Creative Community Bulletin 18 November 2013

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

• Batkid Was Beautiful — Let’s Keep It Going in Social Media

  “The over­whelm­ing reac­tion I had…was this: we have to keep this going. We have to find the essence of what unit­ed us today — that ephemer­al good­will — and use it for good. Social media has some­times been derid­ed for what soci­ol­o­gists call its “weak ties;” Batkid proved that those weak ties can become very strong, very fast, if only we have some­thing uni­ver­sal­ly admirable to ral­ly around, some­thing in the real world.”

• Top 10 FBI Behavioral Unit Techniques For Building Rapport With Anyone

  “Robin Dreeke is head of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Behavioral Analysis Program.
  In his book It’s Not All About “Me”: The Top Ten Techniques for Building Quick Rapport with Anyone he sim­ply and clear­ly spells out meth­ods for con­nect­ing with people.
  Here’s a quick break­down of the methods.”

• 6 Factors to Consider When You Physically Move Your Freelancing Business

  After you’ve been free­lanc­ing for a while, you may decide to move. And of course, wher­ev­er you go, that’s where your free­lanc­ing busi­ness is.

  While local moves prob­a­bly won’t affect your free­lanc­ing busi­ness much, there are def­i­nite­ly some fac­tors to con­sid­er when you move to a new city or even a new state.

  In this post, I list six fac­tors that may affect your free­lanc­ing busi­ness when you move to a new area. If you like this post, you may also like How I Kept My Freelance Business Intact During Relocation.

• 6 Incredible & Creative Custom Made Prosthetic Limbs

  Her work is both eye-catching as well as beau­ti­ful, and it pro­vokes a thought in your head that you haven’t had before. Technology does not have to be con­fined to con­sumer gad­gets and devices, tech­nol­o­gy is every­where! Sophie makes that very clear in her pic­tures of the peo­ple that she has helped “pimp” out their pros­thet­ics to beau­ti­ful works of art. It’s amaz­ing to see the com­mit­ment that has gone into cre­at­ing these one-offs which I am sure grabs the atten­tion wher­ev­er these peo­ple go.

  These pros­thet­ic limbs are of course not meant to be worn every day, they are more meant to be an acces­so­ry in these people’s lives. It’s like a beau­ti­ful watch that you only want to wear on spe­cial occasions.

• 44 Incredible Beta Startups and Webapps for Design Inspiration
  44 bril­liant web­site home­page lay­outs focused on star­tups and web appli­ca­tions. Anybody who is think­ing about launch­ing their own project may find some great tech­niques with­in this show­case. Especially if you would need launch at a beta stage t…
• 25+ Flat UI Kits for Web and Mobile Designers

  “The sud­den rush to this type of design hon­est­ly makes flat design feel like a fad. Everyone’s talk­ing about it and every­one is doing it. Whether this will stick or if we will be doing some­thing new in 2014 remains to be seen. Whatever the out­come, flat design is in right now. It’s the last push away from what Web 2.0 was and into what the future holds.
  ”

• 7 Tumblr Add-Ons to Improve Your Experience
  “For the bur­geon­ing blog­ger, Tumblr is a haven filled with beau­ti­ful images, tem­plates, and oth­ers who under­stand your obses­sion with Doctor Who and Welcome to Night Vale. It’s where you belong.

  That does­n’t mean it’s per­fect. Tumblr seems rel…

• Innocuous Hand Gestures Here Can Get You in Trouble Abroad

  When you’re trot­ting the globe, it’s impor­tant to know when to keep your hands to yourself.

  Read the full text here: http://​men​talfloss​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​5​3​4​4​3​/​w​h​a​t​-​h​a​n​d​-​s​i​g​n​a​l​s​-​s​h​o​u​l​d​-​i​-​a​v​o​i​d​-​w​h​e​n​-​t​r​a​v​e​l​i​n​g​-​a​b​r​o​a​d​#​i​x​z​z​2​k​h​P6abOq
  –brought to you by mental_floss! 

• Welcome To Twitter, Now What Can You Do?
  But as Twitter becomes one of the most pop­u­lar social media plat­forms for mobile users, espe­cial­ly ear­ly adopters of tech­nol­o­gy, it still faces a chal­lenge: evan­ge­liz­ing its ser­vices to the masses.
• SVG-in-OpenType Enables Color and Animation in Fonts

  After two years of dis­cus­sion and devel­op­ment, the W3C com­mu­ni­ty group (CG) SVG Glyphs for OpenType recent­ly final­ized its report for an exten­sion to the OpenType font for­mat. This exten­sion allows glyphs to be defined in the font as SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics). Such OpenType fonts can dis­play col­ors, gra­di­ents, and even ani­ma­tion right “out of the box,” that is, when ren­dered by a font engine that sup­ports this extension. 

• 5 bril­liant artist web­sites to inspire you
  Draw the line where you will between art and design, but no mat­ter where your inter­est lies, the sym­bi­ot­ic rela­tion­ship between the two can­not be denied. Today, where the inter­net dom­i­nates the flow of infor­ma­tion, this co-existence is more imp…
• 5 Free Tools To Support Graphic Designers

  Graphic design is a beau­ti­ful field – how­ev­er, in order to suc­ceed in this indus­try you need design skills, train­ing and a vari­ety of use­ful tools that will help you cre­ate out­stand­ing images and ban­ners. The good news is that there are hun­dreds of help­ful, feature-rich and designer-oriented tools that you can use in your best inter­est, when­ev­er you need to cre­ate a state-of-the-art project. Here is an overview of the most use­ful tools: 

• Spilled Milk and Coffee Art
  “Creative por­traits of famous peo­ple drawn in spilled milk, cof­fee, tea, wine and oth­er spilled liq­uids by tal­ent­ed French artist Vivi Mac.”
• 5 Tips For Writing Productive Email Subject Lines by Asian Efficiency
  “One of the quick wins for every­one who wants to spend less time man­ag­ing emails is by writ­ing effec­tive sub­ject lines. When you and every­one else around you writes pro­duc­tive email sub­ject lines, you all save time.

  Here are our top 5 tips for…

• LinkedIn Partners with Online Educators to Add Certifications Directly to Your LinkedIn Profile
  “As part of our Direct-to-Profile Certifications pilot pro­gram with pre­mier online edu­ca­tion com­pa­nies, includ­ing Coursera, EdX, lyn​da​.com, Pearson, Skillsoft, Udacity and Udemy, LinkedIn is mak­ing it easy for mem­bers to update their profiles.”…
• The World’s Google Searches Reveal Our Secret Horrible Attitude Toward Women
  “These ads for U.N. Women show what hap­pens if you type things like “women need to” into Google. The auto­com­plete func­tion will sug­gest ways to fill in the blank based on com­mon search terms such as “know their place” and “shut up.”
  ”

  …

• Build a respon­sive web­site with Edge Reflow CC

  “Enjoy com­plete con­trol over your respon­sive design work­flow and a real-time con­nec­tion to Photoshop with Edge Reflow CC and a Creative Cloud membership.

  ”

• 10 Proven Digital Marketing Ideas for Startups
  “A new busi­ness needs all of the mar­ket­ing help it can get. Using dig­i­tal tools to enhance mar­ket­ing strate­gies is an excel­lent way to get your new busi­ness rec­og­nized. Building a brand is the first step. Getting the brand, as well as your name…
• 365 Typography Calendar, 2014

  “It’s that time of year again, and if you’re a typog­ra­phy afi­ciona­do, you’ll be glad to hear that the 365 Calendar is back again for 2014. Each month fea­tures one type­face (cho­sen by a promi­nent design­er Stefan Sagmeister, Ivan Chermayeff, Tom Geismar, Massimo Vignelli, Michael Vanderbyl, Louise Fili and oth­ers, all mem­bers of the Alliance Graphique Internationale (AGI)) and includes a descrip­tion and biog­ra­phy of the type­face design­er. As with pre­vi­ous edi­tions, the major hol­i­days are not­ed as well as the birth­days of the type­face designers.
  ”

• New ‘Doctor Who’ Episode Reveals What Happened to the 8th Doctor http://t.co/Y2h1sFMGXO
  “Paul McGann, who starred as the Doctor in the 1996 Fox TV movie, returns to the role in a 7‑minute mini episode called “The Night of the Doctor”, writ­ten by Who’s cur­rent showrun­ner, Steven Moffat (the upcom­ing feature-length spe­cial is entitl…
• High-Quality Premium Magazine Themes for WordPress

  “In this gallery I want to present 25 extreme­ly high-quality WordPress mag­a­zine & blog themes. You can uti­lize these for any con­tent niche as long as the site is main­tained like a blog. The front­page will always fea­ture new posts, along with some oth­er extra wid­gets. Plus the more com­pli­cat­ed themes will gen­er­al­ly have a unique set­tings pan­el locat­ed with­in wp-admin. Check out this col­lec­tion and see if you can use any­thing for yourself.

