Category: professional experience

These are profession related experiences that I wanted to bring to light for your perusal.

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affiliations brand consulting professional activities professional experience

Design process: On creating the Pods & Sods visual branding

Pods and Sods logo by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
Pods and Sods logo by John LeMasney via lemasney.com

My very good long time friend Craig Smith recently reached out to get some visual branding work for his new podcasting venture, Pods & Sods, which focuses on a love for music. Craig has always enjoyed vinyl, a Gen X sense of retro style, and sensitive, thoughtful conversation, so I think this venture will be a hit. Craig generously asked for my help. We started, as always in this kind of work, with font choice and color palettes. I wanted to meet his needs for vinyl centricity, funkiness, and urbanity.

I submitted this:

pods and sods font and color study by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
pods and sods font and color study by John LeMasney via lemasney.com

I had my personal favorites in this batch, but Craig responded quickly that he loved the upper right font, and the top most palette. I took this information and played with the font and color to show the ways in which the branding might be expressed.

pods and sods logo set 1 by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
pods and sods logo set 1 by John LeMasney via lemasney.com

In this set, I wanted to play with that retro style, emphasize or de-emphasize certain colors in the palette, and speak to the conversation and love for music. There are more and less elaborate solutions, but I like to give a range of possibilities. Craig responded that he really loved the upper right solution, and we began to talk about formats for Facebook, iTunes, and other uses.

pods and sods final branding set by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
pods and sods final branding set by John LeMasney via lemasney.com

In the final set, I played with a blue linear element, duplicated the groovy record image to balance the overall weight, and created solutions for a square, rectilinear, and profile image. I really enjoyed this process, it only took a few hours, and it resulted in a very fun portfolio piece. Special thanks to my dear friend Craig for the opportunity and willingness to share. I can’t wait to subscribe. If you love good conversations about good music, make sure to like https://www.facebook.com/groups/podsandsods/ on Facebook! If you’d like to have visual branding development for your business or venture, I’d love to help you! I’m always at lemasney@gmail.com and 609 553 9498.

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Technology and the Arts: On getting started with Scratch

So, Brian Kelley and I did the third installment of Technology and the Arts, our weekly/seasonal podcast that focuses on the connections between technology and art. I thought it was one of our better shows, low on glitch, high on value. Please visit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hwg8Pl-qWSc?t=30m50s where I give a brief demo on MIT‘s Scratch project, a block programming platform for games, art, animation, and more. It’s targeted at kids who want to jump right into programming, but I find that it’s a great platform for any age to work out programming ideas. In the demo, I show you how to get to it, what a project looks like, how to open it for editing, and how too find other projects. Please visit the video in its full form to hear us talk about the rest of our topics, which this week included Google Easter Eggs, a great podcast called It’s a Thing with Molly Wood and Tom Merritt, Jay-Z‘s Picasso Baby art happening as video, and more. Like, subscribe, and find the rest of our online presence at the youtube page.

If you liked this post, please consider subscribing to this site by using the subscription form at the bottom of this page. Maybe Facebook is more your thing? Like our Facebook page at the bottom of this page. We’re also on Twitter, Google Plus, Pinterest, and other social networks listed at the top of this page. Please like, comment, and share if you found this post useful, interesting, or kind.

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Making Sense of the Google Chromebook (September 3rd in Ewing)

Presenting by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
Presenting by John LeMasney via lemasney.com

