Today in Design - Top Articles RoundUp 15 July 2014

Great con­tent found by Pariah and shared to the design and cre­ative com­mu­ni­ties on social media.

  • How to Brand Mind Maps to Make Them Stand Out | Designers: Another Service You Can offer!

    How to use graph­ic design to con­vey a pro­fes­sion­al image and clear­ly com­mu­ni­cate your brand – fea­tur­ing advice from bril­liant mind map­per Roger C. Parker.

  • 5 Quick Photoshop Fixes for Bad Portrait Photos

    That’s why it is impor­tant to know a few quick-fire retouch­ing tricks that can make a big impact with­out a lot of effort.

  • 4 ‘About Us’ Page Myths

    With that said, there are cer­tain­ly some gen­er­al poli­cies to follow—and some blun­ders to avoid. Unfortunately, not all ‘About Us’ pages are writ­ten with these best prac­tices in mind. In fact, there are some pieces of con­ven­tion­al ‘About Us’ wis­dom that may actu­al­ly hurt your brand iden­ti­ty more than they help it—and we’ve round­ed up four of them, below.

  • 4 ‘About Us’ Page Myths

    With that said, there are cer­tain­ly some gen­er­al poli­cies to follow—and some blun­ders to avoid. Unfortunately, not all ‘About Us’ pages are writ­ten with these best prac­tices in mind. In fact, there are some pieces of con­ven­tion­al ‘About Us’ wis­dom that may actu­al­ly hurt your brand iden­ti­ty more than they help it—and we’ve round­ed up four of them, below.

  • Search Twitter More Efficiently with These Search Operators
    There is a lot of infor­ma­tion on Twitter. Use these search oper­a­tors to help weed out the use­ful posts from the posts about what some­one is hav­ing for dinner.
  • Breaking Down E‑book Theft
    You might have inad­ver­tent­ly sup­port­ed e‑book pira­cy. With more and more books turn­ing up in elec­tron­ic for­mat, it wel­comed pira­cy with open arms. How much have authors and pub­lish­ers lost from pira­cy, and what can we do about it?
  • Using Evernote for Fashion Design

    Annching also uses Evernote to take screen­shots of the var­i­ous stages of her designs in Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign. This cre­ates a visu­al time­line that also acts as an archive of works-in-progress for future ref­er­ence. “Now I don’t have a gazil­lion files on my com­put­er in fold­ers I often nev­er look at again. [Evernote] has made me feel a lot more con­fi­dent and relaxed about my research process, which in turn, boosts my cre­ative process. In the end, it’s all about fus­ing inspi­ra­tion and knowl­edge with prac­ti­cal use.”

  • Amazon Appeals Directly to Hachette’s Authors

    In the let­ter accom­pa­ny­ing the pro­pos­al Amazon said its goal was to “take authors out of the mid­dle” of the dis­pute. If Hachette would sign off on the idea of giv­ing authors 100% of e‑book rev­enue, Amazon would then return to “nor­mal lev­els of on-hand print inven­to­ry, return to nor­mal pric­ing in all for­mats, and for books that haven’t gone on sale yet, rein­state preorders.”

  • Americans Can’t Even Focus On Television Anymore
    Now it appears that watch­ing tele­vi­sion, itself a diver­sion, requires more focus than we can muster.

    Forbes reports that a new study from the con­sult­ing group TNS found that 56% of Americans engage in anoth­er dig­i­tal activ­i­ty (play­ing with …

  • Reflector Arrives for Android

    Reflector for Android is an AirPlay receiv­er that runs on most Android devices. It allows your Android tablet, phone or enter­tain­ment sys­tem to receive AirPlay and AirPlay mir­ror­ing signals. 

    Reflector for Android is avail­able in the Google Play Store for an intro­duc­to­ry price of $6.99. Reflector is com­ing to Kindle Fire tablets and Fire TV soon!

  • 5 Superstitions in Which Design Clients Believe
    This, of course, also extends to design. However, as design­ers, we have the abil­i­ty to help peo­ple make sense of their lives and make wise deci­sions as consumers.