  ”

• Get Started with Web Typography
  “We explain the basic con­cepts and ter­mi­nol­o­gy of web typog­ra­phy, includ­ing how it dif­fers from print typog­ra­phy, in words you can understand.

  ”

• What Boston Can Teach the Rest of the Country About Living Well #Boston
  “The best news is that Boston’s secrets to liv­ing the good life aren’t secrets. Here are eight things the rest of the coun­try can learn from Beantown about liv­ing well.

  ”

• 8 Great Design Job Boards to Find Your Next Design Job or Gig by Pariah Burke #jobs #design

  “Whether you’re look­ing for your next great full-time adven­ture, a part-time sup­ple­ment, or great free­lance projects, this place called the World Wide Web offers a num­ber of great places to find cre­ative work. Here are the best eight of those places for cre­ative pro job listings.

  ”

• Dropbox Gets Down To Business

  At one time, “bring your own device” ini­tia­tives were the “new black” for the enter­prise. Now, “bring your own cloud” has become the new, new black. But con­trol­ling and secur­ing that cloud with­out get­ting in the way of work­ers can be a tricky task—one that Dropbox thinks it has solved with its revamped Dropbox for Business.

• Design a Stylized Custom WordPress Login Screen

  The WordPress login screen is one of the most gener­ic, we-have-all-seen-the-same-thing, parts of a WordPress site. And, odd­ly enough, it’s one of the more awk­ward things to mod­i­fy as well. There’s no built-in fea­tures for adding your logo or chang­ing the over­all look and feel.

• 5 Ways to Earn Respect as a New Hire
  You did it. You suc­ceed­ed through rig­or­ous rounds of inter­views, proved your qual­i­fi­ca­tions and earned your­self an offer for a good job with a good company.

  In real­i­ty though, the bat­tle is just begin­ning. Even with an impres­sive track reco…

• Study Shows Playing Video Games Really Can Make Your Brain Bigger
  In par­tic­u­lar, play­ing Super Mario 64 for 30 min­utes a day over two months increased adult vol­un­teers’ brain vol­ume in their right hip­pocam­pus, the right pre­frontal cor­tex, and the cere­bel­lum. These regions in the brain are respon­si­ble for memo…
• All Of The Ways Apple’s New Free Mac OS Hurts Microsoft Windows
  The largest ben­e­fit to Apple, how­ev­er, could come through the dis­rup­tion it might bring to Microsoft’s busi­ness mod­el. Last year, Redmond brought in $19.23 bil­lion from the Windows divi­sion, with 65% of that com­ing from licens­ing its operating …
• How much to charge for design work?
  Danny Outlaw sug­gests to ask your­self 10 Questions when pric­ing yourself:
• 52 Unique Ways to Create Social Media Magic

  Are you ready to super­charge your social media mar­ket­ing efforts, but don’t know how?

  Do you find the cre­ation of valu­able con­tent that both acti­vates and inspires a thriv­ing com­mu­ni­ty elusive?

  The ideas below are designed with you in mind!

• The Top 40 Typography Apps
  Boost your skills and knowl­edge, cre­ate type­faces and play font-related games with these bril­liant typog­ra­phy apps for iOS, Android and the web.
• Marie Curie’s Best Productivity Tricks
  We all hear hor­ror sto­ries of night­mare clients that tread well out­side the bound­aries of writ­ten agree­ments, delay or refuse to pay for com­plet­ed work, or worse. Assertive, unscrupu­lous, and dis­agree­able clients can ask the world of us for a p…
• How to Make an Android Tablet Work More Like a PC
  Android tablets have got­ten bet­ter over the years, but it’s still hard to be very pro­duc­tive with them out of the box (though they have cer­tain advan­tages). However, with a cou­ple acces­sories and a few apps, you can make them feel a lot more li…
• 10 Websites With Creative Moving Elements

  Designers spend count­less hours mak­ing care­ful col­or, typog­ra­phy, and lay­out choic­es, but despite those wor­thy efforts, noth­ing draws the eye as pow­er­ful­ly and depend­ably as motion. Proven evo­lu­tion­ary and behav­ioral psy­chol­o­gy demon­strates our instinc­tu­al draw to vis­i­ble ele­ments that move and change. Despite vast tech­no­log­i­cal advances, the human mind still works as it always has — with a visu­al pen­chant for dynamism and motion. With this reli­able prin­ci­ple in mind, why shouldn’t we add some ani­ma­tion to our web design and Internet mar­ket­ing efforts?

• Envisioning and Finding Your Dream Client
  We all hear hor­ror sto­ries of night­mare clients that tread well out­side the bound­aries of writ­ten agree­ments, delay or refuse to pay for com­plet­ed work, or worse. Assertive, unscrupu­lous, and dis­agree­able clients can ask the world of us for a p…
• Size Does Matter: The Smaller Your Device, the Lower Your Confidence
  When peo­ple use small­er devices, their pos­ture con­tracts, increas­ing stress and decreas­ing testos­terone lev­els, say researchers Maarten Bos and Amy Cuddy of Harvard Business School. The inverse is true when peo­ple use large desk­top com­put­ers, w…
• Infographic: How NASA Visualized Alien Worlds Before Photoshop
  “IN 1979, WHEN THE VOYAGER 1 SATELLITE FLEW BY JUPITER’S MOON IO, NASA SCIENTISTS NEEDED TO ASSEMBLE THE PICTURES IT SENT BACK TO EARTH BY HAND. HERE’S HOW.”
• 5 Tips To Writing Irresistibly Clickable Blog Titles
  An aver­age of 8 read­ers out of 10 will read a blog post title, while less than 3 out of the same 10 read­ers will read the rest of the arti­cle. This sim­ple sta­tis­tic shows how your post title great­ly affects the entire con­tent of your post.
  So y…
• The Complete Guide to Organizing Your Contacts + Building Quality Relationships

  “Anthropologist Robin Dunbar once the­o­rized that humans can only active­ly main­tain rough­ly 150 rela­tion­ships. Today’s world, where the aver­age num­ber of Twitter fol­low­ers alone is 208, this means we can hit the lim­its of our brain pow­er pret­ty quickly.
  ”

• 6 Good Jobs for Bad Students

  “So you didn’t study as hard as you should have. Maybe col­lege just wasn’t for you, or maybe youth and fun got in the way of your degree. You’re not the only one. You can’t ignore the impor­tance of a good edu­ca­tion, but there’s still hope for land­ing a good job if you weren’t the best stu­dent. With some train­ing and strong com­mit­ment, you can still get hired for a great a pro­fes­sion­al posi­tion in many industries.
  ”

• APK Downloader Pulls APK Files Directly From Google Play
  “Being unable to install an app on your device from the Play Store is a pain. Fortunately, a devel­op­er has cre­at­ed a tool that lets you pull an APK direct­ly from Google’s servers and side load it your­self. Handy!”
• Fun, Literal Visualizations Of World Famous Band Names

  “Hailing from London, Mark Szulyovszky has cre­at­ed a col­lec­tion of posters that are lit­er­al visu­al­iza­tions of famous band names. 

  Called “Bandopoly”, this play­ful series requires the view­er to think a lot more lit­er­al­ly to fig­ure out the band that these graph­ics are representing. ”

• Confessions Of A Digital Hoarder
  “How the urge to keep, cap­ture and archive has turned me into the dig­i­tal equiv­a­lent of a cat lady.”
• 5 Fascinating Font Infographics

  “While most peo­ple think about the aes­thet­ic of their design, col­or choic­es, and func­tion­al­i­ty, few peo­ple think about the abil­i­ty of type­face – on its own – to con­vey a mes­sage. Fonts make up words but they are com­mu­ni­ca­tors them­selves, and the font choice you make can either make or break your website/digital com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Want to know a lit­tle bit more about where fonts came from, how they work, and why they’re so impor­tant? Check out these 5 awe­some info­graph­ics below.”

