Today in Design - Top Articles RoundUp 6 August 2014

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

  • WordPress 3.9 Has Built-in Support for Pasting from Microsoft Word

    A com­mon sup­port ques­tion that’s been pop­ping up on the web after WordPress users update to 3.9: What hap­pened to the “Paste from Word” but­ton in the visu­al edi­tor? If you find that the but­ton is miss­ing, don’t wor­ry – it’s not a bug.

  • The 5 Most Dangerous Creative Productivity Myths [Infographic]
    When it comes to being pro­duc­tive in cre­ative work, there are cer­tain rules of thumb that many adhere to that may actu­al­ly decrease instead of increase the accom­plished outputs.
  • How to make a nat­ur­al HDR land­scape pho­to in Adobe Camera Raw and Lightroom.
    The result is a pho­to­graph that looks very close to what you wit­nessed with your eyes. This is not a tuto­r­i­al on the basics of HDR and styl­ized looks, we have that tuto­r­i­al here. Rather, this is a tuto­r­i­al on how to achieve the most nat­ur­al res…
  • 3 Years of Google+ in Numbers [Infographic]

    This info­graph­ic by dpfoc​.com charts Google’s his­to­ry with the world of social net­work­ing, what has worked and what hasn’t. It also com­pares Google+ to its largest rival Facebook in terms of dif­fer­ent vari­ables which makes inter­est­ing read­ing and it also attempts to address what is in the future for the social network.

  • Prejudice Among Designers
    What is Prejudice? Does it exist in the design indus­try? What are some com­mon prej­u­dices among designers?
  • M‑Commerce: Why Going Mobile Is Important For Businesses

    To boil it down to the very basics, mobile com­merce (m‑commerce) is elec­tron­ic sales and com­merce – in oth­er words, e‑commerce – using wire­less hand­held elec­tron­ic devices such as smart­phones and tablets. To be clear, m‑commerce is not a sep­a­rate enti­ty from e‑commerce: instead, it’s a more spe­cif­ic sub-group of e‑commerce trans­ac­tions that involves the use of smart­phones and tablets, instead of desk­top and lap­top computers.

  • How To Run The Best Virtual Meeting Ever

    My col­league Ken Perlman shares his tricks for run­ning incred­i­bly effec­tive and enjoy­able meet­ings – from 3,000 miles away.

  • Top 7 Things Clients Do that Frustrate Freelancers

    There is no hid­ing the fact that, although there are lots of good clients out there, even the best clients can do things that can trig­ger a free­lancer to lose inter­est in the project, the client and any future work­ing rela­tion­ships with that client. It might be things the clients aren’t even aware of, that they might do out of habit, or when stressed. Regardless of the rea­sons, it can be frus­trat­ing, and from a freelancer’s per­spec­tive, they should not happen.

    In no par­tic­u­lar order, here are 7 things that real­ly can tick off freelancers:

  • Top 7 Things Clients Do that Frustrate Freelancers

    There is no hid­ing the fact that, although there are lots of good clients out there, even the best clients can do things that can trig­ger a free­lancer to lose inter­est in the project, the client and any future work­ing rela­tion­ships with that client. It might be things the clients aren’t even aware of, that they might do out of habit, or when stressed. Regardless of the rea­sons, it can be frus­trat­ing, and from a freelancer’s per­spec­tive, they should not happen.

    In no par­tic­u­lar order, here are 7 things that real­ly can tick off freelancers:

  • Disarming Clients’ Loaded Feedback

    Her approach works for her, but that didn’t keep a cou­ple of com­menters from declar­ing that she was wrong.

  • 5 Reasons Why Trello Is So Awesome

    When it comes to intu­itive soft­ware, Trello nailed it. They’ve lim­it­ed what the prod­uct can actu­al­ly do (this is a pro, not a con) and cre­at­ed an inter­face that makes under­stand­ing its actions dead sim­ple. There is a slight learn­ing curve (“what is a board, a list and a card ?”) but once you get over that, it’s smooth sailing.

  • Design Opinion: Information Density Isn’t As Important As Information Hierarchy
    Google’s new approach to design – focused on what mate­r­i­al an inter­face is made of – is a hot top­ic, both in the design com­mu­ni­ty and among end users.

