting with new designs and materials to create violin, viola, and cello bows for the twenty-first century. Meet all 23 MacArthur fellows here.
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This week, Amazon is hiring an art director of visual design, while the Daily Mail needs a photo editor. The Huffington Post is on the hunt for an art operations coordinator, and the Boston Globe is seeking a digital designer. Get the scoop on these openings and more below, and find additional just-posted gigs on Mediabistro.

• Art Director, Visual Design Amazon (Seattle, WA)
• Photo Editor Daily Mail (New York, NY)
• Art Operations Coordinator Huffington Post (Philadelphia, PA)
• Digital Designer The Boston Globe (Boston, MA)
• Art Director/Dept. Manager Dan’s Papers (Southampton, NY)

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.

Naval Battle. From left, Emeco’s famous Navy Chair and a Restoration Hardware ripoff.

Fresh from a scandal that saw its rugged spokesmodel and unofficial mascot Gary Friedman ousted from his post as CEO, Restoration Hardware is back in hot water for ripping off Emeco’s Navy Chair, the aluminum classic designed by the Hanover, Pennsylvania-based company in 1944 for the U.S. Navy and in production ever since. The cut-rate clone (pictured at right), which appears throughout the company’s phonebook-sized fall catalog, is called—wait for it—the “Naval Chair.” The lack of nomenclative creativity may make things easier for Emeco, which is suing Restoration Hardware and Friedman for infringement of Emeco’s trade dress and trademark rights for its Navy Chair. “The irreparable harm caused by Restoration Hardware, an established company, to Emeco’s reputation and significant goodwill is massive, incomparable to that caused by a typical, small-time counterfeiter,” noted Emeco in a statement issued late yesterday. CEO Gregg Buchbinder compared the knockoff to “stealing the Nike Swoosh or the Mercedes Benz logo, and then exploiting our brand and reputation to produce an inferior product.”

The lawsuit comes just days after Restoration Hardware filed for a $150 million IPO. Emeco seized upon a pre-IPO SEC filing as fodder for its cause, highlighting a section in which the company states that, “at our core we are not designers, rather we are curators and composers of inspired design and experiences.” By “[e]xternally discover[ing] and curat[ing]” others’ designs, as opposed to “[i]nternally design[ing] and develop[ing]” its own products, Restoration Hardware can cut the product development process from “12-18 months lead time” to “3-9 months lead time” and “reduce product costs.” In contrast, Emeco pegs its own product cycle of designing, prototyping, research and development, engineering, and tooling at approximately 2 to 4 years. While Restoration Hardware has yet to issue an official response on the matter, it has hastily renamed its Naval Chair “Aluminum Standard Side Chair” and sliced the price from $169 to $129. The authentic version, which comes with a lifetime guarantee from Emeco, sells for $455.