Category: portfolio

This is a portfolio of my work in many forms. It should give you some insight as to the products I might help you to create.

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5 of 365: Alignment #design #principle

5 of 365 - alignment design principle by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
5 of 365 - alignment design principle by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
5 of 365 - alignment design principle by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
5 of 365 – alignment design principle by John LeMasney via lemasney.com

Alignment is a design method for maintaining order, readability, and sense. Horizontal and vertical alignment in design allows for easier reading, a more aesthetic layout, and more sensible use of the designed object. Unless the designer is specifically trying to create visual chaos for effect, alignment should be implemented well. By using visible or invisible grids, tables, or other visual underlying structures to guide the placement of items in a design, the designer can improve the understanding of the design, no matter the content.

“”Should I Stay or Should I Go” is a song by the English punk rock band The Clash, from their album Combat Rock. It was written in 1981 and featured Mick Jones on lead vocals. It became the band’s only number-one single on the UK Singles Chart, a decade after it was originally released. In November 2004, it was ranked at 228 on Rolling Stones “The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time” list.[1] In 2009 it was ranked 42nd on VH1’s program 100 Greatest Hard Rock Songs.” ~ Should I Stay or Should I Go – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia – http://goo.gl/iFwdF

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4 of 365: Affordance #design #principle

4 of 365 - affordance - place setting by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
4 of 365 - affordance - place setting by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
4 of 365 - affordance - place setting by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
4 of 365 – affordance – place setting by John LeMasney via lemasney.com

Affordance is the design principle in which a designer considers the ease with which the user can make use of the design, in comparison to other solutions. A design with high affordance is valued because it makes more logical sense than other solutions. It allows for more understanding, and less misunderstanding. An example is a door with a handle on one side and a push plate on the other, in which the suggestion to pull is clear from one side and the suggestion to push is clear from the other. Another example is that both a round wheel and a square wheel will roll, but one clearly makes easier work of rolling. Good design that incorporates affordance considers the clarity and ease with which a task is done.

I recently attended a lovely lunch with a friend, and it seemed as though there was no design to the layout of the table, that anything could go anywhere. In learning about affordance, I thought that designing a placemat in which places were predetermined for the various dishes, drinks, and accoutrement would have been helpful. Since there is a shared central dish in the design, all of the places would be connected by it. The design could work in a round table, a long table, or a square table. By suggesting actions, the design considers affordance. In the same way that you can push on a handled door, you could place dishes anywhere on this place setting, but the most sensible action suggested by the design brings ease and order. This placemat would be reversible, in the event that a left handed person was seated.

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3 of 365: Aesthetic Usability Effect #design #principle

3 of 365 - aesthetic usability effect by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
3 of 365 - aesthetic usability effect by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
3 of 365 - aesthetic usability effect by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
3 of 365 – aesthetic usability effect by John LeMasney via lemasney.com

The Aesthetic Usability Effect is a design principle and theory that says that a design that is more aesthetic (e.g. attractive, visually appealing) is more likely to be used, chosen, or be interpreted as better. Aesthetic designs are also more likely to be perceived as easier to use that less aesthetic designs, even if that is not actually the case.

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2 of 365: Expository and Comparative Advance Organizers

2 of 365 - advance organizer on serif vs sans serif by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
2 of 365 - advance organizer on serif vs sans serif by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
2 of 365 - advance organizer on serif vs sans serif by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
2 of 365 – advance organizer on serif vs sans serif by John LeMasney via lemasney.com

Advance Organizers are a design method where an audience is given new information in one of two ways to become oriented with a new concept. In cases where the audience is newly introduced to the topic, we might use an expository advance organizer. If an alien was trying to learn about the way that a human hand functions, for instance, we might use an expository advance organizer in the form of a description of the look, feel, uses, and functions of the hand. If the alien had hand like appendages, let’s say 3-pointed claws, we might use their understanding of that in the form of a comparative advance organizer that showed the similarities and differences between the alien claw and the human hand. The purpose of either would be to grant the audience a better understanding of the new concept before going into deeper detail, training, or demonstration.

Above is an illustration of the comparative visual anatomy of serif typography and sans-serif typography, in which the letter A is used in a comparative advance organizational method, since you, the audience, is likely familiar with the letter A.

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1 of 365 (2014): The 80/20 Principle

1 of 365 - the 80 - 20 Principle by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
1 of 365 - the 80 - 20 Principle by John LeMasney via lemasney.com

1 of 365 - the 80 - 20 Principle by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
1 of 365 – the 80 – 20 Principle by John LeMasney via lemasney.com

Welcome, all, to the 2014 edition of 365 sketches. This is a simple offering for the first sketch, but gives some idea of what I intend to talk about. In this series, I intend to learn more about design principles, because in the past I focused mostly on method and technique. I hope that this series teaches me as much about design ideology as past series have taught me about design method. It is perhaps evidence of “a cart before the horse” which I am trying to remedy.

The 80/20 Principle is one in which a well-working system of any kind (book, technology, structure, organization) has distributed value and power, where the 20 percent represents the most important, the most valuable, and the most protected, and the rest supports it. We are experiencing political difficulty in this country at the moment, according to this theory, because the 20 percent has been reduced too far. The same is true in design, books, movies, or other organizations of content: If there is too little to gain from participation in the whole, e.g., if only a small percentage holds the entire value, then the entire structure falls apart, and holds no value at all. The best design, according to the theory, balances value and support at a ratio near to, but not necessarily equal to, 80/20.

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I’ve decided to resume 365sketches in 2014

365sketches.org
365sketches.org

A nighttime rocket launch
A nighttime rocket launch (Photo credit: lemasney)

Relaunching 365sketches

I think that perhaps the greatest design work I’ve ever done was for the 365 Sketches project formerly at http://365sketches.org. I did it for 3 years between 2009 and 2012, with a one year break. You can see the best work from that project at the portfolio page. The concept is simple:

One design a day, using open source software.

It helped me to learn how to use Inkscape thoroughly, build an audience, develop my design, layout and typography skills, develop a portfolio, and get feedback and advice from stakeholders like you.

I will do a few things differently this time. I’ll screencast (record my screen to show the method) more often. I’ll be more explicit in my exposition. I’ll use and show classic design principles. I’ll use Drupal to develop the collection as a very clean portfolio version, while using WordPress, here, for the details. Both will be located here on lemasney.com, and I will likely migrate the existing content from 365 to this site as a category.

On January 1st, 2014, it begins.

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