Today in Design - Top Articles RoundUp 18 December 2015

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

• Ad Blocking Isn’t The End Of The World

  There’s opportunity—if you ditch old-fashioned adver­tis­ing approaches.

• Why Mailbox Died – “the mar­ket for pro­duc­tiv­i­ty apps has proven to be a mirage”
  On Monday, Dropbox sim­pli­fied its own life by end­ing Mailbox’s. (Carousel, Dropbox’s aim­less photo-storage solu­tion, also got the axe.) The moves were a long time com­ing. Despite Houston’s pub­lic pro­nounce­ments to the con­trary, the apps were clear­ly aban­doned ear­li­er this year. It’s easy to crit­i­cize Dropbox for its stew­ard­ship of Mailbox; its pace of devel­op­ment slowed to a crawl soon after the acqui­si­tion, a Mac desk­top app nev­er made it out of beta, and by this spring it was vir­tu­al­ly abandonware.
• Why rejec­tion hurts so much — and what to do about it
  Psychologist Guy Winch shares some prac­ti­cal tips for sooth­ing the sting of rejection.
• 35 Best vCard WordPress Themes 2015 For Your Online Resume
  Below you will find the best of the best vCard WordPress themes designed for easy set­up and admin­is­tra­tion. Most of these themes have unlim­it­ed col­or vari­a­tions or at least sev­er­al col­or schemes for you to choose. I guess you will have a hard time to …
• Over-Delivery Is the Only Way to Do Business as a Stand Out Creative
  The prob­lem with doing what peo­ple expect you will do might be safe, but it will not help you stand out in the crowd.Tags: Design Business
• Fontli – A Social Network for Typophiles and Typography Enthusiasts
  Fontli lets design­ers and type-enthusiasts dis­cov­er new fonts and great Typography. Using Fontli, you can cap­ture inter­est­ing Typography from every­day life and share it with a vibrant com­mu­ni­ty of type lovers. Font inte­gra­tion is made with the MyFonts…
• 28 Most Spectacular Libraries Around the World

  I have gath­ered 28 of the most ele­gant libraries in the world, and I’m sure that the book­worm inside you will want to vis­it each of them!

  Tags: Writing AmWriting inspi­ra­tion

• Best Places to Find WordPress Plugins

  It’s easy enough to list “top WordPress plu­g­ins for X task”, but it’s not so much com­mon knowl­edge where you can go to find a huge resource of WordPress plu­g­ins for a vari­ety of tasks. This can be frus­trat­ing, espe­cial­ly to new­bies who don’t know of the most pop­u­lar WordPress plu­g­in web­sites. So where are the top places you can turn to when you need plu­g­ins to extend the func­tion­al­i­ty of your web­site? There are quite a few good ones, but here are some of the bet­ter options available.

• So What’s the Big Deal with Horizontal & Vertical Bezier Handles Anyway?

  Have you ever seen Illustrator progress shots from your favourite design­ers and won­dered how and why their bezi­er han­dles are so obses­sive­ly arranged? We’re hop­ing to shed a lit­tle light on this seem­ing­ly unnec­es­sary process. Note: this tuto­r­i­al assumes a sol­id grasp of Illustrator & the pen tool.

  Tags: Vector Illustrator

• Nathan Shedroff on Design Strategy and the Merging of Business and Design FOR Businesses and Designers
  Kristin Ellison talks to Nathan Shedroff about the ways he’s help­ing design­ers merge the qual­i­ta­tive and quan­ti­ta­tive to bet­ter under­stand cus­tomers and pitch ideas to com­pa­ny leaders.Tags: Design Business
• Bret Easton Ellis on Living in the Cult of Likability – The New York Times

  The point of the episode is that today every­one thinks that they’re a pro­fes­sion­al crit­ic (“Everyone relies on my Yelp reviews!”), even if they have no idea what they’re talk­ing about. But it’s also a bleak com­men­tary on what has become known as the “rep­u­ta­tion econ­o­my.” In depict­ing the restau­rants’ get­ting their revenge on the Yelpers, the episode touch­es on the fact that ser­vices today are also rat­ing us, which rais­es a ques­tion: How will we deal with the way we present our­selves online and in social media, and how do indi­vid­u­als brand them­selves in what is a widen­ing cor­po­rate culture?

  Tags: Entrepreneur Leadership social­me­dia

• Learn to Love Flying Again with These Secret Travel Tips
  Use tech­nol­o­gy to com­plete­ly change your fly­ing expe­ri­ence. Here are some not-so-secret fly­ing and trav­el tips to make your in-flight expe­ri­ence more bearable.Tags: Travel roadwarrior
• Hunter S. Thompson’s Best Life Tips
  Hunter S. Thompson isn’t exact­ly known as a saint, nor do peo­ple tend to look to the drug-loving, slight­ly crazed jour­nal­ist for life advice. However, through his fringe lifestyle and off-the-beaten-path out­look he’s pro­vid­ed plen­ty of advice on liv­ing that apply to all of us.
• The Best Cities for Women in Tech
  The tech industry’s gen­der diver­si­ty prob­lem is a prob­lem for all of us. Some cities, how­ev­er, seem to be doing bet­ter than oth­ers when it comes to equal pay and job growth for women in tech.

  Tags: Everydaysexism hefor­she

• 6 Ways to Make SciFi and Fantasy Weapons More Believable

  Ever read a fan­ta­sy book or watched a sci­ence fic­tion movie and strug­gled to sus­pend your dis­be­lief due to the total lack of real­i­ty in some make believe weapons? Here’s advice for peo­ple writ­ing this stuff on how to get guns and lasers and bow and wands right.

  Tags: Writing AmWriting self­pub epub fic­tion

• Powerful Editorial Illustrations About War by Gunduz Aghayev

  Gunduz Aghayev is an artist from Azerbaijan who has a dark, very dark sense of humor and satire that he uses in his edi­to­r­i­al style paint­ings. On the top­ics of war, ecol­o­gy, and pol­i­tics in gen­er­al, the artist takes inspi­ra­tion from icon­ic images, brands, and world lead­ers, to cre­ate pow­er­ful imagery that will make you think twice.

  Tags: Illustration Inspiration Design Vector

• 6 Steps to Creating Business Systems
  Wondering how to do more with less time? Creating busi­ness sys­tems can help you take guess work out of your day and give you more energy.Tags: entre­pre­neur leadership
• How to Avoid Turning Into a Jerk When You’re Surrounded by Jerks
  Working in retail, I still remem­ber one of my worst cus­tomers. He hand­ed me a quar­ter and what looked like a sin­gle one dol­lar bill. I said, “Sorry, the total is two twenty-five.” He pulled apart two crisp bills, which I didn’t notice were stuck togeth­er, and slow­ly count­ed, “One…two. Do you speak English? Do you know math?” I was fum­ing, but I said noth­ing. I was, how­ev­er, short with every­one else that day, until a friend asked, “what’s your prob­lem?” The prob­lem was: I let that jerk turn me into an jerk, too.
• Is Your Content Writing Appealing to Thinkers AND Feelers?

  If you aren’t appeal­ing to these two types of com­mu­ni­ca­tion (and deci­sion) styles, you’re miss­ing half of your read­er­ship potential.

  Tags: Writing AmWriting copy­writ­ing

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