• How to Handle Price-Sensitive Design Clients

  “Over the years, I’ve found that clients typ­i­cal­ly fall into two extremes when it comes to pric­ing: the “I don’t care” crowd, and price-sensitive clients. Of course, my favorites are the ones that don’t care about the price, but these are few and far between. Generally speak­ing, most clients seem to fall into one of these two categories:

  ”

• 10 Websites We Miss From 1996
  In mem­o­ry of the Web 1.0 sites of the ’90s, we round­ed up ten 1996 web­sites to take you back to your nos­tal­gic dial-up days, when you had to wait more than 30 sec­onds for your AOL home­page to load. Which sites of the past do you nos­tal­gi­cal­ly m…
• Web apps deserve sexy tran­si­tions too!
  “Thanks to a cou­ple new tools we now have at our dis­pos­al, name­ly Angular.js and Framer.js, this time we were able to own up to this goal. I want­ed to share our expe­ri­ence design­ing for the web with motion in mind, hop­ing to inspire you to do t…
• Build a Responsive Design Using 960 Grid
  “By respon­sive, I mean that the var­i­ous col­umn widths will adapt to the screen size and keep your con­tent orga­nized. This allows for users with any screen size to see a con­sis­tent look and feel.

  Responsive is dif­fer­ent than flu­id in that it st…

• 10 Cost-Effective Ways to Delight Your Design Clients
  The design indus­try is high­ly com­pet­i­tive. There is always some­one on your heels wait­ing to take the next job or to sweep a client out from under you. Being able to retain your clients is essen­tial in this mar­ket, and repeat busi­ness will be th…
• Designing Effective Carousels (aka Web Slideshows, Sliders)
  Summary: Carousels allow mul­ti­ple pieces of con­tent to occu­py a sin­gle, cov­et­ed space. This may pla­cate cor­po­rate infight­ing, but on large- or small-view ports, peo­ple often scroll past carousels. A sta­t­ic hero or inte­grat­ing con­tent in the UI …
• Color Trends for 2014

  “According to the Executive Director, Leatrice Eiseman:
  “This sea­son, con­sumers are look­ing for a state of thought­ful, emo­tion­al and artis­tic equi­lib­ri­um. While this need for sta­bil­i­ty is reflect­ed in the com­po­si­tion of the palette, the inher­ent ver­sa­til­i­ty of the indi­vid­ual col­ors allows for exper­i­men­ta­tion with new looks and col­or combinations.””

• Silicon America: A Map of Tech Hubs in America
  “Here’s a list of places in America that are nip­ping on Silicon Valley’s heels.”
• How to Choose Effective Stock Photos

  With the pletho­ra of stock pho­tos avail­able for use, it’s easy to become over­whelmed by the thou­sands of choic­es. Image resources that were meant to be quick, con­ve­nient ways to fill design needs can quick­ly turn into a tedious task of sort­ing, com­par­ing, and vet­ting var­i­ous stock pho­to options. Many of these pho­tos tend to have an almost “san­i­tized” look to them, and although a lot of these images are meant for all-purpose use, many fall short of their pur­pose and lack gen­uine e

• 10 Ways to Rethink Your Lists
  Here then are some of the lessons from lists past that I think about when assem­bling my own and exam­in­ing those of others.
• 10 Ways to Rethink Your Lists
  Here then are some of the lessons from lists past that I think about when assem­bling my own and exam­in­ing those of others.
• The iPad Mini Is For Snobs, The Kindle Fire Is For Dumb-Dumbs
  Using advanced (read: 4th-grade-level) math­e­mat­ics, we have con­clud­ed that the iPad Mini will be used by smart people/awful snobs.
• 4 Essential UX Resources
  Fundamental parts of user expe­ri­ence which lead to the cre­ation of great products.
• Why Women Collaborate, Men Work Alone, And Everybody’s Angry
  AT THE INTERSECTION OF SELFISHNESS AND TEAM STRUCTURE IS AN INTERESTING LESSON ABOUT GENDER.
• Top 4 Reasons to Use WordPress as Your Blogging Platform

  “WordPress is espe­cial­ly use­ful for blog­gers of all types because of the enor­mous plu­g­in data­base that it sports. If there isn’t a plu­g­in already made for what you are look­ing for, the answer is to sim­ply look hard­er. WordPress has a very active com­mu­ni­ty of both pro­fes­sion­al and ama­teur coders, all look­ing to expand upon the pro­gram and make it more user-friendly. Be it a more inter­ac­tive attempt at a port­fo­lio, or mak­ing your word­press ecom­merce ven­ture more prof­itable, there is undoubt­ed­ly a plu­g­in for this that will make the process much eas­i­er for you, your vis­i­tors, and any of your poten­tial cus­tomers, should that be what you want your blog to be used for.”

• The Importance of Design in Business – Report by the Design Council

  “Inside the report – what you’ll find
  Our three find­ings on how busi­ness­es can ben­e­fit from design:
  Design is customer-centred
  Benefit is great­est when design is inti­mate­ly relat­ed to solv­ing prob­lems, espe­cial­ly cus­tomers’ problems.
  Design is most pow­er­ful when cul­tur­al­ly embedded
  It works best when it has strong sup­port in the organ­i­sa­tion, espe­cial­ly from senior management.
  Design can add val­ue to any organisation
  Design can ben­e­fit man­u­fac­tur­ing and service-based organ­i­sa­tions, small, medi­um or large.”

• 11 Tips For Entrepreneurs Who Hate Sales
  “11 suc­cess­ful entre­pre­neurs give advice on how to best make peace in their sales­per­son role.
  ”
• Solutions for New Technologies’ Effects on Color Management

  “Color work­flow inno­va­tion is one of Erica Aitken’s main focus­es as founder and pres­i­dent of her com­pa­ny, Rods and Cones. We asked Erica, one of our fea­tured speak­ers at this year’s Color Management Conference, about some of the chal­lenges her clients face with col­or man­age­ment today, as well as her insights and rec­om­mend­ed solutions.
  ”

• 5 Ways to Test Your Responsive Web Design

  “As the use of mobile devices con­tin­ues to rise all across the world, so does the need for us to deliv­er a tai­lored expe­ri­ence for those devices on the web. There’s very lit­tle debate about the fact that the best way to do this is to design a sin­gle, respon­sive web­site instead of serv­ing up mul­ti­ple ver­sions of “mobile opti­mized” web­pages as we have in the past. The only prob­lem I have with respon­sive lay­outs is that when it comes time to test them out, I sim­ply don’t have a mul­ti­tude of devices and/or oper­at­ing sys­tems to test them on. Because of this I’ve turned to a few dif­fer­ent test­ing tools for respon­sive web design, and in this arti­cle I’ll share my top 5.”

• Rise Of The Renter Class: In A Spotify World, Need We Own Anything?
  “The more we put into our dig­i­tal devices, the less we seem to own it. Something’s got to give.
  ”
• 7 Amazing Mobile Apps For Designers, Artists And Color Lovers

  “The advent of mobile devices, let alone com­put­ers has changed the way we see and use col­or for­ev­er. Apple and Android’s apps and app stores pro­vide any num­ber of amaz­ing­ly use­ful apps for col­or afi­ciona­dos and we’ve com­piled a list of some of the most amaz­ing in our opinion.

  ”

• The Pin-Ups In This Calendar Are Wearing Only Spilled Milk But Nobody’s Crying About It
  “Got milk? Photographer Jaroslav Wieczorkiewicz cer­tain­ly does: His new pin-up cal­en­dar fea­tures high-speed pho­tos of women wear­ing milk as dress­es (mild­ly NSFW).
  ”
• 5 Things Serial Killers Can Teach Us About Confidence

  “Have you ever won­dered why char­ac­ters like Hannibal Lecter are so com­pelling? Almost despite our­selves, we’re drawn to them regard­less of their deeply evil nature. But they have a charis­ma that’s born from an unshake­able sense of self-confidence. It allows them to feel free to be them­selves with apolo­gies to no one. Luckily, you can devel­op the con­fi­dence of a ser­i­al killer with­out sac­ri­fic­ing any of your moral standards.P

  Here are some of the things they do that you can learn from (with­out hav­ing to actu­al­ly kill someone).P

  ”

• 6 Reasons Why Social Media Can NOT Help You Save Your Business

  “We have all heard of the amaz­ing suc­cess sto­ries that oth­er busi­ness­es have told about how social media is the rea­son they are suc­cess­ful and thrive over their com­pe­ti­tion. While some busi­ness­es might be prof­it­ing, oth­ers could be hurt­ing them­selves with it. Social media isn’t all hap­py times and loads of money.

