Today in Design - Top Articles RoundUp 6 May 2015

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

  • Pay-What-You-Want Pricing for Self-Published eBooks

    Pay What You Want pric­ing can work – or not. The dif­fer­ence lies in the exe­cu­tion. (Writing real­ly good stuff is a given.)

    Here’s a 6‑step frame­work you can use to apply PWYW pric­ing to your work to start lever­ag­ing the upside of your fanat­i­cal readership.

  • 7 Secrets About Editors Every Freelance Writer Should Know

    Editors – most of them any­way – are try­ing to do their jobs and look­ing for peo­ple who can help them do that. One of them could be you.

    Many edi­tors worked as writ­ers before trad­ing places. A lot still do both. I fall into that cat­e­go­ry. Since 2009, I’ve worked as the free­lance edi­tor for a cor­po­rate finance web­site and on a blog series. I’ve edit­ed whitepa­pers and helped train, man­age and edit oth­er free­lancers for an employ­ment news startup.

    Based on my expe­ri­ence on the oth­er side of the desk, here are some secrets about edi­tors that free­lance writ­ers should know:

  • Why Hiring An Editor For Your Self-Published Book Is Unavoidable

    Over the past few years, I’ve read quite a few self-published books. Most of the books have been won­der­ful and I thor­ough­ly enjoyed them. Yet some have been painful to read. Others have been good, but could have been great with the assis­tance of an expe­ri­enced edi­tor. Too many self-published authors don’t think read­ers can tell if their nov­el hasn’t been pro­fes­sion­al­ly edit­ed. Trust me, most of us can. As for authors who skip uti­liz­ing beta read­ers and cri­tique part­ners, that shows as well.

  • A History of Graphic Design As Told By 18 Classic Posters
    GIFs are fun­ny but fleet­ing; web­sites might con­vey more information—but if you real­ly want to make a point, you design a poster. A new exhi­bi­tion at the Cooper Hewitt focus­es on the cul­tur­al impact of this per­sua­sive graph­ic design medi­um and the sci­ence behind what makes posters in par­tic­u­lar pack their visu­al punch.

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  • Make Your Drab and Boring Car Come to Life
    Customizing your car can be dif­fi­cult and expen­sive, but Gera Waisbaum has built a plat­form in StickOut that lets users fit cus­tom graph­ics for their cars.Tags: Kickstarter
  • Promote Yourself AND Another Author with a Social Media Swap
    When you are try­ing to build an author brand and mar­ket a book, it’s impor­tant to keep in mind you’re not the only one try­ing to build an author brand and mar­ket a book. Reach out to your fel­low authors and make a pro­pos­al that could help you both.Tag…
  • 50 Shades of Daryl Dixon: 50 T‑shirt Designs to Kill For
    Let’s face it; there are many who want this much loved crossbow-wielding red­neck on their T‑shirt designs. And if you too are a Daryl fan, we’re sure that the mere thought of hav­ing your favorite Illuminati idol on your T‑shirt would fill you excite­ment and enthu­si­asm. So whether you’re an illus­tra­tor, graph­ic design­er or typog­ra­ph­er, here’re the 50 dif­fer­ent shades of Daryl Dixon inspired T‑shirt designs. So, check out this col­lec­tion and let your cre­ative juices flow.

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  • 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.

  • How To Finish Your Damn Book
    It’s all well and good for me to tell you why you should fin­ish your book (nut­shell: a fin­ished book is the one thing every­one who ever got published/successfully self-published has in com­mon) but how do you do it? How do you over­come pro­cras­ti­na­tion? How do you fin­ish your damn book?

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  • Who is more sat­is­fied with their books, tra­di­tion­al­ly pub­lished or self-published authors?
    Copy edi­tors, dic­tio­nary offi­cials and lan­guage experts seem to be com­ing around to using the gender-neutral ‘they’ in the sin­gu­lar, instead of ‘he or she.’

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  • 55 Strategic Marketing Questions for Small Businesses
    These ques­tions are part of a col­lec­tion of 99 strate­gic plan­ning ques­tion­naires Jay Abraham uses for his clients while con­sult­ing for them. And by clients, I do not mean some strug­gling solo entre­pre­neur, but rather 7 figur…
  • Startup cost tem­plate bud­get worksheet
    Use this start­up cost tem­plate work­sheet bud­get to esti­mate the amount of mon­ey need­ed to start a new busi­ness and run it for the first 3 months to a year.Tags: Entrepreneur Freelance