This is my Curriculum Vitae. If it will help you to understand what I have accomplished, it’s in this list.
Just yesterday, I posted a quick illustration of one of my favorite everyday foods: 4 Ingredient bread. Every time I looked at it today, I had some reservations about the design, and this happens fairly typically. I thought it might be interesting to play with the design over time and post the results of stopping points to show something of my editing process for design work. Here’s today’s stopping point. It might be finished, it might not, but I figured I’d share.
I eat my own home-baked bread every day, and decided to make a quick design to show the beautiful simplicity in bread. With some flour, water, yeast and salt, you can have a beautiful loaf of your own.
John LeMasney of LeMasney Technology and Design Consulting will discuss Pinterest, a visual social bookmarking system that is typically unfairly dismissed as a place for wedding photos and pictures of vegetarian recipes. Pinterest is a way to collect, curate, share and discuss photos of any kind, and this article will discuss 10 ways you can use it to engage patrons and other stakeholders in the visual brand, items, and topics at libraries. You can increase visibility of your programs & assets, and give people new ways to click-through to borrowing.
In support of equal rights for humans in all matters. Let’s not stop at marriage. Let’s not stop at LGBTQ rights. We are all equal; It’s time to recognize it.
I made the image above using a web-based service (pimptheface.com) based on the police sketch artist’s toolkit called identikit. I have an undergraduate degree in the fine arts. I have done many self portraits. None has exactly this look, feel, or tone. None was as easy or quick to make. This looks like a police sketch and carries a lot of interpretive content related to that idea. There is a lot of value in that. Some might say “but it’s not yours” or “it’s cookie cutter”. My response is that for this particular application, that was the point. One should not dismiss services or tools when the result is the right result.
I wanted to talk a bit about my consulting experience on clients and predetermined feelings about originality, ability, and creativity.
Often when I first consult with someone I’ll ask the questions below to get some sense of what they are trying to do. If a client says that they want a web presence that they can update, and they want it up next week, I will invariably respond with WordPress or Drupal as a solution, depending on the number of pages and other factors of complexity that they need to have on the site.
I try not to expect the response “Oh, I don’t want a blog”, but that is usually what I hear. The problem with the response is a bias against blogging: commonality, simplicity, and a lack of creativity and effort. The engine itself is not predetermined to produce uncreative, unoriginal content. When they say, “well, I don’t want it to look like a blog”, I explain that the look and feel of the site is completely customizable and extensible, and that the reason that you see so many blogs that have the same look and feel is because the work of proper theme choice and customization has not been done. I try to explain that creativity, originality, and effort are all possible with these solutions, and that the words, images, video and other media that you produce and share are what will tell your viewers. A lot of my work in web development starts with convincing clients about the potential success of the solution. I have also often suggested Facebook, Google Plus, or Tumblr as the entirety of one’s web presence. It’s the content, and the audience’s reception to that content, not the platform, that determines success. I offer the following questions to help you to start to think about what the purpose of your design is.
Interested in these questions? The answers are even better! I’m at lemasney@gmail.com
Regardless of the outcomes of the Supreme Court votes, the Human Rights Campaign won. It was able to move and align with so many people so quickly, with such simplicity, that it seemed effortless. On Facebook, they just posted a photo of a symbol of equal rights, the emblem of the Human Rights Campaign, asked people to share their agreement with the message, and represent themselves with that symbol. And they did, and everyone saw it, often before they knew what it was about. And Human Rights were often mentioned and examined as part of the explanation…
Jim: “What’s the whole red equals about?”
Mary: “Oh, the HRC asked people to show support for Marriage Equality while the Supreme Court considers the issue.”
Jim: “Oh, I can get behind that.”
Mary: “Yeah!”
You may have noticed the ocean of red equals signs on Facebook on Tuesday. All of the red equals signs were preceded by blue equals signs, and each happened because people decided to replace their profile pictures with a message of human equality. The original blue one is the classic equal rights emblem. The red version is a subtle reminder about the issue focusing on love, the change being brought to light by Facebook icons like George Takei.
If you ever have a hundred thousand people put up your logo, you are doing it right. That is successful brand.
I myself was moved to create my own version of the design, as I thought the ones that most used, with all due respect, were of too low a resolution. I also wanted to add some depth, shadow and glow to the images. I offered them freely and asked that people re-use them, which some people did, and I thanked them for both their re-use and the support of equality.
Then, I noticed that people were doing new iterations, such as simply adding translucent equals to their existing profile photos. The iterations and development of the emblem is likely not done, and it will be interesting to see the marriage equality meme evolve. In this respect, it’s also interesting from a symbolic evolution standpoint. It all happened so quick. And all because of a suggestion by a campaign. That is power, it’s leadership, and it’s an exemplar of how social media can help make us better.
Banana Bread.
All Rise in the Oven! Recipe 3: Strawberry Bread
Winston-Salem church to stop marrying heterosexual couples in protest
Beyoncé and Madonna come out in support of equal marriage
More Great Signs From The Supreme Court Marriage Equality Rallies
Lunch & Learn: John LeMasney – 10 things you should know about Android and the Nexus 7.
