Today in Design - Top Articles RoundUp 12 November 2014

The day’s best and most impor­tant design- and design business-focused arti­cles, tuto­ri­als, and resources hand-picked by Pariah Burke.

  • How to Be a Better Graphic Designer Next Year
    Graphic design­ers are every­where, espe­cial­ly across the Internet nowa­days. Every Pinterest/Dribbble/Ffffound user arrives online search­ing for inspi­ra­tion in dif­fer­ent things, and each and every user sees and relates to the design that they fin…
  • Hand Lettering: Understanding Types of Type

    This tuto­r­i­al will help you under­stand the var­i­ous kinds of typog­ra­phy that exist all around us, such as the typog­ra­phy you see in books, bill­boards, store sig­nage and every­thing else in between. You’ll gain a great amount of knowl­edge to help you deci­pher typog­ra­phy char­ac­ter­is­tics and what their usage is in this day and age.

  • The Ad Agency Is Dead – And Other Dumb Headlines

    Headline-writers will con­tin­ue to pro­claim the death of adver­tis­ing, and mar­ket­ing, and agen­cies – and they’ll still be wrong.

  • Your Content Is Killing You. Here’s Why.
    The lat­est con­tent mar­ket­ing research from Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs found that less than 40% of mar­keters feel like their con­tent mar­ket­ing is effec­tive. Worse yet, just two in 10 are effec­tive­ly mea­sur­ing their con­tent ma…
  • What Makes Great Design?
    Have you ever thought about what makes a design great? Design inspi­ra­tion is every­where. Truly cre­ative design­ers rely on inspi­ra­tion from a wealth of resources sur­round­ing them daily.
  • President Obama Supports Net Neutrality, For All The Good It Will Do
    The Internet explod­ed in emp­ty rhetoric Monday over Barack Obama’s Congress-short, six years late endorse­ment of “net neu­tral­i­ty,” an issue that will like­ly con­tin­ue to go nowhere fast despite the pres­i­den­t’s full-throated tone.
  • Stop Bashing Microsoft: 5 Ways In Which They’re Awesome

    Microsoft doesn’t always get fair treat­ment. When it comes down to it, they’re a pret­ty awe­some com­pa­ny. They invest huge amounts in research, cre­ate inno­v­a­tive hard­ware and soft­ware, devel­op great appli­ca­tions while sup­port­ing every­thing that’s come before. There’s been enough Microsoft bash­ing, now it’s time for some love.
    Here are five rea­sons Microsoft is awesome.

  • Designing the Netherlands’ ‘iTunes of Journalism’

    We tried lots of dif­fer­ent things, but every time we end­ed up with Flipboardish designs: beau­ti­ful, but with­out the soul of the orig­i­nal news­pa­per or mag­a­zine. A tabloid arti­cle should look a bit trashy, an arti­cle from a styl­ish mag­a­zine should look, well, styl­ish, and an arti­cle from The New York Times should feel like it’s an arti­cle from The New York Times.

  • DOs and DON’Ts of Social Media Pictures

    You can put a lot of effort into your brand’s visu­al presence—finding the per­fect head­er, choos­ing an impec­ca­ble pro­file photo—and still fall flat. To reach the full visu­al engage­ment poten­tial of your social media pic­tures, here are DOs and DON’T for your page’s essen­tial visu­al ele­ments: pro­file pho­tos, cov­er images, and pic­ture posts.

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  • The First Amendment: What Photographers Need to Know (And What To Do If You Are Arrested)

    It’s becom­ing more and more com­mon to hear cas­es where pho­tog­ra­phers are being harassed by law enforce­ment for doc­u­ment­ing or film­ing, recent­ly and most notably in Ferguson, Missouri this past August. It has become so much of an issue that the NYPD chief even issued an inter­nal memo to remind his offi­cers that “mem­bers of the pub­lic are legal­ly allowed to record police interactions…”

  • The Smiling Curve Shows Optimism in Writing, Publishing

    All of this is because of the Internet: by remov­ing fric­tion it removes the need for folks in the mid­dle, and the result is that val­ue will flow to the edges. In the case of pub­lish­ing that is aggre­ga­tors on one side, and focused, respon­sive, and dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed writ­ers and pub­li­ca­tions on the oth­er,” says Thompson.

  • The Digital Newsstand Needs to Recognize Its Real Rivals

    Without the false com­fort of dig­i­tal news­stands, pub­lish­ers might be forced to stop hold­ing their noses and plunge into the big scary world where they are com­pet­ing with every­one on the web for time and mon­ey, not just the for­mer rivals they used to face in your local newsagent.”