  ”

• Iceland: Where one in 10 peo­ple will pub­lish a book
  “Iceland is expe­ri­enc­ing a book boom. This island nation of just over 300,000 peo­ple has more writ­ers, more books pub­lished and more books read, per head, than any­where else in the world.”
• The Next Phase of eBook Growth According to Joshua Tallent, Founder of eBook Architects
  “Joshua Tallent is the founder and Chief eBook Architect for eBook Architects in Austin, Texas, a sub­sidiary of Firebrand Technologies. Tallent has a long been a strong voice for the role of design and a more thought­ful approach to ebook presen…
• The Ultimate Include/Require Script for WordPress
  “To save time and let you start cre­at­ing code now, not after hours (or days) of Googling a solu­tion, I cre­at­ed a sim­ple script with which I start all my cus­tom files. It han­dles all the prop­er files I need for 99% of my development.

  ”

  …

• 25 Little Known Facts About Left Handedness

  “While these days being left hand­ed isn’t seen as much of a big deal (at least in the west), for a good bit of his­to­ry most parts of the world held less than favor­able atti­tudes towards it. It is indis­putable, how­ev­er, that some of the most piv­otal fig­ures in his­to­ry were left hand­ed. From Albert Einstein and Alexander the Great to Osama bin Laden and Jack The Ripper, these are 25 lit­tle known facts about left handedness.

  ”

• 5 Colors, Shapes, and Techniques That Make Your Company Friendlier
  “Whether you run a small busi­ness with a few clients or a large cor­po­ra­tion that tar­gets thou­sands of peo­ple each day, your online pres­ence is of the utmost impor­tance. Having a cold, uninvit­ing site is bad for busi­ness. This sends the wrong me…
• Why The $110 Billion Gift Card Industry Must Die
  “Here’s what could replace it. Hint: Technology is involved.”
• How To Create More Profitable Websites

  “If this is your mind­set, you’re leav­ing mon­ey on the table. I’ve learned
  that results (not design) make the biggest dif­fer­ence between the web
  design­ers who earn a lot and those who don’t.

  In oth­er words, you should be mak­ing web­sites that make your clients
  more mon­ey. By think­ing like a busi­ness own­er, you’ll be able to charge
  a much high­er hourly rate. This mind­set starts by view­ing your
  web­sites as more than just a pret­ty face.”

• How to Screw with Car Salesmen (and Get a Better Deal)
  “Not every car sales­man is out to get you, but they have that rep­u­ta­tion for a rea­son. Many will try to sell you more expen­sive pack­ages you don’t want, trick you into pay­ing more than they adver­tise, and lie to get what they want. You can sit …
• The Kleenex Connection: 5 Mental Tricks To Jumpstart Creativity While Waiting In Line
  “BREATHE, LOOK AROUND, EAVESDROP. YOUR NEXT BIG BREAKTHROUGH COULD BE ONE OBSERVATION AWAY.
  ”
• Apple font “beau­ti­ful as type­face, total­ly sucks as an inter­face” — insights from a famous designer

  “Noted design­er Erik Spiekermann has called Apple’s type­face choice a “youth­ful fol­ly.” Speaking at Gigaom’s Roadmap, he explained what he meant and offered oth­er insights into how he sees the world of design.”

• Multi-Resolution Images With srcset
  “What if the brows­er had a way of know­ing which images to load with­out fetch­ing any unused resources? We can already achieve some­thing sim­i­lar with CSS using a com­bi­na­tion of media queries for pix­el den­si­ty or res­o­lu­tion to dis­play hi-res backg…
• The easy guide to design move­ments: Modernism
  “The Modernist school has had a huge influ­ence on the his­to­ry of design – and con­tin­ues to do so today. Aaron Kitney explains why.

  ”

• Start Something: The Power of Side Projects
  “Would you take your side projects more seri­ous­ly if you found out some­one would pay you tens of thou­sands for it?

  ”

• Entrepreneurs, It’s the “Age of Context”. Make Your Fortune By Removing Friction
  “As entre­pre­neurs, we strug­gle to come up with inno­v­a­tive ideas that change the world. But you can build a bil­lion dol­lar com­pa­ny by sim­ply remov­ing friction.

  ”

• Why Work Loneliness Isn’t a Personal Problem (And How to Conquer It)

  “Loneliness seems like such an intense­ly per­son­al, pri­vate prob­lem, but it’s much more than that. At work, lone­li­ness is yet anoth­er effect of the inad­e­quate atten­tion paid to the human side of get­ting stuff done togeth­er. Whether it’s the iner­tia of inter­act­ing with the same peo­ple every day in a way that’s unique from all your oth­er rela­tion­ships, there’s a pre­vail­ing sense that work is this realm where you just deal—that it’s not some­thing you can improve. P

  W”

• Understanding the Affordable Care Act
  “On Thursday, November 7th, OPEN Forum will live stream an inter­ac­tive dis­cus­sion by a pan­el of con­sul­tants, well-versed in health­care pol­i­cy. Our pan­elists will break down the Affordable Care Act and the health insur­ance exchange marketplace, …
• Nested Symbols in Edge Animate by Tom Green [4 Min Video]
  ou can cre­ate sym­bols, place them in oth­er sym­bols and even con­trol their play­back in the Animate time­line. Here’s how.
• 8 Cues Creative Agencies Should Take From Musicals

  “But a deep­er look reveals that the two actu­al­ly share a com­mon cur­ren­cy – per­sua­sion – and it turns out there’s quite a lot of trans­fer­able wis­dom beneath those flash­ing lights. Here are eight lessons lift­ed from Broadway that can also dri­ve cre­ative suc­cess in advertising:

  ”

• Katy Perry Album ‘Prism’ A ‘Biosecurity Concern’ In Australia Because It Includes Plantable Seed Paper

  “The 29-year-old singer, who has been encour­ag­ing her fans on Twitter to enjoy the col­ors of her album, includ­ed seed paper in the deluxe album with the hope that fans would plant the paper and “spread the light.” Seed paper is a hand­made paper con­tain­ing plant seeds that can grow when the paper is plant­ed. While the pur­pose is tame enough, offi­cials Down Under are con­cerned that copies bought over­seas may con­tain plant seeds for­eign to Australia, there­by pre­sent­ing an inter­na­tion­al secu­ri­ty issue. Albums bought in Australia con­tain Swan River daisy seeds, which are not con­sid­ered a biose­cu­ri­ty concern.”

• Your Google+ Pictures Will Pop Up With Caller ID on Android
  “If you have a pro­file pic­ture attached your Google+ account, Android 4.4 KitKat smart­phone users will soon see it pop up with caller ID when you’re calling.

  This is a step toward more eas­i­ly iden­ti­fy­ing a caller, from busi­ness­es to co-workers…

• How Flat Design Is Preparing iOS For The Gadgets Of Tomorrow
  “IOS 7’S NEW LOOK ISN’T JUST A FRESH COAT OF PAINT. IT’S A POWERFUL DESIGN LANGUAGE THAT CAN BE EXTENDED TO THE IWATCH, ITV, AND ICAR OF THE FUTURE.
  ”
• Nested Symbols in Edge Animate by Tom Green [4 Min Video]
  ou can cre­ate sym­bols, place them in oth­er sym­bols and even con­trol their play­back in the Animate time­line. Here’s how.
• The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide To Character Expression
  One of the biggest prob­lem areas for writ­ers is con­vey­ing a char­ac­ter’s emo­tions to the read­er in a unique, com­pelling way. This book comes to the res­cue by high­light­ing 75 emo­tions and list­ing the pos­si­ble body lan­guage cues, thoughts, and vis…
• 6 Top Creatives Answer the Question: What Makes Smart Branding?
  “We asked six lead­ing cre­atives for their thoughts on smart brand­ing. Here’s what they had to say.

