Artist, graphic designer, & tech consultant in Nelson County, VA
Category:affiliations
These are groups, organizations and projects with which LeMasney Consulting is proudly affiliated with through work or other connections. We stand for the same things as the organizations featured in these posts.
A waveform of me saying the word 'open' by lemasney.
A waveform of me saying the word ‘open’ by lemasney.
calligraphy by lemasney
When in doubt, visit your library by lemasney
Do not covet your ideas by lemasney
Symphonic logo by lemasney
delicate stained glass chandelier, photo by lemasney
Tonight, at 7 pm at Princeton Public Library, I’ll be introducing self-designated non-designers about the basics of graphic design for non-designers. It’s free to the public, no registration necessary, in the technology center.
In the talk, I introduce the key ideas of graphic design to those who may never have had the discussion before:
Fonts and typography
Layout and space
Color and palette
Defining and simplifying messages for casual viewers
Getting one’s attention and engagement in an over-engaged world
Visual branding
If you are like me, you went through 12 years of school learning about reading, writing, communication, arithmetic, history, and other important basic skills.
But I did not learn about video production, graphic design, data visualization or other contemporary communication skills while I was in school until I went to college. Not because it was too difficult to learn, as many kids are introduced to these topics in grade school now, but because the emphasis was different. So those of us who are asked to communicate in the new visual ways are often lost, not having even the vocabulary of visual communication. If this describes you, I think you would benefit greatly from the class. I hope to see you there!
Oh, you can’t make it? That’s too bad. Luckily, I have a phone (609 553 9498) and an email address (john@lemasney.com) where we can still talk about it! Talk to you soon.
I had a lot of fun designing this visual brand for Symphonic, an ideological company I’m thinking about that focuses on ways to bring people together. One of the themes that they might use to bring people together ideologically is through sustainability, another through making, another through understanding technology, and so on.
I have served with a few sustainability organizations, and even served on a committee for one. Their purpose is usually transparent: help people to understand that our choices affect the planet, in either positive or negative ways, and that the effects come back to reach us later, in an almost karmic way. Festivals are one effective way to expand outreach, and so they are common event choices for these kinds of groups. The festival usually involves food, awareness games, and other activities to create an impression that reminds you of the organization and its messages. I have seen many t-shirt giveaways at these kinds of festivals as incentive for people to collect a reminder of the event. I have a problem with this, very often. But, maybe you can help me to solve it.
My problem is that I do not see giving t-shirts away as pro-sustainability. If we are buying new shirts, they are still getting bought, new, not reused, not thrift, not gift. It supports the consumerist ideals: more, new, different, need, want. But, done correctly, we might be able to work with t-shirts, differently.
What if the Symphonic festival was a free-thrift and recycling/reusing drive?
The idea is simple: People bring clean, used shirts (and other items) to give away, as they might at a thrift store. then, they get to choose from whatever shirts and other items that have been collected, and choose a visual design (in the form of stencils or other materials) to change it if they wish. There might be a t-shirt stencil-printing station using recycled or high sustainability ink or a manual embroidery station where someone’s monogram might be taught and sewn by the new shirt owner. Simple designs with ideas about the best of sustainability and preservation could be screen-printed or stenciled on exchanged shirts by the new shirt owners. The festival would be free, services donated, t-shirts and other items exchanged and up-cycled by them. Donated leftovers that were not exchanged could be donated to thrift stores, or life support groups.
Imagine, we would have people participating in Making (designing, printing, creating), as opposed to consuming (browsing, liking, buying), in the traditional sense. By understanding and participating, not just observing and consuming as we are asked to do in many parts of our society, we understand that tiny bit of the universe in a new way.
This is an amazing possibility for a thread to emerge in the minds of attendees through open source, sustainability, sharing, teaching, reusing, recycling, up-cycling, code awareness, making, understanding, and seeing.
The common thread? These activities all point to truth, as one can know it, as they put their hands on it, modify and understand it, and know it. They get to see, act, and make (design, etc.) choices for themselves, and possibly discover a truth of their own. We are usually limited to buying or only knowing another’s truth.
