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While we said back in January that 2010 might be shaping up to be another rough and tumble year for Frank Gehry, what with the recent stop work order on his Beekman Tower and his pulling out from Jerusalem's troubled-from-the-start Museum of Tolerance, the guy is still a starchitect after all and that's a pretty choice spot to be in. It's just been announced that he's passed on potentially working on a museum project in Dundee, Scotland (where he's worked before with the small Maggie's Centre building), saying that "he has too much work on at the moment to contemplate taking part in the competition." One of the things most likely keeping Gehry busy at the moment is the main structure for the Saadiyat Beach Golf Club in Abu Dhabi. The building, Gehry's first clubhouse, will be quite large, coming in at around 18,000 square feet, and is described as "a postmodern twist on the traditional garb worn by Arab men." The new building, set to finish in two years, will be surrounded by a golf course designed by golf legend Gary Player. If you want to golf in the middle east in the next couple of years, we're willing to bet that there's more likelihood of being able to do it here than at the proposed Tiger Woods course in Dubai.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

&#151 Pepsi will be a case study on how to be awesome from now on, says AdAge. link

&#151 There wasn't one single, original ad yesterday, and that makes us sad. link

&#151 Betty White, still awesome. link

&#151 Now that Toyota is bent and broken, who will become the leader? link

&#151 Conan O'Brien's closer than ever to a deal with FOX. Tell your media buyers. link

&#151 All the Kobe Bryants you can fit into a room. link

&#151 A round-up of all the madness. link

&#151 The Source tells us how some strong individuals are changing this business for the better. link

&#151 WSJ says Denny's and Dorito's were the game's big winners. link

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Looks from the spring/summer 2010 collections of Prabal Gurung (left) and Bibhu Mohapatra (right), who are among the 12 designers selected for tenancy in the CFDA Fashion Incubator.

With fashion week looming, a crop of young designers have received the good news that they have been selected as the inaugural tenants of the CFDA Fashion Incubator, a business-boosting initiative of the Council of Fashion Designers of America that was established last fall with a $200,000 grant from the New York City Economic Development Corporation. Each designer (or design team) will be able to take advantage of a two-year lease on an individual studio in New York's Garment Center at below-market value rates as well as business mentoring, educational seminars, and networking opportunities. The designing dozen are:

Chicago-based outdoor advertising agency Skywalker is about to get the lightsaber laid to 'em to by venerable filmmaker (and wookie creator) George Lucas. Lucasfilms Ltd. slapped Skywalker Outdoor with a trademark-infringement suit, claiming the ad-firm promised to stop using the name "Skywalker", which Lucas trademarked for 'Star Wars', by December 2008. Skywalker Outdoor CEO Michael Richards claims to have no knowledge of the promise.

Speaking of Star Wars, No Wukkas (yes, wookie, I know).

Via UPI

More: AT&T to Verizon: "There's A Lawsuit for That"

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The sexy Europeans at DDB Worldwide are who you can thank/scowl-at for the above print portion of Reebok's Easytone campaign. Easytones are the shoes that make your ass look like some definition of perfect that is impossible to attain, yet still desirable. So basically, keep dreaming people.

Credits after the jump. Via AdsOfTheWorld.

More: "Reebok Gets in on the Butt Game"

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Say the Nielsen people: 106.5 million viewers. That seems like a lot, but if true $3 million was a steal.

More: "Google's Love Story Written by First Time Writer"

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Google Creative Labs created the 'Love Story' piece we deemed the bowl's best ad earlier today. Since we said it, it must be true. More specifically, Google Creative Labs copywriter Tristan Smith wrote the thing. It's the VCU grad's (May, 2009!) first-ever campaign, we're told. Smith didn't respond to an email &#151 maybe because he's too busy reveling in the glory of it all.

That thing we said about the fake Google Story (Tiger Woods) being better than the real one &#151 yeah, not really.

Someone tells us Jeff Gillette and Robert Wong did the creative direction.

Update: This ad was art directed by Anthony Cafaro.

