Design Business Links 14 February 2014

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

  • 40 Placeholder Content Generators for Testing Project Layout
    “Both web­sites and mobile projects often ben­e­fit from demo­ing con­tent. But instead of spend­ing your time slav­ish­ly copy­writ­ing, why not incor­po­rate Lorem Ipsum as a method to gen­er­ate filler text? Over the years many web­sites have popped up to …
  • 10 pro tips for per­fect typography
    “Ensure that your typog­ra­phy hits all the right notes with these 10 tips that every design­er needs to know.

  • How I Left The Corporate World and Became a Successful Freelancer

    In the sum­mer of 2013, I decid­ed to rein­vent my career. I love to write and I have over a decade of exper­tise in “how to find a job” along with inside knowl­edge of a Human Resource depart­ment. I knew I want­ed a vir­tu­al office and I want­ed once again to feel pas­sion about my work. I read an arti­cle about oDesk, and decid­ed to give it a try. I jumped in with both feet and had no idea of what I was going to encounter! I would love to tell you a sto­ry about how I devised a plan, researched, con­sult­ed with experts, but no – that was not my expe­ri­ence. I jumped in and learned lessons along the way.

  • Here they are: the 50 best logos ever
    “Ever won­dered how the Penguin logo start­ed its life? Or what Shell’s logo looked like in 1901? Then this is the book for you.

  • 20 of the cra­zi­est client requests ever
    “Top design agen­cies and free­lancers reveal some of the most out­ra­geous, baf­fling and down­right weird ques­tions they’ve been posed by clients.

  • 20 of the cra­zi­est client requests ever
    “Top design agen­cies and free­lancers reveal some of the most out­ra­geous, baf­fling and down­right weird ques­tions they’ve been posed by clients.

  • The defin­i­tive guide to logo design: 50 pro tips
    “We reveal every­thing you need to know to craft suc­cess­ful logos, from inspi­ra­tion to execution.

  • How to make client designs more afford­able with­out low­er­ing your price

    But who knows if they even have design­ers in Heaven, so let’s focus on life here on Earth: most clients, espe­cial­ly the start-ups and the entre­pre­neurs and the small busi­ness­es, fit design into their bud­get begrudgingly.

  • The Three Typography Books All Frontend People Should Read (and Why)
    “That means that whether you are a pro-designer or just a part-time doo­dler, rock-solid typog­ra­phy skills can take you a very long way in web design.

  • Writing and Publishing Trapped by tl;dr (Too Long; Didn’t Read)
    “TL;DR is inter­net talk for “too long; did­n’t read”. It’s also a sad, dan­ger­ous symp­tom of the mal­func­tions caused by the inter­net tsuna­mi. (Here’s a most iron­ic exam­ple of this paradox…)

    The triath­lete does­n’t look for the cold­est bot­tle of…

  • A Hard Truth About How The Facebook News Feed Works in 2014

    To find out what mes­sage Facebook is try­ing to get across, I spoke to a source famil­iar with Facebook’s News Feed plans, who, on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, gave me a very can­did explanation.”

  • How To Become A Master Of Creativity – Attitude!

    Masters of cre­ativ­i­ty are mas­ters of cre­ativ­i­ty because they know “how“ to think and not nec­es­sar­i­ly “what“ to think. If you real­ly want to become more cre­ative, you can become (sig­nif­i­cant­ly) more cre­ative both in your per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al life by adopt­ing a spe­cif­ic mind­set and apply­ing par­tic­u­lar strate­gies and tech­niques. You might not become the next Albert Einstein. However, you cer­tain­ly will become (much) more cre­ative than some­one who does not know the con­tents and meth­ods described in this arti­cle. You could even become a mas­ter of cre­ativ­i­ty your­self, if you were will­ing to work hard enough on yourself.

  • 5 Tips For Receiving Great Ideas From Employees

    If there’s art in hav­ing good ideas, there’s sci­ence in receiv­ing them. Here are five ways to make it easy and reward­ing for team mem­bers to deliv­er ideas:

  • 5 Tips For Receiving Great Ideas From Employees

    If there’s art in hav­ing good ideas, there’s sci­ence in receiv­ing them. Here are five ways to make it easy and reward­ing for team mem­bers to deliv­er ideas:

  • 350 Kinds Of Zombies, Explained
    “THIS CHART WILL HELP YOU IDENTIFY EXACTLY WHICH TYPE OF ZOMBIE IS ABOUT TO EAT YOUR BRAIN.
  • Here Are The 7 Things That Can Make You Wildly Successful

    What does vol­umes of research say you can learn from wild­ly suc­cess­ful people?

  • Best Screen Size & Screen Resolution to Design Websites

    [We keep the fol­low­ing charts up-to-date every month with the lat­est stats (last 3 months) avail­able for 2013–2014 on the most pop­u­lar screen res­o­lu­tions in use in 2013–2014.]

