Tag: John LeMasney

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brand consulting insights teaching workshops

The case for improving your visual creation skills #design #technology #transliteracy

A visual list of dangers
A visual list of dangers

It is becoming more important to know how to create original images, videos, and other visual content. You need transliteracy skills.

20060410 (2)
20060410 (2) (Photo credit: nikontino)

In the same way that it has traditionally been important to know how to read, write and perform arithmetic as a basic skill set of  communication, it has become increasingly important for people to create their own images, video, and other graphics to communicate their particular message effectively. It’s almost as though people only recently realized their visual preferences, maybe as a reaction to the emergence of visually motivated social networks like Pinterest, a place for people to curate, share, and collect images with verbal content becoming secondary.

A more visual web of content requires new skills.

A screenshot of the GIMP 2.2.8 raster graphic ...
A screenshot of the GIMP 2.2.8 raster graphic software. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

As we move towards more digital interactions, and enjoy more visual web content from producers as a first introduction to their messages, we can see that they are creating a digital trail for themselves. Other people then find and interpret what they are about through quick visual assessments. If you look at my Pinterest boards, you will quickly get a sense of what I am about, because the cursory glance at a series of images does not carry the threshold of understanding that reading text does. We must slow down and engage our verbal brain to interpret the letterforms, then the words, then the combination of words to make meaning. With images, we need only recognize the items in the image to begin interpretation. We want to be able to leave our own visual trail, one with interesting, insightful, and communicative images, videos, and graphics that tell our story. If you do not know how to edit a photograph, make cuts, titles, and transitions in video and audio, or create a reasonable graphic, you will become more reliant on others to produce, edit, or change content for you. In the same way that you would not have to rely on someone else to create your word processed documents for you, you do not want to rely on someone else for mediating your visual content.

You can learn how to make great images and videos.

There are fantastic free tools and resources to begin to learn how to use these toolkits in the same way that you learned how to use browsers, word processors, spreadsheets, and operating systems. If you learned by spending time in the applications, the same will likely be true for visual applications. If you learned by reading a book, you may want to try the same for these applications. In order to learn Inkscape, an open source illustration application like Corel Draw and Adobe Illustrator, by book, I strongly suggest The Book of Inkscape, by Dimitry Kosonov. You likely learned word processing and other  applications because a need arose for you to become familiar with them to do schoolwork, business, or to communicate with others. A new need has emerged in digital transliteracy: for people to communicate in person, on paper, on-screen, in images, in video, in voice, and in graphics.

You can be your own graphic designer, video producer, or photographer with the skills to support you.

English: An infographic illustrating and compa...
English: An infographic illustrating and comparing the popularity of different geosocial networking services (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

With newly acquired video editing, image manipulation, and other visual media skills, you can begin to tell new stories that move people differently than a page or a voice can, take part in the remixed web, leave your creations waiting to be found and enjoyed, and have a kind of digital presence that engages, sticks with visual learners, and promotes you differently than text can because of the very nature of the media.

 

I’d like to help you to gain these skills!

Contact me at lemasney@gmail.com or 609-553-9498 to talk about how we can begin to acquire these skills for your organization, service, or product. Let’s do something great together!

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brand consulting curriculum vitae insights

On originality, creativity, and templates: 5 rules for choosing a solution

pimptheface-com-400x288I made the image above using a web-based service (pimptheface.com) based on the police sketch artist’s toolkit called identikit. I have an undergraduate degree in the fine arts. I have done many self portraits. None has exactly this look, feel, or tone. None was as easy or quick to make. This looks like a police sketch and carries a lot of interpretive content related to that idea. There is a lot of value in that. Some might say “but it’s not yours” or “it’s cookie cutter”. My response is that for this particular application, that was the point. One should not dismiss services or tools when the result is the right result.

I wanted to talk a bit about my consulting experience on clients and predetermined feelings about originality, ability, and creativity.

Often when I first consult with someone I’ll ask the questions below to get some sense of what they are trying to do. If a client says that they want a web presence that they can update, and they want it up next week, I will invariably respond with WordPress or Drupal as a solution, depending on the number of pages and other factors of complexity that they need to have on the site.

I try not to expect the response “Oh, I don’t want a blog”, but that is usually what I hear. The problem with the response is a bias against blogging: commonality, simplicity, and a lack of creativity and effort. The engine itself is not predetermined to produce uncreative, unoriginal content. When they say, “well, I don’t want it to look like a blog”, I explain that the look and feel of the site is completely customizable and extensible, and that the reason that you see so many blogs that have the same look and feel is because the work of proper theme choice and customization has not been done. I try to explain that creativity, originality, and effort are all possible with these solutions, and that the words, images, video and other media that you produce and share are what will tell your viewers. A lot of my work in web development starts with convincing clients about the potential success of the solution. I have also often suggested Facebook, Google Plus, or Tumblr as the entirety of one’s web presence. It’s the content, and the audience’s reception to that content, not the platform, that determines success. I offer the following questions to help you to start to think about what the purpose of your design is.

