Hasta La Ideas

That soft-focus street scene on the cover of The New Yorker‘s June 1 issue? It’s Jorge Colombo‘s “Finger Painting,” finger-drawn on his iPhone using the Brushes application. Colombo, a New York-based artist and designer, created the “iSketch” while standing for an hour outside Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum in Times Square, according to a post on the magazine’s blog. “I got a phone in the beginning of February, and I immediately got the program so I could entertain myself,” Colombo tells TNY. “Before, unless I had a flashlight or a miner’s hat, I could not draw in the dark.” Another advantage of iSketching recalls the methods of Ben Shahn, who rather sneakily fitted his Leica with an angle finder to minimize self-consciousness in the subjects of his street photography. Colombo can draw discreetly on his iPhone, as passersby assume he is checking his e-mail. Watch the below video to see how he created the cover image.

Medals, pencils, cubes, elephantine statuettes designed by Alexander Calder—spring always finds us buried in design awards, and we’re still in catch-up in mode. Last things first: On Friday, the Society of Publication Designers (SPD) held its annual awards gala at New York’s Hammerstein Ballroom to recognize outstanding design, photography, illustration, and online work. WIRED creative director (and outgoing SPD president) Scott Dadich was the Michael Phelps of the evening, taking home a whopping eight gold medals for the Condé Nast publication, including the coveted magazine of the year award and the top honor for overall design of the November 2008 “Future of Food” issue. WIRED also won five silver medals, in categories including feature design and info-graphic (also for the food issue).

Meanwhile, New York continued its domination of best magazine cover accolades with its unstoppable Barbara Kruger-ized depiction of Eliot Spitzer‘s brain, while The New York Times Magazine took home silver for its March 2008 “End of Republican America?” cover, which featured Andrew Bettles‘ photo of a deflated red elephant. The night’s other big winners included GQ (with 11 medals, including a silver for magazine of the year) and W, which cleaned up in the feature design categories (you go, Edward Leida!) and won gold for its May 2008 “Cairo” photo portfolio by Philip-Lorca DiCorcia. Click here for a full list of this year’s SPD winners, and if you missed the gala, check out the SPDtweets Twitter, which posted minute-by-minute updates from Friday’s festivities. “AARP art staff is in the house,” read an early tweet. “The only art staff that never gets carded for drinks.”

Ever vigilant in our monitoring of all things Visionaire, the limited edition art-meets-fashion triannual, we bring you sunny tidings that the fifty-sixth issue is “solar-powered.” A collaboration with Calvin Klein Collection, Visionaire 56 (pictured at left) uses photo-sensitive printing wizardry that instantly transforms black-and-white artwork—by contributing artists that include Yoko Ono, M/M Paris, Alex Katz, John Baldessari, and Ryan McGinley—into vibrant color when exposed to direct sunlight. Should you live in a non-sunny part of the world, or if the $250 price tag makes you feel dark inside, check out the issue online, where you can slide a sun-shaped cursor over the featured artworks and watch them change color.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media

Today’s big news in the tastefully appointed, farm-fresh land of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia (MSLO) is the reorganization of its media business, as Wenda Harris Millard steps down as president of media and co-CEO of MSLO to become president of brand consulting firm Media Link. The shakeup puts Charles Koppelman at the helm of the media division while Stewart herself will “oversee all editorial and creative functions.” But the colorful happenings don’t end there. The May issue of Martha Stewart Living is all about color. In her editor’s letter, Gael Towey, the magazine’s acting editor-in-chief (and MSLO’s chief creative officer), reminisces about the earliest days of the magazine, back in 1990, which can only mean one thing: misty egg-colored memories!

For us, COLOR has always been a touchstone. It all started with some unassuming chicken eggs. While on a photo at Martha’s house in Westport, she gave me a dozen eggs freshly laid by her Araucana chickens. That Saturday morning, my husband, Stephen, and I were cooking the eggs for our children…when Martha called. We had just put the eggshells on the windowsill in the sunlight to admire the gorgeous colors: soft blue greens, gentle browns, and warm creams. It took Martha and me about five minutes to cook up a plan for our first how-to painting story, inspired by the Araucana eggs, followed by our launch into the paint business. Soon Stephen and I were painting our kitchen ceiling Araucuna Turquoise, our dining room Drabware, and the hallway Americana Buff. For us at Martha Stewart Living, the egg definitely came first.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media

What’s the secret to surviving in the rapidly shrinking world of print media? Very tiny type. New York magazine has taken to sprinkling its cover with ultrasmall headlines akin to those wee quotations that sneak their way onto the front of Vanity Fair. John Koblin, writing in this week’s New York Observer, describes the point size as “somewhere between the size of a grain of sugar and a grain of kosher salt.”

After the cover line, the rest is “garnish,” according to New York editor-in-chief Adam Moss, and readers’ palettes are far too sophisticated for the design equivalent of parsley:

“There’s a certain texturing,” he said. “Texturing? Is that a word? A texture object that has to do with the design of the cover. We have very large type and very small type. It’s impossible to describe graphic design, but you want to create a visual tension on the cover. We want you to see a big word that excites you. And then it’s like someone who speaks very softly and you lean in to hear them.”

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media