  ”

• Twitter Becoming the Anti-Social Social Network? Removes User Control Over Themselves?
  “As the social media giant works hard for its mon­ey, it’s remov­ing any pre­tense that we’re some­how in con­trol of our social selves.”
• A Designer’s Activity Book To Overcome Creative Blocks

  “Entitled ‘The Art of Getting Started’, the sim­ple but help­ful guide­book con­tains enjoy­able hands-on activ­i­ties and inspi­ra­tional quotes and tips, to get your cre­ative juices flowing. ”

• 10 Ways To Make Evernote Rock Harder
  “Accessories and add-ons that make note-taking eas­i­er and way more use­ful than you might have ever thought.”
• How Flat Design Is Preparing iOS For The Gadgets Of Tomorrow
  “IOS 7’S NEW LOOK ISN’T JUST A FRESH COAT OF PAINT. IT’S A POWERFUL DESIGN LANGUAGE THAT CAN BE EXTENDED TO THE IWATCH, ITV, AND ICAR OF THE FUTURE.
  ”
• Make Swatches From Photos In Photoshop

  “Picking the per­fect hues for your design projects, on or offline, can be a tricky busi­ness. Using the swatch­es palette in Photoshop you can grab a full col­or palette from any pho­to­graph or image and save the swatch­es. Here’s how it works.”

• 8 Cues Creative Agencies Should Take From Musicals

  “But a deep­er look reveals that the two actu­al­ly share a com­mon cur­ren­cy – per­sua­sion – and it turns out there’s quite a lot of trans­fer­able wis­dom beneath those flash­ing lights. Here are eight lessons lift­ed from Broadway that can also dri­ve cre­ative suc­cess in advertising:

  ”

• Less Light = More Creativity. New Study Says Darkness Promotes Creativity
  “Ever won­der why so many of your cre­ative break­throughs came through at night? As it turns out, the dark­ness could be cor­re­lat­ed with enhanced creativity.”
• What To Do When Your Cloud Service Fades Away
  “Nirvanix cus­tomers learned first hand what hap­pens when cloud ser­vices go out of busi­ness. Here’s how you can be prepared.”
• A Client Asks You to Design 4/0 or 4/4. Do You Know What Those Are? Print Term Glossary.
  Just what is an “aque­ous coat­ing”? When the job spec calls for “4/0” or “4/4”, what is it ask­ing for? Learn the def­i­n­i­tion of these and many more terms in this excel­lent glos­sary of print­ing terms.
• Why Every Parent Needs To Know About Text Bombs
  What I did­n’t real­ize at the time was that my son and this boy were prac­tic­ing a prim­i­tive form of text bomb­ing, a cyber bul­ly­ing tech­nique that has blos­somed because of apps that enable you to tor­ment your tar­get with up to 10,000 text message…
• Gale Launches New Purchase Model for Ebooks #eprd­ctn
  “Gale, part of Cengage Learning and a pub­lish­er of research and ref­er­ence resources for libraries, schools and busi­ness­es, announced a new pur­chase option – a Usage-Driven Acquisition (UDA) mod­el – for its Gale Virtual Reference Library (GVRL) …
• Frenzy Is a Private, Dropbox-Powered Social Network
  Frenzy uses Dropbox to store your feed, and you invite friends to par­tic­i­pate in that feed. So, once it’s installed, you sim­ply share the fold­er with friends through Dropbox, then once they down­load it they can start par­tic­i­pat­ing in the feed. …
• Top 15 Free Symbol Fonts
  “Zapf Dingbats is not the only sym­bol font. Check out these 15 alter­na­tives that will pro­pel you to pic­togram paradise…

  ”

• Design-Based Media Queries

  I’ll dis­cuss the idea of design-based media queries (as opposed to the more preva­lent way of bas­ing our media queries on com­mon mobile devices). This approach to respon­sive web design could help us make our sites as future-proof and device-agnostic as possible.

• What’s hold­ing back VFX work in the cloud?
  Online ren­der­ing and col­lab­o­ra­tion is already a part of CAD pipelines. But will 2013 be the year the cloud final­ly breaks the mould?

  Tags:

  vfx

• Amazon MatchBook Seems To Be A Mismatch
  “Now you can buy Kindle ver­sions of pre­vi­ous­ly pur­chased books from Amazon at dis­count­ed rates. But the new pro­gram may have some gaps in the collection.”
• Responsive HTML Emails: a Different Strategy

  “Media query sup­port can pret­ty much be tak­en for grant­ed in desk­top browsers, but it remains unknown to many email clients today. One of the most pop­u­lar mobile email clients is the Gmail app for Android and iPhone, and it remains a staunch non-attendee of the media query par­ty. Without media queries to detect device size and recon­fig­ure the lay­out accord­ing­ly, users could be stuck squint­ing at some­thing like this:”

• 29th Street Publishing Remakes iPad Magazines

  “Check out some screen­shots of one of the first iPad-native pub­lish­ing tools – and a Q&A with one of its founders.”

• 14 Facebook Tools You Didn’t Know Existed
  You know all about Facebook’s basic tools. You can post sta­tus­es and share arti­cles with the best of ’em. But how often do you check your Activity Log? What is the Browse tool for?
• How Social Analytics Goes Beyond Marketing To Save Lives
  “New Poptip social tool can ana­lyze break­ing events and sto­ry evo­lu­tion to help media and first respon­ders track emer­gen­cies on Twitter.”
• Evernote’s Guide To Making Startup Schwag

  Evernote has start­ed sell­ing home office and lifestyle prod­ucts as a new source of rev­enue. Here’s the secret to choos­ing the right stuff.

• Teens To Facebook: “Okay, Bye!”
  “Facebook final­ly admit­ted what many peo­ple have long pre­dict­ed, and what CEO Mark Zuckerberg denied this sum­mer: Facebook is los­ing its cool with teens.”
• Subcompact Publishing — A Year Later

  “Now — open the sky and dump down upon that table all the dig­i­tal pub­lish­ing tools we have. Let rain down the infra­struc­ture and typog­ra­phy, the plat­forms and devices. Separate them into their small­est com­po­nents. Spread them out evenly.

  ”

• Amazing Patterns From Rule By Art
  RuleByArt pro­vides design­ers with some of the high­est qual­i­ty dig­i­tal art resources. As design­ers, they hold them­selves to very high stan­dards in cre­at­ing their work both by hand and on the com­put­er. Check out some of their cre­ative pat­terns, g…
• Why Do Poor People ‘Waste’ Money On Luxury Goods? Because They Must
  His is a belief held by many peo­ple, includ­ing lots of black peo­ple, poor peo­ple, for­mer­ly poor peo­ple, etc. It is, I sus­pect, an hon­est expres­sion of increduli­ty. If you are poor, why do you spend mon­ey on use­less sta­tus sym­bols like handbags …
• Sketchbooks from Creatives around the world on tour in this trav­el­ing library

  ‘The Sketchbook Tour’ truck acts as a mobile library, hous­ing a col­lec­tion of almost 30,000 sketch­books sent in by cre­atives around the world. The truck trav­els to 40 over cities in North America over the span of a year, park­ing at var­i­ous events and loca­tions where any­one can hop on to browse through a mish-mash of won­der­ful art. 

• Sketchbooks from Creatives around the world on tour in this trav­el­ing library

  ‘The Sketchbook Tour’ truck acts as a mobile library, hous­ing a col­lec­tion of almost 30,000 sketch­books sent in by cre­atives around the world. The truck trav­els to 40 over cities in North America over the span of a year, park­ing at var­i­ous events and loca­tions where any­one can hop on to browse through a mish-mash of won­der­ful art. 

• 10 cap­ti­vat­ing uses of typog­ra­phy in movies
  The open­ing cred­its are often the first clue you have to a film’s theme and tone, and typog­ra­phy is inte­gral to that. Here’s our selec­tion of 10 engag­ing pieces of typog­ra­phy in movies.
• Apple’s iCloud Keychain: It works, but with frus­trat­ing limitations
  Unfortunately, it’s kind of a mess. iCloud Keychain does accom­plish the most basic things you’d expect a pass­word man­ag­er to do, but it often does so in an awk­ward man­ner. Important func­tion­al­i­ty is hard enough to find that it may be effectivel…
• Why Did Apple Lose Its Humanities?
  Ever since the pass­ing of Steve Jobs, some folks have felt that Apple has lost its rud­der. If you lis­ten to the argu­ments of not­ed tech blog­ger Ben Thompson, you’ll dis­cov­er that’s because the com­pa­ny that famous­ly asked us to Think Different h…
• The Best Personal Finance Tips from Evil Millionaires

  Just because someone’s evil doesn’t mean they can’t teach us some­thing worth­while, and the mil­lion­aires of the world are no dif­fer­ent. Even though you may con­sid­er some of them evil, there’s no doubt­ing that they know how to amass a for­tune. With that in mind, here are just a few of the most applic­a­ble tips from evil mil­lion­aires (mon­ey laun­der­ing not included).

