
I hope you all had a wonderful valentine’s day.
tags: valentine, 365, lemasney, sharing, daily, open source, creative commons, GNU, GPL, CC-SA, postaday2011
John LeMasney (lemsy) is an artist, graphic designer, and technology creative. He is located in beautiful Nelson County, VA, but works remotely with ease. Contact him at: lemasney@gmail.com to discuss your next creative project.

It is likely that I am just upset that it’s not a TiVo remote, but I really think this remote has some incredible design flaws.
tags: Verizon, fail, lemasney, 365, daily, postaday2011, GNU, GPL, GIMP, Inkscape, open source, creative commons, cc-sa

So Rider’s Recreation Programs on Facebook announced a t-shirt design contest. I decided to put this in as an entry. I have to say, I was a little perplexed about what to do besides text because the contest didn’t have a lot of direction. Which sports are being played? Who would be wearing the shirt? The Athletes? People who buy them? When is the championship, and what is at stake? Any of those answers would have given me a bit more visual influence to go on, but as it was, they asked me to “be creative” and I tried.

Laura Hyatt, who is basically synonymous in my mind with sustainable practice at Rider University, recently approached me about a cool project. She is looking to emulate successful classroom sustainability efforts in other universities, and asked me if I could help with certification branding. I looked at some of her examples, and made these. By demonstrating that in your classroom you do things like use refillable reusable beverage containers, turn off lights, do little or no printing, provide materials electronically, practice sustainability with texts and assignments, and use the outdoors and locality in your curriculum, you gain points on a standard scale. The more points you get, the higher the certification you can meet. I’m hoping to have my Digital Media Communication class be the first Emerald certified class at Rider University. Thanks for the project, Laura!
tags: Rider University, sustainability, emblems, logos, branding, certification, classroom, lemasney, 365, sharing, postaday2011, GNU, GPL, open source, Inkscape, creative commons, cc-sa

This is another in the series of predetermined captions. Nancy McMillin was kind enough to suggest the phrase “Don’t just sit there with your teeth in your mouth” and this is almost exactly what I pictured when I read the line.
In the GIMP, I brought in a picture of myself, and a picture of some gnarly teeth. I selected my jaw from the photo, then cut and pasted it as a new layer. I placed the teeth behind the hole where my jaw had been, by placing that layer behind my photo. I rotated the jaw layer and moved it below the teeth in the image, as the top most layer. I worked to recreated the goatee in a the image by cloning.
If I did it again, I’m sure I could make it more believable, but one sketch a day makes time a luxury. I’m sure I’ll use the technique in future sketches. Thanks, Nancy, and everybody please keep the captions coming!