  1. What are you trying to do? In other words, are you trying to get the word out? Are you trying to learn something new? Are you trying to get more customers? Are you trying to reinforce brand? Are you trying to change your audience? Those questions, more so than what do you want to use to do it, are the important ones, and will lead us to a solution that meets those needs. Do we need to beat a new path or reinvent the wheel to do that?
  2. What is your best result? What does success look like? If you are trying to get more customers, how many more do you want? If you are trying to sell more plates of food, how many more will it take for you to see value for effort? If we have a goal, we can work towards that goal, track it, and know when we’ve accomplished it. Now, what is the best way to go about that?
  3. What are you an expert at, and how do you carry out your success there? If you are a successful multiple restaurateur, what gets people to come in? Is it the food? The ambiance? The site? The service? All of the above? In what ways will that help us to decide the directions we take with your project? If we treat your design project the same way that we treat a new dish or new restaurant, you will have a better sense of the choices you should make to make success there too. The solution we choose in graphic design or technology choice should please you as a successful new dish would.
  4. What is it that makes your service, product, or organization unique? If you are doing something in your work that is also done by 20 others, why would they choose you over someone else? If I’m already at Wal-Mart, or CVS, and they do the same thing you do, and I have to go through the register here, what about your service is going to make someone say “I’d prefer to do this at Joe’s”? Answering this question tells us what we need to emphasize in our project, but if you don’t have a good answer for this, you might want to look at another business.
  5. What is your brand? As always, we want to know what it is that you are trying to underline about what you do. We want to have alignment between what you believe about your organization and what your customers and potential customers believe about you. What design choices, technology choices, and marketing choices do we make to do that?

Interested in these questions? The answers are even better! I’m at lemasney@gmail.com

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brand curriculum vitae

On the origin of Comic Sans

On the origins of Comic Sans, cc-by lemasney
On the origins of Comic Sans, cc-by lemasney
On the origins of Comic Sans, cc-by lemasney
On the origins of Comic Sans, cc-by lemasney

I woke up one day recently with this idea in my head for an illustration of the origins of Comic Sans, Microsoft’s often inappropriately misused, popularly hated, comic font. Free to reuse as you wish with attribution. (Origin of Comic Sans by John LeMasney via lemasney.com)

‘Comic Sans MS is a sans-serif casual script typeface designed by Vincent Connare and released in 1994 by Microsoft Corporation. It is a non-connecting script inspired by comic book lettering, intended for use in informal documents and children’s materials.[1] The typeface has been supplied with Microsoft Windows since the introduction of Windows 95, initially as a supplemental font in the Windows Plus Pack and later in Microsoft Comic Chat. Describing it, Microsoft has explained that “this casual but legible face has proved very popular with a wide variety of people.”[2] The typeface’s widespread use, often in situations for which it was not intended, has been the subject of criticism and mockery.[3]’

from “Comic Sans – Wikipedia” at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comic_Sans curated by lemasney creative. Feel free to share.
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brand consulting insights

The Customer and the Service: Episode 21

on idea
on idea (Photo credit: lemasney)

In this episode, Sean and John talk about ethics in service, determining brand, and new ways to pick up merchandise.

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consulting insights

Why I offer the first hour of consulting for free

Do not covet your ideas... by John LeMasney via 365sketches.org
Do not covet your ideas… by John LeMasney via 365sketches.org

A few colleagues have learned that I always offer my first hour of consulting with a new client for free, and have given me lots of advice:

  • But what if you only ever get one hour out of them?
  • You should never give away your skills, it devalues you.
  • People will take advantage of you.

The reasons that I give my first hour of consulting for free to new clients considers these and many other issues. I’ll discuss them here.

I may only get one hour out of a client, but if that’s the case, I was not likely going to get a lot of business out of them anyway, and they are likely to speak well on my behalf to their friends and colleagues if it goes well. If even one referral comes from any client, it is at least worth an hour of my time.

I have spent many hours volunteering my time doing my consulting, presentation, and training work, and it has come back to me a thousand times over in referrals, new paying work, experience, and good-faith networking. Volunteering also happens to bring me joy and happiness,all by itself. I am focusing more now on paying work these days, but I will never regret the volunteer hours I have put in.

I welcome people to take advantage of me, or try to. I think that if someone sits with me and sees what I have to offer them, I can make an impression that makes them think of me the next time they need graphic design, technology support, a presenter, a media consultation, etc.

Perhaps the most important reason for the first-hour-free clause is that I may not wish to continue to work with someone after hour one, and they may not wish to work with me. Everyone has their philosophies, concepts, experiences, and values, and they may sometimes make for uncomfortable partnerships. I’d rather not have to ask for money from someone who does not wish to work with me, and I’d rather not take money from someone who I’d rather not work with. It’s more important that we be able to amicably walk away, saying “I’m sure you will find success, thanks so much for your time!” with smiles on our face, cheer in our heart, and money safely remaining where it was.

This philosophy also acts as a standing discount on the remainder of our work together, meaning that if I work with someone for two hours, it’s as though they had a 50% off coupon.

So if you are wondering if I can help you, remember that you can find out for free, no strings attached, for the first hour that we work together. I promise.

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