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This month, the song Crazy by Gnarls Barkley made musical history as it climbed to number one in the UK charts before a single hard copy of the album was released. Who needs CDs? Crazy hit the top based purely on downloads.

They lit the fire by setting up a Myspace page which streamed the entire album, then supplemented that with the official Gnarles Barkley website. After that, they let the buzz take care of the rest and made history.

I’m reminded of last month, when 37signals released their book Getting Real available only as a PDF download for $19. There is no printed version. Within one day of release they had sold over 1,750 copies, which translates to over $33,000 in sales. With almost no advertising (they promoted it on their blog) and no publishing company to grab their chunk, the profitability of this kind of delivery is undeniable.

Plus, you just can’t buy the kind of promotional momentum delivered by a group of pumped up fans. No matter what industry you’re in.

As for Gnarls Barkley, I’ve been listening to the album on constant repeat ever since I got my copy. I’ve also become part of the marketing plan myself, as I’ve demanded all of my friends check it out or I’ll never speak to them again.

Well there was a wiki for just about everything else, and now thanks to design contemplators UnderConsideration, the design community can have one of its own. The Design Encyclopedia is an ever-growing collection of all things design, with topics ranging from the revolutionary icon Saul Bass to The visual evolution of the letter R.

They say:

“The purpose of the design encyclopedia is to build a resource where anything and everything is explained through its design implications and background.”

I say this rocks and I’m probably going to spend way too much time at this site.

Registered users can join in on the collaboration by creating their own entries or adding to already-existing content.

The site has been around since September of 05, and in the past few months has made considerable leaps in content depth and variety. At present day it is quite the beast.

Also worth mentioning is Speak Up, an incredible design blog also created and maintained by UnderConsideration. Check it.

Just noticed that our site has been featured on CSS Beauty, which is definitely a nice way to start the day.

If you haven’t checked them out before, do. They’re a great place to find design inspiration, news, book reviews, job listings, tutorials and all kinds of other tasty goods.

A recent post shared five tips on how to write better web content. The first: learn to edit.

It’s so tough because school assignments programmed me to ramble. I wrote a ton of papers, and most turned out mediocre due to a minimum length requirement of ten pages (12 pt. Times New Roman, double-spaced, of course).

First drafts would always land a few pages short. I’d squeeze the margins in by a quarter inch, increase the line spacing to 2.25, bump the font size up to 12.25, and cover every paragraph with adjectives. If that didn’t stretch it to having just a line on that tenth page, I’d pad it with more adjectives and take a tenth of an inch where I could.

Years of minimum page requirements taught me to deploy the adjectives at the front-end of the process. Eventually I got so comfortable with verbosity that I still struggle with the habit. Here’s what I do to combat drivel:

• Use a staging area. On posts like this, I start in the scratch pad on my Google Desktop sidebar before moving to a better staging area. When I put together content for a traditional site, I use a wiki for taking inventory, editing and collaborating. When I need collaboration on something short, Writeboards also work nicely. (When Writely allows new registrations again, I’ll add that to my options.)
• Get honest feedback from tough critics. How can I tell if I’m getting honest feedback? If it stings, it’s honest. It helps to work with people who aren’t afraid to tell you when you’re off your game. (Thanks, Matt, Brent, and Mark.)
• Keep it as short as possible concise.
• Identify your weaknesses. It’s through the sting of honest feedback mentioned above that I’ve learned I’m a passive writer, a comma splicer, and a rambler. I watch these reappear, then I do my best to fix them.
• Bookmark and revisit this Lifehack post on fifty tools for better writing.

At the risk of losing my job to everyone else with an index finger, I thought I should share a hilarious infomercial-style site I came across the other day. It’s definitely a new kind of get-rich-quick scheme.

I’ll let the sales letter do its own talking:

“If You Can Point And Click With A Mouse, You Can Make $100,000 A Year Or More As A Desktop Graphic Designer!”

It’s important to point out that this site doesn’t think that it’s joking. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to get a manservant…because I can. I just found out I’m loaded. More from the letter after the jump.

“You don‚Äôt even have to be able to draw a straight line ‚Äî the computer does everything for you.

You can work from home, set your own hours, and have every job be different and challenging.

I make a six-figure income even raising three children at home!

Read this letter and see if this career suits you, too. If it does, we might even give you your first job‚Ķ”

Thanks to Design Observer for pointing this one out.