Today in Design - Top Articles RoundUp 17 March 2016

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

  • Do You Suffer From Infobesity (And What The Heck is it)? [Infographic]
    It was­n’t that long ago that we had to wait until the evening news to find out what was hap­pen­ing in the world.Check out the info­graph­ic below for a fas­ci­nat­ing look at infobe­si­ty and find out if you suf­fer from it.
  • 5 Ways to Make Sure Your Email Writing Is Clear

    Imagine an inter­na­tion­al team of peo­ple with vary­ing lev­els of English lan­guage pro­fi­cien­cy, using emails to work togeth­er on a project. Members of the team might have a hard time com­mu­ni­cat­ing with each oth­er as it is, and if they don’t do their best to keep their email writ­ing clear, mis­takes are bound to hap­pen because of a lack of under­stand­ing. But it’s not that hard to improve the clar­i­ty of writ­ing in emails. All it takes are a few sim­ple steps.

  • Make Use of Grids for Typographical Layouts
    A well-planned grid is key to cre­at­ing a good typo­graph­i­cal lay­out, as hav­ing a strong foun­da­tion to work with is a great way to keep a text-heavy doc­u­ment look­ing clean, con­sis­tent and easy to navigate.Tags: InDesign Layout editorial
  • How To Build A Global Author Entrepreneur Business
    Brian Clark inter­viewed me for Unemployable, the show for peo­ple who can get a job, they’re just not inclined to take one. We talk about how to grow a businessTags: Writing AmWriting self­pub epub
  • Inside Instacart’s Fraught and Misguided Quest to Become the Uber of Groceries
    The changes Instacart out­lined were grim. Fees for cus­tomers were increas­ing. One-hour deliv­ery in New York City had been sus­pend­ed. In stores, stan­dards were get­ting much stricter. A lengthy list of poli­cies detailed every­thing from how Instacart shop­pers should dress to when they could lis­ten to music (only on break, only with head­phones). Shoppers who breached two rules would be placed on four weeks’ pro­ba­tion. Violate any more, and…

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  • 10 Best Grammar Resources for Teachers

    Every day is a gram­mar day for teach­ers, but the whole world is invit­ed to cel­e­brate mor­phol­o­gy and syn­tax on the fourth of March—National Grammar Day. Everyone loves a par­ty, but how can you moti­vate stu­dents to embrace good gram­mar the oth­er 364 days of the year? These ten gram­mar resources might be just what you need.

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  • InDesign CC: Publish Online Video Training by Pariah Burke
    Use InDesign Publish Online for pub­li­ca­tion dis­tri­b­u­tion or to send proofs, sketch­es, and iter­a­tions of doc­u­ments to clients for review and approval.Tags: InDesign Layout epub selfpub
  • The 10 Slides You Need to Pitch Your Business Idea

    Guy Kawasaki’s info­graph­ic tells you which top­ics to cov­er, with the reminder that the point of the pitch is to stim­u­late inter­est for a sec­ond meet­ing for fur­ther discussion.

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  • Adding Custom Fonts to WordPress with @Font-Face and CSS3

    Luckily, adding your own choice of fonts is rel­a­tive­ly easy using the CSS3 @font-facerule. All that’s required is upload­ing a font to your serv­er, then adding it to your theme with a few small snip­pets of CSS.

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  • 15 Insights Into the State of Women in Business
    Times have changed for women in busi­ness. Find out what sev­er­al suc­cess­ful women busi­ness own­ers have to say about gen­der par­i­ty and today’s busi­ness climate.Tags: busi­ness glassceiling
  • Better Bookmarking With RainDrop​.io
    Even with all the advanced tech­nol­o­gy avail­able, there is still one thing that has­n’t changed about the way we explore the Internet and that is bookmarks.
  • Ragtime Typesetting Game for Designers

    What’s bet­ter than typog­ra­phy and rag­time music? A typog­ra­phy game and rag­time music. Read more about Rag Time here.

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  • How To Design Empty State Pages For Websites & Mobile Apps
    Blank pages are bor­ing, dull, and even con­fus­ing. Empty states pro­vide guid­ance to help users under­stand what they’re look­ing at. Even though it’s a blank page the extra con­text helps.

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  • 10 hottest design tools you absolute­ly must try
    A recent design tools sur­vey con­duct­ed by Khoi Vinh, one of Fast Company’s “fifty most influ­en­tial design­ers in America”, shows that Photoshop is slow­ly los­ing its pop­u­lar­i­ty among designers.

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  • 10 Best Grammar Resources for Students

    Something great hap­pened on March 4, 2008. Martha Brockenbrough, through The Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar, estab­lished National Grammar Day in the United States. It’s a day to cel­e­brate all that gram­mar does. Would you like to wish your friends a Happy Grammar Day? Make sure you don’t have any errors in your mes­sages! How can you make sure your gram­mar is in tip-top shape? Check out this list of gram­mar goodies:

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  • 30 Days of Sucking: A Challenge for Creative Rebels
    (A chal­lenge for cre­atives who have fall­en in the trap of perfectionism.)Tags: Design Inspiration
  • Running a Design Business: Self Promotion
    Learn how to pro­mote your design busi­ness. Discover the var­i­ous ways to use self-promotion, both ana­log and dig­i­tal, to stand out in today’s com­pet­i­tive marketplace.Tags: Design Business
  • Write!, the Elegant Distraction-Free Writing App, Comes to the Mac
    OS X: Write!, a good-looking writ­ing tool (pre­vi­ous­ly Windows-only), now has a Mac ver­sion that brings all of its best fea­tures over, includ­ing auto-saving, cloud-synced doc­u­ments, offline edit­ing, day and night edit­ing themes, unlim­it­ed undo, and mor…
  • WPForms: A fast new solu­tion for WordPress Forms
    WPForms changes all that – by start­ing you off with form tem­plates. It’s a move that I hope will inspire oth­er form ven­dors in the WordPress ecosys­tem because it makes good sense.
  • Five Places To Find Writing Inspiration
    One sin­gle word describes a copy­writer who’s only inspired by oth­er copy­writ­ers. Boring. Here are five places I find writ­ing inspi­ra­tion in the wild.

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  • How to Make Your Project a Success with Excel Templates
    Excel tem­plates are an essen­tial tool in the port­fo­lio of an effec­tive project man­ag­er. Even in the small­est project, tem­plates can make your life eas­i­er and save sig­nif­i­cant time. We have com­piled a selection.
  • Pantone Adds 112 Colors Just for Graphic Designers

    You could make the argu­ment that there can nev­er be enough col­ors, no mat­ter how many Pantone puts out there. And yet, now, with the intro­duc­tion of thePantone Plus series, Pantone is adding 112 col­ors to their sys­tem, and they say that they’re made specif­i­cal­ly for graph­ic design­ers. Hey wait — are you a graph­ic design­er? Well then maybe you’re who they’re talk­ing about. Small world!

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