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The Joseph C. TenBarge Outstanding STA Award Announcement Graphics

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The Joseph C. TenBarge Outstanding STA Award Announcement Graphics

Start: Jan 23th 2023

To be Completed: Jan 30th 2023

Client: LAITS

Staff Guidance: Maddy

Description: A brand-new award for outstanding STA excellence-The award was established to commemorate the founding director of LAITS, Joe TenBarge.  Joe was hired in 1998 to promote the integration of technology with teaching at the College of Liberal Arts.  Over the next 23 years, Joe transformed a fledgling department into a robust and respected service organization. One of Joe’s proudest creations is the LAITS Student Technology Assistant (STA) Program through which LAITS professional staff hire, train, and mentor UT undergraduates. 

The announcement graphic should keep minimal, simple and formal. The dark background such as velvet can help express the elegant style with minimal texture. So the first iteration is made on the blue velvet with subtle sparkle golden typography (serif).

However, the use of dark-blue velvet and golden serif make it old-fashion and lack of LAITS features. So we finally decided to find a waved-texture pattern and overlay LAITS color code on the top of it to make it modern and inclusive. The asset can also be used in studio display when remote studio make presentation with the awards.

The new background needs a more clean and bold typography as the waves has created lots of pattern. I finally choose the type family BentonSans, UT font, for this project. BentonSans is rich in different type weight as well as italic and All-cap versions. I combine BentonSans ExtraBold and BentonSan thin to differentiate the award name and award content.

The final version with following changes:

  • The portrait of Joe looks isolated from the wave but the original gray background bend into the colorful wave with few contrast. So I decided to place UT capital campaign with lighter effect under Hoe’s portrait. I also used pen tool to transit between the text and portrait.
  • For the text part, the contrast between thin and extrabold is too much so finally go with regular and extrabold. Maddy and I played with 3D effects to create dynamics and made the final layout.