STA Blog

Rachel Sacks

Rachel Sacks

Strategic Direction Progress

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Dana Center: Strategic Direction Infographic Progress

For the Strategic Direction portion of the Dana Center project, I am tasked with creating infographics based on the information they have given us. For this first infographic, I am working with what Cristina left off with, and building off the feedback I got on some previous work of mine.

My first drafts looked like this:

Maddy took this and made a few drafts where she made it look a bit like puzzle pieces. We particularly liked the “magical” looking inverted version, so we decided to work based on that one:

Here is the black and white draft I made based on what Maddy created in photoshop:

And here is the first draft of the colored version (very rough)

Arkansas Progress

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Arkansas Progress: Client Changes

On Wednesday and Friday, I made quite a few alterations to the Dana Center Arkansas pages based off of the requests by the client. The primary changes they were looking for were to make room for citations in the bottom of the second page of both sets of pages. This required me to rethink how the pages were structured slightly, and also change some of the margins. Fortunately, the clients also shortened much of the text, which made it quite a bit easier to make room for citations. Besides changing the citations, the clients also had some wording and design change requests, and wanted unique titles for each cover page (previously, the cover pages had been the same for both sets of pages.) The current drafts look like this:

Set 1:

Demystifying the Myths about Quantitative Literacy: Facts That Dispel Commonly Held Beliefs 

Set 2:

Demystifying the Myths about Quantitative Literacy: Different Journeys for Students

Currently, I am waiting to hear back from our clients about any further changes to make to these pages. I will update my blog about these changes ASAP!

EDIT: 3/9/22

After hearing back from our client, I made a few more changes to these pages. These namely were changes with the citations:

In my old draft, I had make some mistakes with the bulleting:

As you can see here, InDesign accidentally bulleted every single line rather than the sentences I specified. I fixed that in this draft!

I also fixed a few other formatting things, such as alignment and font sizing. I am sending this back to the client, and will update once more depending on how it goes.

Weekly Progress: Dana Center Infographics, Iconography Training

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Dana Center

Dana Center: Arkansas Progress

Good Wednesday! I have recently received an email regarding changes to the Arkansas template, and have begun implementing these changes. I will update my blog once I have more progress on this!

Dana Center: Strategic Direction Progress

I was recently assigned to the second infographic for the strategic direction portion of the Dana Center project. This entails devising an infographic based on specifics that our clients have requested. Each of these infographics will be used in a variety of mediums, from powerpoints to potentially print, so they have to be modular and easy to move around.

For this particular infographic, we were given this basic outline:

  • Graphic 2: Strategic Priorities
    • This graphic will feature our overarching goal, with our areas of work surrounding it. This could look like a circle of arrows (with each area of work being an arrow) or something similar.
      This will be used as part of our overall strategic direction document as well as in slide decks.
  • Text components:
    • Overarching goal:
      • To create and achieve our vision for modern K–16 mathematics education, the Dana Center will address the critical barriers to equitable access and success in mathematics.
      • Areas of Work:
        • Movement Building
        • Systems Capacity Building
        • Innovative Services and Tools

 

For my first draft of this, I was experimenting with different ways to lay out the ideas. I attempted something like this:

As Cristina pointed out, circles don’t really fit the general structure of these infographics, as we are trying to keep them modular. She sent me some really helpful sketch layouts ideas for a more modular, square style graphic, and I worked from there:

I then drafted up two separate versions, based on the top center and top right options she created.

These are definitely a step closer to the general style we are going for. Maddy suggested I change the symbol for “Innovative Services and Tools,” as the Dana Center focuses on mathematical tools – not literal ones. Additionally, the amount of arrows on the drafts make them a bit hard to parse, so I decided to remove as many as possible.

My current drafts look like this:

I will update this more after I gain more feedback, and make further changes to these drafts. It will also look quite a bit different once we add colors and/or other design elements.

Iconography Training

Furthermore, I spent some time this past week on the Iconography Training. I will need to take a break from this for some time, so I wanted to share some progress I have made so far.

The communication and video ones were pretty straightforward, but I had a lot of fun making them so far. Additionally, I really like how the reading one came out, and am considering still how I can add more pizzazz to it!

Arkansas Templates + Iconography Training

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Arkansas Templates

This week, I primarily worked on created drafts for the Dana Center Arkansas project. My task was to take the drafts they gave me and turn them into something that fit the template that I created last week.