• The Best Personal Finance Tips from Evil Millionaires

  Just because someone’s evil doesn’t mean they can’t teach us some­thing worth­while, and the mil­lion­aires of the world are no dif­fer­ent. Even though you may con­sid­er some of them evil, there’s no doubt­ing that they know how to amass a for­tune. With that in mind, here are just a few of the most applic­a­ble tips from evil mil­lion­aires (mon­ey laun­der­ing not included).

• How to Keep Your Pinterest Brand Page Legal
  Thinking of cre­at­ing a busi­ness page on Pinterest or con­vert­ing an exist­ing page to one for com­mer­cial use? There are some impor­tant dif­fer­ences between per­son­al and busi­ness pages that you need to con­sid­er. Click below to watch full-screen:

  …

• What can free­lancers learn from larg­er com­pa­nies when it comes to email etiquette?

  Today’s free­lancers are often seen as being in a priv­i­leged posi­tion where com­mu­ni­ca­tion is con­cerned. Thanks to the rise of the Internet and the preva­lence of emails, free­lancers are now more acces­si­ble to work and com­mis­sions than ever before, but this sit­u­a­tion isn’t with­out its hazards.

• Smartphone Patent war goes nuclear: Microsoft, Apple-owned “Rockstar” sues Google

  Google bid for the patents, but it did­n’t get them. Instead, the patents went to a group of competitors—Microsoft, Apple, RIM, Ericsson, and Sony—operating under the name “Rockstar Bidco.” The com­pa­nies togeth­er bid the shock­ing sum of $4.5 billion.

  Patent insid­ers knew that the Nortel port­fo­lio was the patent equiv­a­lent of a nuclear stock­pile: dan­ger­ous in the wrong hands, and a bit scary even if held by a “respon­si­ble” party.

• Creative Inspiration: The Power of Books
  I recent­ly dis­cov­ered a project by design­er Mladen Penev called ‘The Power of Books,’ and I could­n’t believe I had nev­er seen or heard of it before. Here are some of the inspir­ing images from the collection:
• Now You Can Get Twitter Direct Messages From Any Follower—If You Dare
  “A new option on the Twitter set­tings page lets some users receive DMs, which are pri­vate mes­sages sim­i­lar to texts, from any­one who fol­lows you. Until now, most users could only get direct mes­sages from fol­low­ers you also fol­low back.”

  …

• Now You Can Get Twitter Direct Messages From Any Follower—If You Dare
  “A new option on the Twitter set­tings page lets some users receive DMs, which are pri­vate mes­sages sim­i­lar to texts, from any­one who fol­lows you. Until now, most users could only get direct mes­sages from fol­low­ers you also fol­low back.”

  …

• Do your brain­storm­ing on Mondays for the most cre­ative and effec­tive results

  Why do all of this pre­frontal cor­tex think­ing on Mondays? If you’re liv­ing right, Monday should be the day that your pre­frontal cor­tex is well-rested. You’ve spent time with fam­i­ly and friends, caught up on sleep, and haven’t thought about work.

  On Monday morn­ing, your mind should be about as dis­con­nect­ed from the lit­tle details of work as it will be any oth­er part of the work week. So, you’re well-prepared to review the 30,000-foot view of what you’re work­ing on.

• How to Get iWork for Free on Older Macs…Until Apple Plugs the Loophole

  However, there’s a clever loop­hole that a Redditor dis­cov­ered that allows old­er Macs to get the iWork suite of apps for free. It does require a lit­tle bit of elbow grease — cer­tain­ly more effort than just down­load­ing and installing the apps, but it may be worth it for some users who have been want­i­ng the apps for some time.

• How to Get iWork for Free on Older Macs…Until Apple Plugs the Loophole

  However, there’s a clever loop­hole that a Redditor dis­cov­ered that allows old­er Macs to get the iWork suite of apps for free. It does require a lit­tle bit of elbow grease — cer­tain­ly more effort than just down­load­ing and installing the apps, but it may be worth it for some users who have been want­i­ng the apps for some time.

• 19 Everyday Items With Slight Alterations That Change EVERYTHING

  “At first glance, they look like nor­mal every­day items. Upon a clos­er look, they’re pret­ty much baf­fling. That’s what this set of pho­tos by Eugenio Martorelli is called Unlikely, But Not Impossible.

  ”

• Illustrators Rally for Gay Rights in Russia
  “Aiming to ‘make a state­ment and pos­si­bly a dif­fer­ence’, these inspir­ing illus­tra­tions sup­port the LGBT com­mu­ni­ty in the host coun­try of the next Winter Olympics.”
• Nice User Interface #UI Icon Set – Singularity Icons for iOS 7 & iOS 6
  “These flat icons are designed in accord­ing to iOS 7 guide­lines. By default they can be used for iOS apps. Also this set con­tains a lot of sizes to design Windows desk­top soft­ware, Windows 8 apps, Android apps, web interfaces.”
• We Need More Women in Tech: The Datas Prove It
  Male dom­i­nance in the field is bad for women, and bad for the indus­try, as well.
• The Man Turning The Privacy Tables On Mark Zuckerberg
  “THANKS TO MICHAEL ZIMMER, THE WORLD NOW HAS A SEARCHABLE, DIGITAL DATABASE OF ALL OF THE FACEBOOK CEO’S PUBLIC STATEMENTS. KIND OF LIKE A FACEBOOK BOOK JUST FOR ZUCK–A ZUCKBOOK, IF YOU WILL.
  ”
• How to Design a Top-Quality Icon

  “Eugeniu Clim, inter­ac­tion design­er at ust­wo, brings you a mas­ter­class in icon design – includ­ing how to tack­le the chal­lenge of build­ing upon an exist­ing icon style like the agency did for the Tesco Hudl tablet.”

• How to Design a Top-Quality Icon

  “Eugeniu Clim, inter­ac­tion design­er at ust­wo, brings you a mas­ter­class in icon design – includ­ing how to tack­le the chal­lenge of build­ing upon an exist­ing icon style like the agency did for the Tesco Hudl tablet.”

• Virgin America Made An Airplane Safety Video You’ll Actually Want To Watch

  Airline safe­ty announce­ments just got a lot cool­er, thanks to Virgin America’s new music video, #VXsafetydance. Using a com­bi­na­tion of catchy music, sassy dancers, adorable kids, humor, social media savvy, and even a singing nun, Virgin America has accom­plished the impos­si­ble: con­vinced us to lis­ten to air­line safe­ty announcements.

• Google Plus Remains an Afterthought for Publishers

  “But for pub­lish­ers, it’s a dif­fer­ent tale. Since its roll­out in 2011, Google Plus as a traf­fic dri­ver has become not just third fid­dle to Facebook and Twitter, it doesn’t even hold a tam­bourine. Publishers like BuzzFeed and Gawker have stopped offer­ing it as a shar­ing option. The traf­fic from Google’s social net­work is a trick­le at most pub­lish­ers. At best, Google Plus serves as an SEO boost, draft­ing off Google’s main busi­ness: search.”

• Fun Papercraft Infographic Helps You Decide If You Should Take That Design Job

  This amus­ing paper cal­cu­la­tor wheel asks the user four ques­tions about the job they have in mind—regarding its fit, pay, work­ing con­di­tions and ethics—in order to assist them in mak­ing an objec­tive assessment. 

  For instance, when the job is near-perfect, the answer to the ques­tion on work­ing con­di­tions should prob­a­bly be, “Is this too much fun to be called ‘work’?”. 

• Design Thinking, Deconstructed

  Nueva School
  At the Nueva School in Hillsborough, Calif., design think­ing is built into stu­dents’ and teach­ers’ every­day lives. The process, which is an approach to learn­ing that includes con­sid­er­ing real-world prob­lems, research, analy­sis, build­ing by hand, and lots of exper­i­men­ta­tion, is doc­u­ment­ed and shared among staff.

  Tags:

  design­think­ing

  design think­ing

  design

  design_thinking

  péd­a­gogie

• The 10 Best Typewriter Typefaces
  Want to add typewriter-style text to your designs? We bring togeth­er a selec­tion of the most effec­tive type­writer fonts, from authen­tic to unusu­al, for you to use in your designs.
• The Transaction Marketing Age Has Ended. Enter The Participation Age or Perish
  Brand val­ue, as a result, was defined by con­vert­ing inter­rup­tion into trans­ac­tion. Great brand­ing cre­at­ed transaction.

