Today in Design - Top Articles RoundUp 25 February 2015

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

  • In Honor of the Death of Clip Art, a Brief Illustrated History of Clip Art

    A major source of raw mate­ri­als for board room pre­sen­ta­tions and net art projects is about to go dry: Microsoft announced on Monday that it is dis­con­tin­u­ing Clip Art and replac­ing the charm­ing­ly bland, often inscrutable stock image library that’s long been a fix­ture of its Office word-processing pack­age with a Bing image search func­tion. On the occa­sion of its demise, here is a very brief his­to­ry of Microsoft’s Clip Art illus­trat­ed, nat­u­ral­ly, with Microsoft Clip Art.

    Tags:

  • In Honor of the Death of Clip Art, a Brief Illustrated History of Clip Art

    A major source of raw mate­ri­als for board room pre­sen­ta­tions and net art projects is about to go dry: Microsoft announced on Monday that it is dis­con­tin­u­ing Clip Art and replac­ing the charm­ing­ly bland, often inscrutable stock image library that’s long been a fix­ture of its Office word-processing pack­age with a Bing image search func­tion. On the occa­sion of its demise, here is a very brief his­to­ry of Microsoft’s Clip Art illus­trat­ed, nat­u­ral­ly, with Microsoft Clip Art.

    Tags:

  • Will the Uber Effect Transform Banking? That’s the Fear of Bank of England, Others

    Bank of England Governor Mark Carney wor­ries that tech­nol­o­gy will dis­rupt the bank­ing and finan­cial ser­vices indus­try in just the same way that it has torn apart news­pa­pers, radio and the postal ser­vice. His chief con­cern is that gov­ern­ments will fail to reg­u­late it until it’s too late — “an Uber-type sit­u­a­tion,” as he put it at the World Economic Forum in Davos last week.

    Tags:

  • 500 Startups Keeps Its Commitment To Invest In Women In Tech

    The best thing women in tech can do is to invest in oth­er women,” 500 Startupsman­ag­ing part­ner Christine Tsai told me. That’s exact­ly what the early-stage invest­ment firm has been try­ing to do over the last five years, and it seems to be succeeding.

    Tags:

  • 11 Essential Things to Know If You Want to Write Fiction for a Living
    Based on that, here are the 11 most impor­tant things I can tell an aspir­ing fic­tion writer.Tags: Writing AmWriting
  • Stop Working And Play With This Virtual Spirograph Instead
    Watch out, it’s addictive.

    Programmer and musi­cian Nathan Friend’s dig­i­tal spiro­graph is odd­ly addic­tive. The spiro­graph, a famil­iar child­hood toy, lets you make pret­ty, vague­ly trip­py designs even if you have zero artis­tic abil­i­ty. By pick­ing two dif­fer­ent gauges and choos­ing one of their holes, you can cre­ate all kinds of weird, cool shapes. You can select from the site’s pre­set col­ors and back­grounds or choose any you like using the avail­able gradient.
  • Cisco Developing Cloud-Based Virtual Meeting Rooms

    Sixty-six per­cent of the 200 event orga­niz­ers who par­tic­i­pat­ed in Meeting Professionals International’s second-quarter Meetings Outlook sur­vey this year indi­cat­ed they expect­ed a year-over-year increase in vir­tu­al atten­dance, and more than half of the respon­dents indi­cat­ed their orga­ni­za­tions were using vir­tu­al and hybrid tech­nol­o­gy to enhance in-person meet­ings or incor­po­rate onsite and remote event elements. 

  • The Changing Nature of Middle-Class Jobs [Infographic] NYTimes

    The types of jobs that pay middle-class wages — between $40,000 and $80,000 in 2014 dol­lars — have shift­ed since 1980. Fewer of these posi­tions are in male-dominated pro­duc­tion occu­pa­tions, while a greater share are in work­places more open to women.RELATED ARTICLE

  • Easily Apply the Trendy Desaturated Skin Look in Photoshop

    This is just about the hottest Photoshop por­trait tech­nique out there right now, and you see it pop­ping up every­where, from cov­ers of mag­a­zines to CD cov­ers, from print ads to Hollywood movie posters, and from edi­to­r­i­al images to bill­boards. It seems right now every­body wants this effect (and you’re about to be able to deliv­er it in rough­ly 60 sec­onds flat using the sim­pli­fied method shown here!).

    Tags:

  • Easily Apply the Trendy Desaturated Skin Look in Photoshop

    This is just about the hottest Photoshop por­trait tech­nique out there right now, and you see it pop­ping up every­where, from cov­ers of mag­a­zines to CD cov­ers, from print ads to Hollywood movie posters, and from edi­to­r­i­al images to bill­boards. It seems right now every­body wants this effect (and you’re about to be able to deliv­er it in rough­ly 60 sec­onds flat using the sim­pli­fied method shown here!).

    Tags:

  • Easily Apply the Trendy Desaturated Skin Look in Photoshop

    This is just about the hottest Photoshop por­trait tech­nique out there right now, and you see it pop­ping up every­where, from cov­ers of mag­a­zines to CD cov­ers, from print ads to Hollywood movie posters, and from edi­to­r­i­al images to bill­boards. It seems right now every­body wants this effect (and you’re about to be able to deliv­er it in rough­ly 60 sec­onds flat using the sim­pli­fied method shown here!).

    Tags:

  • Easily Apply the Trendy Desaturated Skin Look in Photoshop

    This is just about the hottest Photoshop por­trait tech­nique out there right now, and you see it pop­ping up every­where, from cov­ers of mag­a­zines to CD cov­ers, from print ads to Hollywood movie posters, and from edi­to­r­i­al images to bill­boards. It seems right now every­body wants this effect (and you’re about to be able to deliv­er it in rough­ly 60 sec­onds flat using the sim­pli­fied method shown here!).

    Tags:

  • At 90, She’s Designing Tech For Aging Boomers
    Barbara Beskind stands out in youth-obsessed Silicon Valley. She inspires design­ers at the IDEO firm to think about the needs of old­er gen­er­a­tions: What if your glass­es could help you remem­ber people?Tags: UI UX ID Aging
  • The 14 most beau­ti­ful­ly designed apps of 2014

    Here’s our list of the 14 most impres­sive­ly designed apps — for mobile, desk­top, and the web — released or updat­ed this year. From sim­ple util­i­ties to immer­sive expe­ri­ences, we’re sure you’ll find some­thing on this list worth down­load­ing on your brand new smart­phone, tablet, or [insert hot new gad­get here]. Enjoy.

    Tags: