She feels in italics – Henry James, CC-BY lemasney
On Henry James – She feels in italics…
“James contributed significantly to literary criticism, particularly in his insistence that writers be allowed the greatest possible freedom in presenting their view of the world. James claimed that a text must first and foremost be realistic and contain a representation of life that is recognisable to its readers. Good novels, to James, show life in action and are, most importantly, interesting. His imaginative use of point of view, interior monologue and unreliable narrators in his own novels and tales brought a new depth and interest to narrative fiction. An extraordinarily productive writer, in addition to his voluminous works of fiction he published articles and books of travel, biography, autobiography, and criticism, and wrote plays, some of which were performed during his lifetime, though with limited success when compared to the success of his novels. James was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911, 1912 and 1916.” – Henry James – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia – http://goo.gl/67fA3m
A waveform of me saying the word 'open' by lemasney.
Symphonic logo by lemasney
Do not covet your ideas by lemasney
calligraphy by lemasney
A waveform of me saying the word ‘open’ by lemasney.
delicate stained glass chandelier, photo by lemasney
When in doubt, visit your library 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.
I had someone ask me yesterday, and I took a moment to think about my answer. I said that technology was moving towards individualized experiences that are more immersive, connected, and transporting.
Immersive
For example, we are starting to see more reasonable, affordable, and comfortable virtual reality gear. It’s still large and clunky, but the prototypes show that we could eventually just have these functions present in the form of our glasses. When you can pick up and put on a normal pair of glasses and not have battery or nausea or connectivity issues, people might spend their entire day in augmented or virtual reality. Ernest Kline‘s Ready Player One predicts this in very interesting ways, and Microsoft’s Hololens is a pretty promising way to think about first steps. The Oculus Rift and Samsung offerings are amazing, but I don;t see anyone walking around with them on anytime soon. This is an adoption factor.
Connected
Some of us spend some time in social networks, like Facebook. I spend a lot of time there. I often find myself defending social media against the claim that it is not social. In other words, many critics of social media see it as dividing people, and not a gathering place, and I simply disagree. Further, I believe that my online, social network based conversations and posts strengthen and enhance my in-person meetings with people. When I greet someone, we might spend 5 minutes talking about the various things we had shared and seen from each other recently. I feel far more connected with people who are on social media with me than not. We stay connected in the interim between meetings. I suspect that this will not decrease, but increase, and that it might not be in a form that we recognize, like Facebook, but maybe the virtual reality systems described above. Maybe a less pixellated form of Second Life, but hopefully, something far more grand.
Transporting
Before those things happen, we are already starting to see visual media taking on new importance in our browsing habits. Further, video is becoming the prominent media. This is in part because technologies like bandwidth and storage are at the point that they can more readily handle video without hiccups. Video is interesting as medium because it offers the most senses to be interpreted by the watcher. More than still photos or audio alone. Therefore you get more of a sense of what happened in the captured scene. Tools like Periscope allow for real-time capture and broadcast, and their philosophy is that they are offering teleportation services, which is kind of amazing. I believe this heralds a shift towards technology as superpower or science non-fiction. So perhaps in the future, technology will give you the power of flight, invisibility, or x-ray vision, but instead of you doing these with your natural senses, your body would just be sensually informed (by sensors, actuators, signals) that you were doing these things.
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,
Don’t eat anything incapable of rotting by lemasney
So, those of you paying close attention may have noticed that I write about food. A lot. And so you might ask:
What does food and nutrition have to do with technology, design, and training, John?
And my answer is straightforward: Everything.
Cooking, food, nutrition, and technology.
Food and nutrition in my life are highly influenced by technology. Every time I eat anything, the next thing I do is use my phone, computer, or other Internet connected device to add to my food log. I count every calorie I eat. I am able to review, analyze, or otherwise know the details of every calorie I eat, going back years. Around my neck, always, is my fitbit, which counts steps, stairs, sleep, and other data about what I’m putting out as far as energy. The difference between when I was very heavy and now is that now I know to the calorie what I am taking in and what I am burning. As a result, technology is directly responsible, in part, for my level of fitness.
Cooking, food, nutrition, and design.
Food is design in that when you cook, count calories, or otherwise plan your nutrition, that is design. It’s not visual design, or architecture, granted, but it is very clearly design. In fact, I would posit that the difference between the obese and the normal weighted is very often the result of a lack of design. I’ve redesigned my nutritional plan, and lost over 100 pounds. Design is the act of codifying, simplifying, and making clear a plan of communication, layout, or direction. Taking hold of one’s nutrition is a pure form of design.
Cooking, food, nutrition, and training.
I have learned a lot in my journey towards health. I know when and exactly how I am mis-eating, which I did not know before. I knew when I was eating badly, I knew when I was eating cleanly, but I did not know, numerically, to what degree either had as an effect on my fitness. I know now. I firmly believe that I could help (e.g. train) anyone with a weight problem to resolve it, if they want to. There is no cost but your will in my method, and no disbenefit except awareness of how badly you might be eating. But as soon as you lose your extra weight, you’ll forget all about that.