  As the eco­nom­ic land­scape shifts, the trans­ac­tion mod­el is becom­ing obsolete

• 9 Rules For Running A Productive Design Critique
  “DESIGN CRITIQUES CAN BE PAINFUL, LONG, AND UNFOCUSED. HERE ARE SOME GUIDELINES FOR AVOIDING THE MOST COMMON PITFALLS.”
• 8 Websites That Will Dramatically Increase Your Internet Productivity
  According to this Quora thread, the fol­low­ing sites will cre­ative­ly keep you entertained.
• Why have young peo­ple in Japan stopped hav­ing sex?

  What hap­pens to a coun­try when its young peo­ple stop hav­ing sex? Japan is find­ing out… Abigail Haworth investigates

• How Kapitza are using Kickstarter to launch their new art book with­out a publisher
  Geometric Two is, nat­u­ral­ly, a sequel to their 2008 book of pat­terns Geometric, which was released through German pub­lish­er Verlag Hermann Schmidt Mainz. Between the two, Kapitza released Organic, which was nom­i­nat­ed as one of the Design Museum…
• 10 insights from the world of design
  This year The Big Picture design research agency cel­e­brates 20 years explor­ing con­sumers’ rela­tion­ships with FMCG design for the likes of Unilever, GSK, and Reckitt Benckiser. We’ve used this mile­stone as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to take stock of some of…
• Stolen Adobe account data found on the web
  In an update on the data breach dis­closed ear­li­er this month, Adobe has said that source code for Photoshop was stolen. Making mat­ters worse, a file con­tain­ing 150 mil­lion user­names and hashed pass­words has appeared online, and the com­pa­ny says…
• Create Mouthwatering Bread Typography in Photoshop

  “In this tuto­r­i­al, I’ll show you how to cre­ate a won­der­ful baked bread text effect using Photoshop. I will explain every step in order to achieve the best pos­si­ble result. Let’s get started!

  ”

• FAA Changes Safety Rules: You Can Now Use Electronic Gadgets Gate-to-Gate

  “Government safe­ty rules are chang­ing to let air­line pas­sen­gers use most elec­tron­ic devices from gate-to-gate.

  The change will let pas­sen­gers read, work, play games, watch movies and lis­ten to music — but not make cell­phone calls.”

• FAA Changes Safety Rules: You Can Now Use Electronic Gadgets Gate-to-Gate

  “Government safe­ty rules are chang­ing to let air­line pas­sen­gers use most elec­tron­ic devices from gate-to-gate.

  The change will let pas­sen­gers read, work, play games, watch movies and lis­ten to music — but not make cell­phone calls.”

• Value Activation: A Different Business Model for Internet Entrepreneurs

  When we pay for soft­ware, it’s usu­al­ly because it solves a crit­i­cal prob­lem we have. It sat­is­fies a need. It pro­vides a cer­tain val­ue we’re will­ing to pay for.

  And if we can derive val­ue from a prod­uct or a ser­vice at no upfront cost, then we are more like­ly to pay lat­er on in order to con­tin­ue deriv­ing that value.

  Internet entre­pre­neurs need a busi­ness mod­el that sup­ports this notion.

• See Why We Have An Absolutely Ridiculous Standard Of Beauty In Just 37 Seconds
  Well, I want to see more of this. I want to show my daugh­ter, over and over, why the images of so many women she sees aren’t real­is­tic. And what I real­ly want is for us to stop turn­ing beau­ti­ful women into draw­ings and pass­ing them off as real.…
• Neil Gaiman: Why our future depends on libraries, read­ing and daydreaming
  A lec­ture explain­ing why using our imag­i­na­tions, and pro­vid­ing for oth­ers to use theirs, is an oblig­a­tion for all citizens

  Tags:

  reading

  libraries

  gaiman
  …

• The designer’s guide to Gestalt Theory

  If you’ve ever won­dered why some design approach­es seem more coher­ent, con­nect­ed or uni­fied than oth­ers, it may be because the design­er has used the Gestalt prin­ci­ples to help bring togeth­er their design elements.

• ‘Life Coach For Creatives’: Brutally-Honest Feedback For Creative People

  In his ‘Life Coach for Creatives’ illus­trat­ed series, London-based free­lance ani­ma­tor and illus­tra­tor Tony Johnson offers brutally-honest advice and feed­back to cre­ative people. 

• How Do I (Really) Know If My Startup Is Infringing On Trademarks?
  Checking for exist­ing trade­marks is gross­ly inef­fi­cient. A new start­up thinks it has the solu­tion for founders.
• What Designers Think Of When They Think Of San Francisco

  The San Francisco divi­sion of design asso­ci­a­tion AIGA asked cre­atives from all over the world to come up with posters that depict their impres­sions of the city. 

• Five orga­niz­ing myths

  Myths abound in the organ­is­ing world. Don’t let your­self fall for these five com­mon tales:

• How to Be the Worst Freelance Designer in the Universe (in Just 10 Steps)

  Well, yeah, being the hon­est free­lancer seems a bit too main­stream. Besides, it’s way too dif­fi­cult. So why not just be the worst one instead – the under­achiev­er of the free­lanc­ing world if you will?

• Why design schools need to teach life-long skills
  Today’s fresh­ers are tomor­row’s cre­ative pros. As the new intake set­tles in, Lawrence Zeegen asks how col­leges can best pre­pare them for an indus­try that nev­er sits still.
• 10 Principles of Successful Freelancers

  Running an effec­tive free­lance busi­ness is a learn­ing process. Even expe­ri­enced design­ers still have plen­ty to learn about the busi­ness aspect of free­lanc­ing. In this post we’ll look at 10 prin­ci­ples that I have learned from my own expe­ri­ence, and have observed to be true of oth­er free­lancers as well.

• Using Your Design Skills to Get Website Traffic

  If you’ve got design skills, you have plen­ty of oppor­tu­ni­ties avail­able to you for gen­er­at­ing addi­tion­al site traffic.

  In this arti­cle, I’ll dis­cuss some ideas and show you some exam­ples of web­site con­tent that have the abil­i­ty to bring in a lot of site visitors.

• Fully Spec’ed Out Apple Mac Pro Could Cost Around $14,000 (video)
  If you are look­ing for­ward to pur­chas­ing a new Apple Mac Pro and are already busy sav­ing your pen­nies, you might be inter­est­ed to know that a ful­ly upgrad­ed Apple Mac Pro sys­tem with 64GB of RAM, 12-cores and Dual FirePro D700 Graphics graphics…
• 15 Minimalistic Package Designs

  “Minimal” is a term each design­er uses on a dai­ly basis. It is char­ac­ter­ized by the use of sim­ple or pri­ma­ry forms or struc­tures, espe­cial­ly geo­met­ric or mas­sive ones. This con­cept has become a trend that is asso­ci­at­ed with clean, focused, and sim­pli­fied design, most famous­ly encour­aged by Apple’s founder, Steve Jobs, who stated: 

  “That’s been one of my mantras – focus and sim­plic­i­ty. Simple can be hard­er than com­plex: You have to work hard to get your think­ing clean to make it sim­ple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.”

  Enjoy a lit­tle sim­plic­i­ty with our 15 most min­i­mal­is­tic pack­age designs.

• 5 Effective Ways for Freelance Designers to Manage Information Overload
  In this post, I describe five effec­tive tech­niques that free­lance web design­ers and oth­ers can use to man­age infor­ma­tion overload.
• Don’t Just Do One Thing–the Best Advice Ever Ignored

  Why “just do one thing” was prob­a­bly the best advice I’ve received. Because I’ve total­ly ignored it.

• John Nack on Adobe : Animography: Animated type for After Effects
  Our ani­mat­ed type­faces are Adobe After Effects files with each glyph in a sep­a­rate com­po­si­tion. A controller-composition serves as a cen­tral point from which you can cus­tomize all the glyphs in one to.
• Fascinating Photos That Look Unbelievably Like Paintings
  While we’ve all seen our fair share of hyper­re­al­is­tic and pho­to­re­al­is­tic art, or paint­ings and sculp­tures that look amaz­ing­ly like pho­tographs, it’s not too often that we come across pho­tos that look like paint­ings. Here, then, are ten fascinat…
• 10 tips for bet­ter pro­duc­tiv­i­ty when using the Creative Cloud #CreativeCloud

  Looking to work faster, smarter and more effi­cient­ly? Creative Cloud is packed with fan­tas­tic new func­tion­al­i­ty that will save you time whether you’re work­ing across print or dig­i­tal – you just need to know how.

