More AMS PPTs and WordPress Documentation

Hello, this week I started off by continuing with the AMS 310 PowerPoints and making sure the lectures were transferred to the new format in time for the professor to record her lectures. I talked more about it in my last post. Then, Thuy introduced me to the WordPress Documentation project that she, Cristina, Relena, and maybe some more folks had been working on. There are many departments at UT that have their own WordPress websites, and  the WP documentation project involves creating a series of help guides to help additional editors understand how to do all the important processes involved with maintaining and updating content on a webpage. The process of WP documentation first involves identifying the pertinent processes that would be useful for editors to know, then writing out a step by step guide with pictures for extra visual assistance.

For example, the WP documentation that I was working on was for “The Theatre (&) Philosophy Project, which you can visit here. It is a comparatively simpler WP, so it was a good introduction for me, and I worked on posts like How to Add Philosopher. Here are some screenshots of what that looked like for the Add a Philosopher guide.

Outside of work, I have just been working on school and the like. Relena and I are in a class together called “Perspectives in Design,” and it is nice to see a fellow STA in a non STA zoom. I already talked about this, but Samurai Champloo is sooo good I’m still thinking about it.

AMS 310 PowerPoints

I pretty much focused on one thing this whole week, which was the AMS 310 PowerPoints. It’s a similar type of work to the Henderson powerpoints with Poonum. We are transferring the content from an old set of powerpoints to a new template that Abriella made. This standardizes the content and hopefully improves the readability of the slides. It’s a pretty repetitive and standard process; there are just a lot of powerpoints. It’s kind of relaxing. But in the process, I end up reading a lot of the content, which is heavy sometimes. America is scary.

Here are some examples.

 

The Past Week!

Hello, I don’t really have too many visual things to show, but over the last week, I have mostly been continuing with the KBs and starting to put them onto the actual KB WordPress.

Here is the banner that I fixed in the earlier portions of the week.

I was added to the Cascade help ticket request team, so I read over a lot of the guides and best practices. I can see that a lot of people are requesting; however, I am still unsure of my responsibilities here haha.

This week, I also started working on the PSD Flashcards KB and began working with Poonum, Ingrid, and De’Sha on an assignment to transfer over a few PowerPoints over to a new standardized format that Poonum designed.

This week my computer screen went kaput, and I thought I was gonna lose it, but then it miraculously came back so….. hopefully it doesn’t keep doing this to me.

Hope everyone has a good and relaxing spring break!

AI Shapes, AI Logo, and other KB material

Hi, this week, I mostly worked on developing the KBs and on a few different trainings.

In the earlier half of the week, I worked on the AI Logo training. Instead of the bunny concept that I had started a while back, I thought it would be cool to do something a little more personalized to myself. So, I tried making some logos from my last name, Zeng, in Chinese characters. I think the result ended up looking more like a face (specifically a person in a balaclava) than my last name. The training asked us to make a symmetrical logo, so I kind of lucked out there. These are the drafts.

I also worked on the AI shape manipulation training, and the outputs are below. It was really interest to see how you could use a bunch of circles to make a completely different shape with shape builder, and I am looking forward to using that technique as I continue working. I also really enjoyed the process of making the pattern using rotate and the degree tool. I did not know how to do that prior to this training, and I can see it being really useful.

And lastly, I worked on the banner for the Exporting file types training. I just looked at a bunch of the other banners actually, so I want to make this more interesting, but this is the start. Plus, I began imagining the concepts for the client briefs that will be used in the trainings, which has been very fun and creative.

That’s it! I have a lot of midterms next week, but then it will all sort of end on my birthday, which is nice. I’ve been watching these study with me broadcasts to help time my studying sessions, and I think it’s funny how I have to assume a different personality and identity to get work done at this point. Hopefully the pandemic ends sooooon.

Progress on KB Trainings and some more

Hi, this past week/ a little bit of last last week when the storm was happening, I mostly continued work on the KB trainings. For the design systems research KB, I fleshed out a “visual audit” subtask that the STA will use to think through the process of identifying a theme for an existing UT department then eventually apply that to add assets to the theme. The instructions can be found below. This is a subtask because eventually, this training will fit into a larger series of KB where the STA will be making a brand for a mock business.

1. Gather visual materials
   1. Gather at least five components of relevant information and assets (such as logos, mission statements, etc.) by searching through the department website
   2. Also, feel free to search through events the department has held, promotional material, or related webpages
2. Organize visual materials
   1. Create a mood board of the gathered information on Photoshop or Indesign and create a PDF of the mood board
   2. Doesn’t have to be super fancy, just make sure all elements are nicely laid out and visible 
   3. Upload to a folder in Box and Basecamp
3. Assess
   1. Additionally, share the moodboard to Basecamp and write 1-3 sentences per component on what visual/emotional/psychological takeaways you have, making sure it is clear which component you are referring to
   2. Then, write 3-4 sentences on what you believe the overarching identity of the department is
4. Translate
   1. Now that you’ve identified a theme, add to the initial mood board 4-6 visual elements that you think visually represent the theme
   2. One of these components must be a color scheme
   3. Additionally, create a typeface system that you believe represents the theme
      1. One font for headings
      2. One font for body text

I also made this decision tree chart for the file exporting KB. I made this chart on Lucidchart, but initially I drafted it with pen and paper. I think this KB will actually be more of an informational one. If it is to be combined with Sheryl’s KB on creating a package for logo design, this training will be a good thing to read through before using that training because it explains why one might be using a certain file type. For example, I did not know why we were exporting to EPS and SVG in the logo package training, but I think learning all this info gave me a greater understanding of how those file types would be used in different scenarios.

Lastly, I wrapped up the last bits and pieces of the online studio course training, which is the last priority training I had left! Here are the corresponding Canvas assets and the Design Menu that includes all the individual assets as well as a recommendation for wardrobe.

 

That’s it for now! On a personal note, I shaved my head last Friday night, and if you are wondering why and what my thoughts on it are so far, I will be writing something I think. I can send it to you! Also, it’s some sort of holiday in Chinese culture today so here is traditional Happy Lunar New Year song that I like. It’s not the new year though, that already passed.

Very small blog update

Hi! I don’t really have too much to show because most of the work I did this week was research for the KBs on design systems and file exporting. So here is just a small update.

The file training is more or less straightforward, I just need to figure out what the best way to organize the information is. At first I said that it might be good to do a decision tree, but today as I was working, I questioned whether or not that would be the best way. Choosing the best file type is not exactly a linear process, it’s more so a series of questions and hence a point system would probably be more fitting. But most of the time, only one or two questions are necessary to really understand what file one should be using. So I am going to just identify the most pertinent questions and maybe make a chart.

I have been working a lot on the design systems research, but I think I recently figured out that the STA program doesn’t really work on something as large as a complete design system. Design systems are more for like large organizations as a whole. But a package of consistent design and messaging across department assets is important, so I will parse it down to that. I have been thinking about how this training might fit in with Cristina’s brand strategy one because they are kind of similar in nature. After talking with Megan, I gained a lot of insight on the way she went about working with Texas Politics. I am thinking this part of the training could be about the process of scraping through available client resources (like websites and posters) to gather relevant logos, colors, messaging, etc. Then the STA would go through an activity for a UT department and create a package of assets, logos, colors, messaging, etc. and place them on something like figma or cascade so that it could be accessed by the whole organization.

Yes yes that is all, trying not to get lost in the research. I really like this song! naruto is making me cry!