Today’s dose of cute: a designer asks his 5-year old her impressions of logos for, among others, Google Chrome (“that looks like a beach ball”), the Republican Party’s elephant (“that is a parade outfit”), and Gerber (“babies are little”).

The Design Museum unveiled plans Tuesday for its new space, the museum’s third iteration in London. Scheduled to open in 2014, the new site will be in Kensington’s “cultural corner,” near the V&A, the Royal College of Art, and the Serpentine Gallery.

How can design be part of the Occupy movement, and how can Occupy change the world of design? Launching next weekend in a former London bank now dubbed the Bank of Ideas, Occupy Design’s “This Space Is Not For Hire” seeks to address these questions.

The U.S. Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale is looking for submissions of guerrilla design, “ranging from urban farms to guerrilla bike lanes, temporary architecture to poster campaigns, urban navigation apps to crowdsourced city planning.”

The American Institute of Architects’ just-released list of 2012 legislative priorities focuses on job growth in the building sector, with an emphasis on lending for small architectural firms and tax deductions for green retrofits, among other goals.

Dave Jordano’s photos of Detroit—contemporary architectural photos paired with historic shots—are an antidote to “ruin porn,” implicating the viewer in the changes they depict: “this has happened — is still happening — in our lifetimes.”

In a tough economy, architects should consider moving from academia to the streets, says Pedro Gadanho, MoMA’s new curator of architecture and design, where they could do “more unsolicited work, advancing their own ideas before someone asks them.”

Dubbed “the Oscars of the design world,” the Design Museum has released its Design of the Year 2012 nominees, which include the Olympic velodrome, the Met’s Alexander McQueen show, and a hospital in Rwanda designed by Boston’s MASS Design Group, among others.

It took him two years (nearly 6,000 hours) but his efforts weren’t wasted: David Imus’ U.S. map is the country’s best, according to the Cartography and Geographic Information Society. So just what makes a great map, anyway?