There’s a free and open to the public class tonight (4/15/2015) at Princeton Public Library at 7 pm on Google Drive. I’m excited for the session because in many of the conversations that I have with clients about how they manage documents and archives, I usually end up discussing Google Drive with them as a solution.
Why Google Drive?
Because of:
Cloud-based storage, about 15 GB for free
Rich creation, collaboration, and editing tools for documents, spreadsheets, drawings, and presentations
The multi-platform nature of drive, in that it opens up anywhere you have a browser or app.
The security that protects my documents, especially when using two-factor authentication.
I hope you can join us for my talk on one of my favorite software services,
Take typed notes – You can use it as a simple note taking application, and many people do only that.
Take image based notes – you can also use it to take images and add them to your research or study notes.
Take voice based notes – You can be your own Don Draper and use it to do voice based dictation, with transcription!
Take webpage based notes – You can collect web pages for reference in Evernote
Annotate your notes – Once you have created your notes, there are lots of ways to add commentary.
Store and organize your notes online – You use Evernote’s cloud service to store your notes, and use notebooks and tags to group them.
Get to your notes from anywhere – Because it’s a cloud based service, you get the benefit of access from all of your devices. That includes most OSes on the desktop, phone, tablet, Raspberry Pi, etc.
Study – Evernote is a student’s friend, allowing you to collect all of your citations, tag them, add them to a notebook, and include lots of different media types.
Do research – Field researchers love the abilities of Evernote, from the multifaceted media input types to the organization and taxonomy tools.
Support your business – Some people use Evernote as a customer relationship Management tool, and so might you.
English: The logo of the blogging software WordPress. Deutsch: WordPress Logo 中文: WordPress Logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
A client asked me recently how to affect the ways that posts show chronologically in WordPress. By default, WordPress shows the latest publish post first, the next most recent post next, and so on. This is affected mostly by the date at the time the post was published is set to the date of the post by default, even though the post may exist elsewhere in time chronologically. This is especially true if you are moving old content from another source to a new WordPress site.
How to affect chronology of posts in WordPress
There are at least two ways to do this. In this case we are just talking about posts, as WordPress pages use a different way of ordering.
Edit a post.
In the area where it says publish/update, look for “Published On:” where you can edit the publish date. The most recent dated posts will show first, the next most recent next, etc. This will allow you to set articles from 2005 as having been published then.
In your particular case, you may also want an especially important post to show up first regardless of date, and so you have a second option:
How to make a post sticky in WordPress
In the same publish area, look for the “visibility:” area, where you can set whether a post is visible or not.
In this area, you can also set a post as “sticky” which allows it to show first until you turn off the option.
Click on the checkbox next to “Stick this post to the front page” and it will show as the first post until you change the setting back.
Make sure to click ok and update, or the change will not be saved.
Project 09 – Motorized Pinwheel in Fritzing by lemasney
panda by lemasney
Helen Keller quote by lemasney
Rocketship by lemasney
Bowl of noodles by lemasney
Do not covet your ideas by lemasney
Marylin Monroe as Pixel art by lemasney
Don’t eat anything incapable of rotting by lemasney
body sized tablet by lemasney
Design Course for the non-designer.
Tonight, at 7 pm in the Technology Center at Princeton Public Library, I will be teaching a design course for free to the public about the basic tenets of graphic design. No registration is necessary. In the class, we will discuss color, typography, layout, shape, format, tools, inspiration and more. The increasing importance of visual literacy for communication in an increasingly visual communication environment means that those who are simply using text, clip-art, and other more common tools are making messages that are getting lost among more visual presentations. Come visit us and let’s fix that.
“This workshop covers the foundations of design principles, key (free) tools for design and illustration, and sources for inspiration to help you create the best visual solution for your particular needs. Learn about color theory, typography, layout and more. Instructor: John LeMasney. Skill Level: Intermediate” – Graphic Design for Non-Designers | Princeton Public Library –