    One of the major points of con­tention with the new design approach is infor­ma­tion den­si­ty, a…

  • 13 stats that mat­ter to dig­i­tal pub­lish­ing | Lean back
    We hear a lot about how tablets are chang­ing the dig­i­tal pub­lish­ing land­scape. But how exact­ly? Here are 13 sta­tis­tics that shed light on the impact of tablets on pub­lish­ing, read­ing and the media indus­try. Note that most of these stud­ies are f…
  • Send Newsletters 100x cheap­er via Amazon SES
    Sendy is a self host­ed email newslet­ter appli­ca­tion that lets you send track­able emails via Amazon Simple Email Service (SES). This makes it pos­si­ble for you to send authen­ti­cat­ed bulk emails at an insane­ly low price with­out sac­ri­fic­ing deliver…
  • 6 Things You Need to Explain to Your Clients Before Signing a Contract
    Contracts are bind­ing and legal lever­ages that pro­tect the inter­ests and rights of both the design­er and the client. These tie both par­ties to attune to the pro­vi­sions of the con­tract and makes sure no one cheats over the other.

    Also, these be…

  • Ideas to Keep ‘Em Coming Back with Compelling Content

    2014 is the year of con­tent marketing.”

    I’ve read this claim in enough arti­cles that pro­vid­ed enough proof to believe it, and I also believe 2015 will see an increase in its use. Let’s face it: the con­cept of shar­ing help­ful and infor­ma­tive mar­ket­ing pieces in a way that serves your prospects and clients’ best inter­ests and that estab­lish­es and pro­motes your brand’s voice isn’t going away. The chal­lenge is fig­ur­ing out how to rise above the noise and the clut­ter and present your con­tent in com­pelling ways. Here’s a quick list of ideas on how to do just that:

  • Ideas to Keep ‘Em Coming Back with Compelling Content

    2014 is the year of con­tent marketing.”

    I’ve read this claim in enough arti­cles that pro­vid­ed enough proof to believe it, and I also believe 2015 will see an increase in its use. Let’s face it: the con­cept of shar­ing help­ful and infor­ma­tive mar­ket­ing pieces in a way that serves your prospects and clients’ best inter­ests and that estab­lish­es and pro­motes your brand’s voice isn’t going away. The chal­lenge is fig­ur­ing out how to rise above the noise and the clut­ter and present your con­tent in com­pelling ways. Here’s a quick list of ideas on how to do just that:

  • The right (and wrong) way to build a team
    I would hate to see any of you hap­haz­ard­ly build out a team. You’ll end up with deep rifts in your busi­ness mod­el and lack­lus­ter per­for­mance from the peo­ple around you.

    So what is the right way to build a team? Try these five steps.

  • Usabilla, a Pinterest for Designers
    Usabilla Discover lets you col­lect, rate and save design ele­ments on any website.

    Build your own curat­ed library of design pat­terns and share them with oth­ers. Follow great design­ers to get your dai­ly dose of design inspiration.

  • 7 Ways Entrepreneurs Can Effectively Manage Older Employees

    And that can cre­ate a dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion, where as a younger per­son, you might be privy to tech­nol­o­gy, for exam­ple, that is nec­es­sary for a par­tic­u­lar role or indus­try. However, old­er employ­ees might be com­plete­ly unfa­mil­iar with that tech­nol­o­gy. In such a sit­u­a­tion, it might be dif­fi­cult to approach such employ­ees, as you want to show them respect and don’t want to dis­cour­age them.

    With that in mind, let’s take a look at sev­en tips you can keep in mind while deal­ing with man­ag­ing old­er employees:

  • Intelligent People All Have One Thing In Common: They Stay Up Later Than You

    According to ”Psychology Today,” intel­li­gent peo­ple are more like­ly to be noc­tur­nal than peo­ple with low­er IQ scores. In a study run on young Americans, results showed that intel­li­gent indi­vid­u­als went to bed lat­er on week­nights and week­ends than their less intel­li­gent counterparts.

    In ”Study Magazine,” Satoshi Kanazawa, a psy­chol­o­gist at the London School Of Economics And Political Science, report­ed that IQ aver­age and sleep­ing pat­terns are most def­i­nite­ly relat­ed, prov­ing that those who play under the moon are, indeed, more intel­li­gent human beings.

  • Buyer’s Guide to Ebook And App Technology
    A guide to com­mon prac­tices for pro­duc­ing ebooks and book apps and tips for find­ing the right solution.
  • 3 Reasons Why Online Content Can Leave ‘Above the Fold’ Behind

    And, giv­en that we’re now a multi-screen world, the idea of keep­ing online con­tent above the fold is mean­ing­less any­way. Following are three rea­sons why.

  • Is the iPad doomed?! Best Buy’s CEO says it is.
    NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -
    Tablet sales are “crash­ing,” says Best Buy’s CEO! IPad sales are sink­ing fast! Is this the begin­ning of the end for the tablet?