• Graphic Design Book For Kids, Teaches Key Concepts In Graphics And Typography

  Titled ‘Go! A Kidd’s Guide to Graphic Design’, it teach­es chil­dren, ages 10 and above, about the key con­cepts of graph­ic design and typography

• Link Text: Best Practices for Desktop and Mobile

  I think the lack of under­lin­ing on links is a wide­spread prob­lem already – design­ers not wish­ing to spoil their typog­ra­phy work at the cost of an eas­i­ly nav­i­ga­ble page – so a good shout out on that.

• 50 Wonderful Free WordPress Plugins – October 2013
  “Thousands of peo­ple are using WordPress plu­g­ins because all WordPress plu­g­ins pro­vide awe­some fea­tures, great flex­i­bil­i­ty to the users, are editable and also save time as well. All expe­ri­enced per­sons are using WordPress plu­g­ins and even the b…
• Reading with iOS 101, a Reading App Guide – Revisited

  ” Today I’m revis­it­ing the major read­ing apps for the iPad, iPad Mini, iPhone and iTouch. Because of the preva­lence of the iPhone and iTouch devices, all the images here are from the iPhone/iTouch except for the Marvin read­ing app which is designed for iPad and iPad Mini devices only.”

• One Year Later, The Most Promising iPad Magazine Looks Back (And Forward)
  Like a lot of tech­nol­o­gy projects, The Magazine start­ed out as an exper­i­ment: could a well-executed dig­i­tal mag­a­zine attract enough pay­ing read­ers to exist as a busi­ness? A year lat­er, we spoke to its edi­tor and own­er to find out.
• 5 Infographics to Teach You How to Easily Create Infographics in PowerPoint [+ Templates]
  “In this post, we’ll high­light some PowerPoint info­graph­ic cre­ation basics as well as four of the info­graph­ic tem­plates from the down­load that explain how to eas­i­ly cre­ate info­graph­ics in PowerPoint (how meta, right?). Just be sure to download …
• NYT Writer Responds to Design for Free and Write for Free–for “Cxposure”–Culture

  “People who would con­sid­er it a bizarre breach of con­duct to expect any­one to give them a hair­cut or a can of soda at no cost will ask you, with a straight face and a clear con­science, whether you wouldn’t be will­ing to write an essay or draw an illus­tra­tion for them for nothing.”

• Planning for Social 2.0

  “Social media has become the key source of refer­ral traf­fic for media com­pa­nies and con­tent cre­ators are con­stant­ly lever­ag­ing their pres­ence on var­i­ous plat­forms to invig­o­rate their brands and enhance their com­mu­ni­ties. Here, Adriana Nova, asso­ciate direc­tor of social media for New York Magazine, and not­ed speak­er at FOLIO:’s MediaNext event, October 28 to 30 in New York, talks about her strat­e­gy for engag­ing and inter­act­ing with a chang­ing social audience.”

• Elemental Photo Manipulation Tutorials, Part 4: Water by Pariah Burke

  ““Elemental Photo Manipulations” is a four-part series of amaz­ing tuto­ri­als and inspir­ing art­work com­bin­ing pho­tog­ra­phy with Photoshop in sur­re­al, mind-bending, and some­times star­tling ways. In this final install­ment of the series you’ll get your feet wet with, make a splash in, dive into—and oth­er cliched actions asso­ci­at­ed with water and liquid—liquid-based pho­to manip­u­la­tion. Infuse your art­work with the ulti­mate rep­re­sen­ta­tion of nature, beau­ty, ener­gy, and power.”

• Facebook Ad ROI and Click Through Rates Growing; Revenue Per Visit (RPV) on Twitter Up 300%

  “The Adobe Dig­i­tal Index team exam­ined more than 200 bil­lion Face­book ad impres­sions, over 1 bil­lion Face­book posts, and more than 400 mil­lion unique vis­i­tors to social net­works includ­ing Twit­ter in our first annu­al Social Media Intel­li­gence Report, which reviews all facets of social media—paid, owned and earned. Some inter­est­ing findings:”

• eCanCrusher: Drag-n-Drop Utility Converts EPUB Folder to .EPUB File and Vice Versa
  “eCanCrusher is a sim­ple drag/drop util­i­ty to con­vert an EPUB folder/directory struc­ture into an .epub file and vice versa.”
• Becoming a Designer – Getting Your Foot in the Door

  “Wide-eyed and bushy tailed
  So you’ve made it! The degree show is com­plete and you’re real­ly pleased with your final show. You’ve just received your results and every­one is proud of what you have achieved. Congratulations are due but now the hard work begins. Being proac­tive, cre­ative and resource­ful will put you in a best posi­tion pos­si­ble whilst you are com­pet­ing with all of the oth­er design grad­u­ates try­ing to get a foothold in the industry.

  ”

• Nostalgia: the History of Aldus PageMaker
  “Paul Brainerd was one of those pro­gram­mers. When the Aldus Corporation intro­duced PageMaker 1.0, it rev­o­lu­tion­ized the pub­lish­ing indus­try. Suddenly any­one could design brochures. Publishers had to become com­put­er lit­er­ate, and Apple start­ed s…
• 25 ways design can make children’s lives better
  The ideas range from apps designed for new dads and to help tie togeth­er a sup­port net­work around new par­ents, a site to help par­ents find all of the resources for them in their local area, pop-up play parks, wear­able tech­nol­o­gy to encour­age pl…
• thingCHARGER. The awe­some new charg­er for ALL your things. | Indiegogo
  “Indigogo cam­paign (ful­ly fund­ed): A clever, beau­ti­ful design unlike any­thing we’ve seen before. Got a smartphone/tablet? A must have …”
• The Fascinating Workspaces Of Bill Clinton, Bob Dylan & Other Famous People
  “Which one do you find most inspiring? ”
• Handy Techniques for Cutting Out Hair in Photoshop
  “When trim­ming out images in Photoshop, human hair or ani­mal fur always proves trou­ble­some and can be tricky to achieve a real­is­tic look. Here are two tech­niques I use on images with both plain back­grounds, and those with a var­ied back­ground to…
• 25 Ways Design Can Make Children’s Lives Better
  “The ideas range from apps designed for new dads and to help tie togeth­er a sup­port net­work around new par­ents, a site to help par­ents find all of the resources for them in their local area, pop-up play parks, wear­able tech­nol­o­gy to encour­age p…
• The Ultimate Guide to Photoshop Gradient Map Adjustment Layers

  “Gradient Map might be one of the least used Photoshop Adjustments. In this tuto­r­i­al from PSDTuts, we will take a close look at the Gradient Map Adjustment and will explain every­thing you need to know about it. Let’s get started!

  ”

• What Cloud Computing Means to College Applicants #EdTech

  “Today’s high school grad­u­ates live in the cloud-computing era. It’s typ­i­cal for a high school stu­dent to use mul­ti­ple web-communication tools, such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Students’ music, news and videos are deliv­ered via the cloud. They e‑mail and text using soft­ware that mon­i­tors their pref­er­ences and adapts to their usage pat­terns. In short, stu­dents are at home in the cloud.

  ”

• Twitter and Square co-founder Jack Dorsey sug­gests you cre­ate a dai­ly ‘Do and Don’t List’. This is his.
  “He says that by for­mu­lat­ing a list, it helps estab­lish healthy pat­terns for peo­ple to live bet­ter lives. By putting togeth­er a list, it will elim­i­nate noise and allow you to focus on things. Both Square and Twitter employ­ees have set up their …
• Is Your House Haunted? Website Helps You Check If Anyone Has Died In Your House

  “Worried about para­nor­mal activ­i­ty in your house, or the one you’re about to buy? From count­less Hollywood hor­ror pro­duc­tions, we know that sell­ers often fail to dis­close cas­es of deaths in their properties.
  ”

• How to Make a Billboard That Delivers + Best Practices

  “While bill­board ads to some may seem like an old-fashioned adver­tis­ing tac­tic, bill­board adver­tis­ing has evolved to keep up with today’s tech­nolo­gies while still pro­vid­ing results when it comes to expos­ing a company’s brand, prod­uct or service.

  ”

• A Women’s Magazine With A Strict ‘No Photoshop’ Policy

  “Unlike oth­er mag­a­zines out there, Verily “nev­er alters the body or face struc­ture” of its mod­els with Photoshop.
  ”

Curated by Pariah Burke