These are the drafts I was given:

 

In order to fit these into the template we designed, I integrated what I had already designed for Carnegie with the specifics of these layouts. This primarily meant coming up with how, for example, the dual column myths vs. facts table would look in the style I developed. This was a fun experiment, and having a template with a style already laid out really helped!

Ultimately, the first drafts ended up looking like this:

Right now we are waiting to hear back from the client about any changes we are to make for these. My next step will be to create the second infographic for the final part of this project, which I will begin working on today.

 

Iconography Training

As well as working on the Dana Center project, I also began working on the Iconography Training. The goal of this is to create custom graphics for either COFA or McCombs business school, based on the concepts of “communication, videos, readings, networking, and deadlines.” I chose to create icons for COFA, which have the notorious black and yellow button style icons. My first draft of these looked like this:

After showing these to Maddy, she pointed out that every single one of these had a main singular image in the center apart from Communication. To fix that, I ended up making communication simpler and having it just be one big bubble:

The next step for this will be to actually make these in illustrator. Stay tuned for that!

Type Hierarchy in InDesign + Other Things

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Typography Training: Type Hierarchy in InDesign

For this particular training, my requirement was to create a faux flier for the course “Underwater Basket Weaving” in InDesign. I had never used InDesign before, so this was a great learning experience for me! My first flier had quite a few problems…

Namely, the text hierarchy was off (the more important text i.e. the title and time was the smaller text), and there was a lot of extraneous negative space.

In the second version, I was able to get the type hierarchy better, but there is still extensive negative space as well as some awkward margins. I decided to essentially redo the entire layout and rethink the most logical way to place things and reduce awkward spacing. I ended up coming up with this:

This was definitely an improvement to the overall layout and format of the document. However, there were still a few things I was missing here:

  • The bold text was too hard on the eyes
  • The white accents were found on the top but not on the bottom
  • The name bar was a bit too far to the left and also did not complement the shape of the image of “Dr. Basquit Weaver”

Abriella suggested I try making the image of the professor a different shape – which was very helpful!

The final version of this with those changes ended up looking like this:

I was able to fix quite a bit of the issues involved with the last version, as well as add a few new changes that I think gave it more personality. Personally, I can still see things about it that I’d like to change, but I think overall it’s improved significantly since my initial draft (which now that I look at, makes me kind of sad.)

I learned quite about of InDesign by doing this assignment while also having fun designing this!

Bezier Curve Training Finale

As well as finishing that training, I also finished the “Create Custom Wordmarks Using Bezier Curves” training as well. My final version of this looks like this:

Ultimately, I decided not to include the gradient on the R because it didn’t match the solid colors of the triangles. Additionally, I removed the “Rachel Sacks” on the bottom as this is more of a short letter logo than a full brand logo.

Through this training, I learned a lot more about unity of design and maintaining a consistent coloring style and balance throughout. I also improved my skills with the pen curve tool, which allowed me to smoothly alter the initial R in this design without making it as clunky as the regular pen tool. I really like the pen curve tool, it and I are best friends.

2022 Charles A. Dana Center: InDesign templates + Infographics

Speaking of InDesign, this week I began a large client project for the Dana Center. We are creating templates for their journals, and then later are going to fill this out with actual content.

The first step to this is designing a template. We started working in Microsoft Word to create the template, but ultimately decided that InDesign would have better template functions. My first draft of the template looked like a replication of the previous template they gave us as a reference:


For my second draft, I was to create my own “innovations” to this style, while still sticking to the Dana Center brand. This was my first draft of this that I made on Friday:

I got some feedback on this already from Suloni and Maddy, and this is the final version of the style B we are sending to the client:

Finally, here is an important photo of my cat:

He was sitting on my lap last night completely tuckered out from…sleeping all day. A joy!

Beginning of Bezier Curves Training

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Bezier Curve Training

The Bezier Curve training involves taking a stock font letter and using Bezier Curves in adobe illustrator to alter that into a symbol used for a logo.

I began with an “R” in the font Adam Warren Pro, which looked like this:

I picked this font to create myself (another) logo, and felt the handwritten style would work well with the type of look I was going for.

With Bezier curves, I began altering the R to look less clunky, and to have more personality:

The main thing I wanted to do here was create a sense of motion with the R – as if it was pulling towards the right. Thus, I added the long legs to the R’s endings, and also rounded out the top. Next, I added various shapes, colors, and bottom text to make it feel more like an actual logo. I decided to add a gradient to the R as well as an outline to it, to give it a more futuristic look.

I will update this more as I am given more changes to make to it!