  • Adobe: Digital mag­a­zine edi­tions see big gains in read­er­ship, engagement
    “Digital mag­a­zine edi­tions con­tin­ue to gain trac­tion, with read­er­ship and engage­ment num­bers creep­ing up. Adobe on Tuesday announced a few mile­stones for its Digital Publishing Suite that under­score the ongo­ing shift by mag­a­zine read­ers to tabl…
  • What is Flat Design (and how do I do it)?

    While flat design is far from being a new trend, it cer­tain­ly appears to have plen­ty of stay­ing pow­er. Today’s arti­cle fea­tures not only a break­down of the flat trend, but we’ll also run through two mini-tutorials to get you off on the right (flat?) foot in Photoshop.

  • 45 Photoshop short­cuts to speed up your workflow
    “Take a look at our quick list of Photoshop short­cuts, guar­an­teed to speed up your work­flow. The list includes lay­ers, select­ing, sav­ing, text and brushes.

  • The Five Basic Questions Interviewers Really Want You to Answer
    “You could spend a lot of time try­ing to pre­pare for every pos­si­ble job inter­view ques­tion (and there are a ton), but most job inter­views real­ly boil down to just five things employ­ers want to know about you.”
  • The ‘World’s First 3D-Printed Book Cover’ Features Pop-Up Typography

    The result of the col­lab­o­ra­tion is a func­tion­al work of art that com­ple­ments the min­i­mal­ist cov­er of the hard­back ver­sion of the book—on the stark white sleeve, the title text is stretched and made to pro­trude at a slop­ing gradient.

  • 5 Hopeful Signs For Publishing From 2013

    For the media, this is the best of times and the worst of times. Tina Brown put it best recent­ly at a con­fer­ence when she said that jour­nal­ism is hav­ing a “very, very pathet­ic moment.” As the out­go­ing DailyBeast and Newsweek edi­tor, she ought to know. “The dig­i­tal explo­sion has been so explo­sive,” she said. “There isn’t a sin­gle place where the dig­i­tal thing is a prof­it thing. The dis­rup­tion hasn’t brought a busi­ness model.”

  • Raising The Minimum Wage Would Be Good For Wal-Mart, And America – Forbes

    During the 1950s peak of America’s post-war pros­per­i­ty, Detroit was our wealth­i­est city, General Motors GM ‑0.03% our biggest employ­er, and GM CEO “Engine Charlie” Wilson deliv­ered the famous­ly mis­quot­ed claim that “what was good for our coun­try was good for General Motors, and vice-versa.”

  • Customizing the Tool Panel in Illustrator CC(17.1)+ [Video]

    Accessing favourite tools in Adobe Illustrator can be some­what dif­fi­cult. This is due to the num­ber of tools in the appli­ca­tion — even before you’ve added any Astute Graphics plug-ins! As a result, the Tools Panel has many tool icons, which are grouped accord­ing to Adobe’s wishes.

  • Modern Art Was CIA ‘Weapon’ — No, really!
    “For decades in art cir­cles it was either a rumour or a joke, but now it is con­firmed as a fact. The Central Intelligence Agency used American mod­ern art – includ­ing the works of such artists as Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, Willem de Koo…
  • The drop cap like you’ve nev­er seen it before
    “Typography reach­es new heights with these gor­geous­ly illus­trat­ed drop cap designs by Sveta Dorosheva.

  • Pew: 69% of Americans read a print book in 2013, 28% read an e‑book, but only 4% went exclu­sive­ly electronic
    “During 2013, 69 per­cent of Americans read a book in print­ed form, 28 per­cent read an e‑book, and 14 per­cent lis­tened to an audio­book. While the pro­por­tion of Americans who read e‑books is grow­ing, few have com­plete­ly replaced print books for e…
  • Got A Great Domain Name? Here’s How to Protect it From Scammers

    Social secu­ri­ty, dri­vers license, PIN and… domain names? Who would have thought, say 20 years ago, that a defin­ing name, marked with at least two peri­ods and three W’s would be defin­ing char­ac­ter­is­tic of our dig­i­tal profiles?

  • How to back­up files on mul­ti­ple cloud stor­age services
    “You may use a num­ber of cloud stor­age ser­vices like Dropbox, SkyDrive or Google Drive to back­up your files online and access them away from home. The prob­lem is, they (usu­al­ly) ask you to store your files in the ser­vice’s own fold­er on your co…
  • 10 free typog­ra­phy apps for designers
    “Boost your skills and knowl­edge, cre­ate type­faces and play font-related games with these bril­liant free font apps.

  • Print and 2 oth­er pub­lish­ing sta­ples that are still not dead i 2014

    Three sta­ples of multi-platform pub­lish­ing – print, pageviews and ban­ner adver­tis­ing – have been on the media death watch for some time. For bet­ter or worse, all per­sist­ed in 2013. Here’s a brief look at the sta­tus of each.

  • Designers choose the top logo designs of 2013
    “Our pan­el of indus­try experts select­ed 2013’s best and most inspi­ra­tional logo designs.