A monstrous squid with a hundred eyes by John LeMasney via 365sketches.org #cc #design #illustration #inkscape
A monstrous squid with a hundred eyes by John LeMasney via 365sketches.org #cc #design #illustration #inkscape
So today’s sketch is of a squid, which, not being a marine biologist, I think of as simply a sea creäture with 8 tentacles. And black, black eyes. Lots of eyes. So that’s what I drew here for you. A gracefully swimming black-eyed squid.
In Inkscape, I started with an ellipse, which I shaped into a thin US Mailbox type shape, then I used the pencil tool set to Spiro and shape: triangle in to create the tentacles. As a final touch I created a single black eye with a small highlight and then used 0.48’s brand new spraypaint tool which allowed me to quickly fill the space of the head with many clones of the original eye. Hope you enjoyed it!
Google before you Tweet is the new Think before you speak - LeMasney Consulting
Google before you Tweet is the new Think before you speak – LeMasney Consulting
Okay. Where to begin? I got the saying from my good friend @gservo on his tumblog at https://gservo.tumblr.com/#_=_ where he pointed to the original (at least as far as I’m concerned) a repost by artpixie at http://artpixie.tumblr.com/post/395862226/design-is-mine-isnt-it-lovely which was likely found originally at in the glorious letterpress form by Joe Newton. I thought it was lovely, indeed, but I wanted to make my own take on it. I’m counting this as a 365 Request from @gservo even though I’m fairly sure he has no idea that he was involved yet.
So, I typed out each of the words as separate objects in Inkscape, only keeping the fragment “is the new” together, so that I’d have plenty of placement flexibility. I then began to do separate treatments for each piece, trying to evoke some emotion and connotations with color, feel, and size. So, for instance, I treated Google as though I were creating a refreshed logo, adding a web 2.0 candy coating. I gave Tweet a twitter blue glow. I lifted the words off the page with shadows (dark dupes with some blur and distance) and invoked age and a bit of sadness with 70’s colors in the words “think” and “speak”. “before you” in the second phrase got muted, contrary colors. To give the whole design a bit of drama, I added a yellow tinge at the corners with a center gradient.
If I was successful, you get a bit of irony, humor, and perhaps sadness. I wanted the first phrase to almost seem superficial and short lived. I wanted the second phrase to have some direness to it, to seem like an old idea that’s really not.
I also just fell in love with the idea that this statement evokes: that we are changing in the way that we process, store, and deliver intelligence. I heard a recent interview on NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross on the idea that we are moving towards a time where intelligence is defined not so much by what we can hold in our heads and spit out when called upon to do so, but rather how quickly we can filter and manipulate the google-store of data, the invisible web, and the shallow web (which is how I refer to fleeting social media and data). How we use and interpret metadata, semantic supporting information, and tags will likely become more important than whether we can recall the capitals of all 50 states.
Google before you tweet (and think before you speak).
Happy valentine’s day to those of you who celebrate. Today’s sketch is a hummingbird caught out at night. Something about it appealed to me, something touching or romantic. I’m not sure.
Anyway, I got an image of a hummingbird in silhouette, a CC licensed image from Rick Buch on Flickr at http://www.flickr.com/photos/rickbuch/1332747859/ . I thought it was CC licensed because I used the Behold Search Engine and forgot that unless you specifically ask for images that are free to use and modify that by default you might as well be searching Flickr itself, which is not useful if you’re looking for CC images. I should have used one of the other 12 engines for finding great free images that use the CC license engine. Apologies and Kudos to Mr. Buch for a great shot.
I bitmap traced it in Inkscape, then, I added a circle with the ellipse tool and put some blur on it to give a bokeh effect. I applied the colors I wanted, including a slight gradient on the hummingbird from a black center to a very dark blue at the edge. The result is an easily reproduced night effect for almost any simple silhouette photo.
So this was pretty straightforward. I took the pencil tool (set to spiro paths and shape: triangle in) and dropped some wavy lines, which I combined into single path. I duplicated the path about 4 times, adding additional levels of blur effect to each duplicate. In the lowest duplicate, I also applied several outsets, enlarging and broadening the path with the greatest amount of blur. I gave this duplicate a deep blue tint. Finally, I added a deep dark navy square as the bottom most part of the image. I wouldn’t want to run into this thing.
Jay-Z, on to the next one by John LeMasney via 365sketches.org #cc #design #illustration
Jay-Z, on to the next one by John LeMasney via 365sketches.org #cc #design #illustration
I decided that enough people are telling me that they are digging the gradient based bitmap to vector translations that I want to work more often on them. Plus, my most popular posts so far (by far) are those of famous people, icons, or objects. In this sketch, I used Inkscape to take an image of Jay Z and convert it to vector, apply gradients to it, and to a rectangle based background. I then took three rectangles, converted to paths, and brought the opacity down. I’ve seen this kind of triple overlay imagery in several images related to his new album, The Blueprint 3, which I’m enjoying quite a bit. I especially like On To The Next One (feat. Swizz Beatz). I decided to twist the rectangles in space using the node tool to add some depth. If you’re interested in Jay Z and his latest album, you might be interested in seeing another direction it could have gone with the help of a producer named Alex Goose who developed .
Nexus Negative One by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
On Early Adoption and the Nexus
I am a technologist, but I’m not generally an early adopter. Part of being a technologist for me is letting other people kick the tires so that I personally can benefit from their costs, repairs, mistakes, and teachable moments. I’m not saying all techs do this, but I do. I like stability in my software and hardware and services. I have some exceptions, and Google‘s first foray into phone software, Android, is a key example, and one I’ve not regretted.
I pre-ordered the G1 in November of 2008, and while I’ve certainly not regretted my purchase (it’s better than any handheld device I knew of or owned previous to it, phone or otherwise), I’ve been somewhat jealous as new phones running the OS, such as Verizon‘s Droid, have come onto the scene. The G1, though, has not failed me — it gives me what I need in a phone, a set of applications, and functions, generally speaking. I could use an upgrade on the camera. At any rate, this sketch is a tribute to my trusty G1 from T-Mobile, who I’ll likely stay with when I upgrade to the Nexus One or two or three, which is the point of the text there.
I feel like the G1 was a great first step towards the Nexus One, a “Negative One” of sorts. I do not intend for this to be derogatory though I am really looking forward to the release of Google’s N1. Google is doing great things in lots of areas, but the Android operating system is a killer set of apps, and the Nexus One seems like a great home for it.