More: "Honesty Wins SuperBowl, The End"

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Last week saw us back in product wonderland, better known as the New York International Gift Fair (NYIGF). Our first stop at the biannual gifts and home accessories extravaganza is always the juried Accent on Design division, where the likes of Marimekko, Jonathan Adler, Umbra, and Artecnica showcase their latest and greatest items. Tasked by the fair to select one item as "the next big thing," we chose the Brelli: the world's first biodegradable umbrella! Designed by Pam Zonsius, the Brelli covers a bamboo parasol frame with a sleek canopy of transparent biofilm. The result is a sturdy reimagining of a delicate design classic that also happens to be 100% green. Available in three sizes that retail from $38 to $62, the Brelli comes tucked inside an organic cotton carrying case and can be decorated with permanent paint markers (non-toxic, of course). Finally, a way to protect oneself from the environment without contributing to its destruction.

Previously on UnBeige:

When I grow up, I want to be like Tavi Gevinson. The blogger-cum-cult-fashion-icon behind Style Rookie makes Grannie-style sweaters and buffalo plaid Doc Martens look chic. Not only that, but she writes with an easy, prolific wit, and stars in the current video promotion for Rodarte's clothing line for Target. When you were 13, you were just learning to play with yourself.

Is it sad that I want to be like a mid-pubescent kid? With Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week starting up in New York this Thursday, I want to shine a quick spotlight on the Chicago-born-style-wunderkind's work for Target, produced by an agency you might know, Peterson Milla Hooks.

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If MDC Partners has their way, advertising will soon be an industry of insurgents who live alone in bungalows hidden in various city-centers where advertising normally doesn't happen. At least that's the take away from the odd press release they issued today, which seemingly was meant to clear up questions no one asked. We bolded some stuff after the jump, but as far as we can tell, it's a pointless release you should not waste your precious time reading.

Well, it does seem to answer the "is Alex Bogusky retiring question" by saying he'll be around for another five years.

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ABC News, via The Blotter, reports today that a group of Toyota dealers buying media through 22Squared in Atlanta pulled ads from ABC News due to "excessive stories on the Toyota issues," which has now lead to additional coverage of the Toyota issues.

Though the company's tagline has been rewritten (by one of our readers) to more accurately reflect the automaker's brand, and despite ads that ran during the Super Bowl to showcase the company's "tail-between-the-legs" status, Toyota now has another battle to fight &#151 its own media-stupid clients.

According to ABC 22Squared's Senior Vice President Marcia Owens-Reder tried to dissuade the group of dealers, all from the Southeast Toyota coalition, from pulling their ads. Presuming to know more about crisis management than the industry whose job it is to manage crises, Southeast Toyota chose to pull the ads anyway, and now it's a thing.

More: "Help Punch Up Toyota's Ironic Tagline"

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A brawl has been brewing between North Face and a competitor borne from the notion that the clothier is pompous-and-self-righteous. Cue South Butt. The so-called parody brand was started by innocent-sounding-18-year-old Jimmy Winkelmann who took advantage of North Face's name and logo to create his own line, which is now reportedly worth a few million.

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Looks from the spring/summer 2010 collection of Sophie Théallet, who will show her fall collection next Tuesday, February 16, in New York City. (Photos: Dan Lecca)

"For me, creating a collection is a very painful process. I just like looking at my environment: walking in Prospect Park, going to the movies, reading a book, listening to music. At some point, something shows up and I begin to design on the paper, and I start to play with it. It depends on a lot of things but when the ideas come, I feel free and happy."

-Sophie Théallet, winner of the 2009 CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund Prize

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Tiger Woods was once the center of many Super Bowl ads, but today he is the butt of a joke that parodies once such ad. Full circle, we hardly knew ye.

Via AdPulp

More: "Honesty Wins SuperBowl, The End"

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Unfortunate and belated as it is, you run into some pretty interesting lives in the obituaries. Case in point, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution has reported that Clifford A. Nahser passed away last week. In addition to working for the Atlanta Public School System for 26 years, designing new buildings for them, and being "an early expert in the installation of AstroTurf," Nahser was also the chief architect behind the Waffle House, the iconic, greasy spoon restaurant chain you run into every two minutes in the south of the country. Here's the story:

Co-founder Joe Rogers Sr. asked him to help design new restaurants from the prototype diner he opened in Avondale Estates in 1955. Mr. Nahser worked on the blueprint for one of the earlier units, then went on to help design hundreds more as the restaurant chain grew.