“Making Sense of the Google Chromebook” Free Computer Program September 3

20110805
Color study (Photo credit: lemasney)

Ewing, NJ:   “Why would I want a laptop that only runs a browser?”  This is the critical question New Jersey technology consultant and graphic designer John LeMasney will explore when he presents The Computer Learning Center’s newest, free Computer Tips and Tricks program on Tuesday, September 3.   “Making Sense of the Google Chromebook” will begin at 2 p.m. in the Ewing Senior and Community Center at 999 Lower Ferry Road. It will be preceded at 1:30 p.m. by a question and answer session during which the audience can direct computer questions to the CLC’s all-volunteer faculty.  Both programs are free and no prior registration is required.
            “Come learn why I stopped carrying around my MacBook Pro and exchanged it for a Chromebook, Google’s low-cost laptop that runs just one application,” says LeMasney. “Chrome begins to make a lot of sense when you look at several converging factors, namely, the increasing availability of high-speed connectivity, the emergence of applications and cloud-based services for real-world functionality, and the ability to stay connected in rather light ways.  I plan to look at both why the Chromebook works for me and the incredible power of this platform, but also why keeping a MacBook around still makes sense for some things.”
              John LeMasney describes himself as an artist, designer, technologist, and consultant whose passion is to help people use technology in sensible ways to enhance their work and life.   His career most recently included work as Manager of Technology Training at Rider University where he assisted faculty, staff and students in integrating technology into their work, classroom, and extracurricular activities.  A Fine Arts graduate of the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, he holds a Master of Arts in Organizational Leadership with distinction from Rider University, as well as LPI Level One Certification in Linux Administration.
       The non-profit Computer Learning Center at Ewing, which sponsors the Computer Tips and Tricks programs as a public service, also offers a variety of PC and iPad computer skills courses for adults in central New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania.  For further information about the September 3 program, courses or directions, call 609-882-5086, 609-883-1776, Ext. 6205 or visit the CLC website at www.clcewing.org.

[flexiblemap address=”999 Lower Ferry Road, Ewing, NJ”]

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An introduction to Arduino, Raspberry Pi, and open source hardware.

At 7 pm, on Monday August 5th, 2013, I’ll be at Princeton Public Library, I’m going to be giving an introductory overview of open source hardware, the Make movement, and the ideology of openness. In particular, I’ll be talking about Arduino, Raspberry Pi, and related hardware projects.

(post event note: Thanks to everyone who came out, and here is the link to the presentation)

Arduino is an open-source electronics prototyp...
Arduino is an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software. In other words you can build all kinds of cool shit with it. And yes, you can program it with Python 🙂 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Arduino is an electronics learning platform. The instructions for how to make one from scratch are freely available, which is why it is considered open source hardware, though many people find it far easier and supportive to the platform to just buy one. You can get them at your local Radio Shack. Once you have it connected to a computer, you can begin to program it or run programs that others have made for it, called sketches. The key idea with Arduino is that you program it to accept input from sensors or scripts, and to produce output in the form of light, sound, and other signals. With this basic idea, you can use the Arduino to solve little problems like knowing when the Dryer has stopped, feeding your animals reasonably while you are away, or making sophisticated environment based games.

Raspberry Pi
Raspberry Pi (Photo credit: tkramm)

The Raspberry Pi is perhaps a simpler idea for the uninitiated: a computer capable of doing most anything your laptop, desktop, tablet or phone can do (given the monitor, keyboard and mouse) available for $25-$35 dollars, depending on model. Because of the incredibly low price but relatively strong computing power, you can use the Pi to do all kinds of interesting things that you would not consider doing with your desktop or laptop machine. Running home automation, media servers, dedicated graphics workstations, an email terminal, a streaming media interface for your TV, and much more.

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Art All Night 2013: Master Class on Getting Started with Graphic Design

getting started graphic design
getting started graphic design
getting started graphic design
getting started graphic design

Saturday, June 15, 2013
7:30pm until 8:15pm

In this session, local graphic designer and technology consultant John LeMasney will demonstrate how to get started with digital graphic design using free (open source) software, and will introduce the concepts of color choice, font choice, visual inspiration, best practices, and resources. If you ever find yourself tasked with putting words and images on a page in an interesting way, but have never had any training in how to do that effectively, this class is for you!

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Tuesday, May 14th, 7 pm – Free WordPress Boot Camp!

leaf by John leMasney via lemasney.com
leaf by John leMasney via lemasney.com
WordPress
WordPress (Photo credit: Adriano Gasparri)

WORDPRESS CAMP FOR BEGINNER BLOGGERS PART 1

May 14, 2013 – 7:00pm -8:30pm

Location: Princeton Public Library  Technology Center

Interested in creating your own blog? In this two-part course, social media and technology expert, John LeMasney will teach how to start and manage a blog for free through WordPress. Prior web design experience is not needed. Session 2 will be held on Tuesday, May 21.

Skill Level: Basic

No registration necessary

 

 

 

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