Tweaked and updated a little over the years, the same basic plan was used for Waffle Houses in 28 states, said his brother Donald Nahser of Alpharetta.

"He used to say, 'Anybody who's ever traveled through the South by car has been in one of my buildings,'" his brother said.

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Monday morning hangover? No worries, let's wrap it up for the new join-ees of 'Who Dat' Nation....

-5 ads that stood out in the Super Bowl. link

-Let's call it the "Nostalgia Bowl". link

-The Tebow ad. Worth all the hype? link

-Super Bowl ads had family in mind. link

-Loopt launches local advertising. link

-Porter Novelli named digital AOR for Bel Brands. link

More: "Friday Morning Stir"

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Oh the Super Bowl was last night? That's funny, all I can remember is an endless stream of advertisements, sponsorship mentions and CBS promos wrapped around 12 minutes of game play. Unfortunately, I have no recollection of what I'm supposed to buy/do now.

So rather than write an analysis of the work, I'll save time and list the stuff I can remember &#151 cuz, you know, real people don't take notes. OK so I did jot some things, but they're scribbly + uninteresting x four-pages-front-and-back. Take this away: the work I remember had some element of simple honesty. If you think about it, that and trust are the things that help us remember people's names. Insert Latin phrase for "if you build it, they will come." Wait that's not right.

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As the LA Times' critic Christopher Knight puts it: "'Great Recession'? What 'Great Recession'?" He's commenting on the news that the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has announced that it has raised $250 million in just six months, largely to help expand their space to make way for the massive Donald Fisher Collection, which you'll remember they were able to hold on to after the Gap founder's sudden, unexpected passing last year. Kenneth Baker at the San Francisco Chronicle reports that there haven't been any designs yet for the new extension, but now that the money has poured in, the museum is planning to add roughly an additional 100,000 square feet to its current facility, making it one of the largest modern art museums in the country, larger than the MoMA in New York. The big story of all of this, however, is this:

The $250 million raised thus far comes from what [museum director Neal Benezra] called "core members of the board" and is intended to challenge other affluent friends of the museum to pitch in. The museum will not divulge individual contributions, but its board includes luminaries of business and philanthropy such as Charles Schwab, Mimi L. Haas, Helen Hilton Raiser, Paul Sack and Roselyne Swig.

To which Christopher Knight responds, "Those pockets are not merely deep, they are also open. Good for them."

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We think we've made it perfectly clear in the past that there are a lot of things we don't know about Barbie. We know it was the doll's birthday last year and she can get Jonathan Adler to design her Malibu Dreamhouse, but that's about it. So it was interesting to read about a controversy surrounding the iconic toy coming out of Buffalo, New York. Story goes, according to the Buffalo News, is that a 2002 competition called "I Can Be," which asked the public to select the next career-themed edition of the toy. But when "Architect" won, "Mattel balked at producing an architect doll." Now that the company has launched another similar contest eight years later, architecture professor Despina Stratigakos has kicked off a campaign to finally give architecture its due. Here's a bit:

"This is a powerful icon, and it does speak to little girls," said Stratigakos, an assistant professor in [University of Buffalo]'s School of Architecture and Planning. "We need role models."

Architect, environmentalist, surgeon, news anchor and computer engineer are the five jobs voters can pick from in the contest, which runs through Wednesday at www.barbie.com/vote. "An architect designs buildings and makes sure they're safe, sturdy and cool-looking," the job description reads on the contest Web site.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

We're sure your head hurts too after last night's pummeling of greasy food, beer, and some occasional bits of football thrown in there for good measure, so we'll start out gently this morning. An interesting new iPhone app has been released by the Japanese company Wowlab. Called addLib (not to be confused with the popular sound card company, AdLib, of the 1980s), it's essentially a random design generator. You plug in a photo, it kicks out a poster that looks like it might have been laid out by some famous Swiss designer, all at random, using "the Grid System, a fractal theory, the golden ratio, and the Facial Recognition System." A fun toy, sure, but we'd be interested to hear what you think it says about design, that quality can come from formula rather than unique, practiced artistry. Or are we just over thinking the whole thing? Here's the app in action:

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