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History SZB Posters

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History SZB Posters

I was assigned to help create posters documenting the life of George I. Sanchez for the SZB building. I was given pictures and text, which I was then to format on posters using Adobe InDesign. The process mainly consisted of cleaning up the photos in Photoshop (sometimes converting to grayscale, removing blemishes, and adjusting them so they weren’t skewed), getting all the elements onto the page, and then rearranging them to make sure that the text was not too overwhelming and that the images were big enough.

View the exhibit:

Save the Date

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Save the Date

The theme for STA Presentations this year was movie productions! The presentation poster was themed around “The Peanuts Movie” film poster, so Save the Date was to be similarly themed.

First Drafts

I decided to display the important information on a clapper board to keep with the movie theme. However, after doing that, the background looked really empty, so I added film strips behind it. I used the LAITS logo colors as the accent colors for my design.

Additionally, I came up with a secondary design because I felt that the colors on the clapper board may be unnecessary, and the black letters for the less important information (“Save the Date”, “College of Liberal Arts”) might be too bold. I also switched the order of the colored film strips in the background (and brightened them) to match the order they are in in the LAITS logo.

Lastly, I created an option with a different accent font choice. This is a font that matches the one on “The Peanuts Movie” poster, so I thought we may want to see what that looked like too.

This is an alternate design that I thought could work as well. I was also able to get the STA roles information in using this layout.

For style one, I received feedback to:

  • Add STA photos to the film strips with a color overlay
  • Replace “College of Liberal Arts” with the LAITS logo

For style two, I received feedback to:

  • Try and add more personality, as the black was a little overwhelming, and it wasn’t very dynamic
  • Rework the hierarchy/arrangement so that the date is more prominent
  • Add the LAITS logo

Second Drafts

For the first version, I added the STA cutouts to all the film strip rectangles because it looked a little odd to have some empty, even if they were covered with something in front. I also moved “Save the Date” to the slate because it became hard to read in the top left corner when I added the STA photos.

For the second version, I tried to add some movement by creating a new, curved film strip and tilting the film slate. I also added the date/time/location to the film strip because it was more prominent there and put the STA roles under the slate.

We decided to go with style 1, and I received feedback to:

  • reposition the STA photos so that they weren’t being blocked by the film slate
  • make the LAITS logo grayscale

Third draft

After adjusting the graphic according to the feedback I received, it ended up looking like this:

We then decided that there was too much white space in certain places, so we decided to use the more dynamic photos of STAs that were also used on the presentation poster. After deciding this, the graphic looked like this.

Final Thoughts

Overall, this assignment was a fun way for me to practice both my layout and graphic design skills. I don’t have as much practice with Illustrator, so making graphics for this assignment was a new and fun challenge. I’m also happy that we decided on adding the STAs inside the filmstrips—I think it’s a lot more visually interesting and unique. Here is the final design!

February Progress

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February Progress

February was a busy month for me as I got a bit behind on my major project, the IPE animation for Dell Health. But luckily I have some good news!

We’re halfway there!

We now have 4 out of 8 IPE animation done! I believe with the current progress, we’ll have all animations done by April 1st. Here’s one of the completed animations to show how they are looking so far.

I realize that the main challenge I come across with the animations is delivering the narration through the visuals in an engaging way while also being clear to understand. Sometimes there are terms that are too specific or broad for me to display in an icon or a looping character animation.

We also have yet to get completed client reviews on the first pair of animations sent over so hopefully that won’t impede the process.

That’s all I have for February to be honest. Given my timeline, this will most likely be the project I talk about in March too haha. But I look forward to seeing it come together!

January 2025

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JANUARY 2025

— IPE PROJECT —

I finished a lot of the illustrations for the IPE project by this point, so I was tasked with other assignments related to this project. One of them was revamping some PowerPoint slides:

The request for the first two slides was to rearrange the information already on the slides. For the third one, I was asked to make an illustration with all the doctors together.

— 2025 STA PRESENTATION ROSTER POSTER(S) —

In the second half of the month, I was assigned my first poster (yay!). However, it turned out to be two posters as it would be a roster of all the STAs for the 2025 STA Presentations. I was a little intimidated at first, but knew I could reach out to De’sha if I needed any help! The poster(s) were going to draw inspiration from The Peanuts Movie.

The first big challenge was tackling the theater chairs. I decided to make them in Illustrator so I could easily resize them if needed. Initially, I left the chairs with flat colors and was going to shade them in Photoshop.

However, I decided that I would be giving myself extra work if I decided to shade and light each row of seats by hand. So I decided to use the gradient tool in Illustrator to simulate shadows. Before landing on my final iteration, I went back and forth between Photoshop and Illustrator multiple times to get the shadows to my liking.

Now, it was time to arrange the seats and put the STAs in!

Below is the final iteration I did for January and I will continue editing these posters in February. Through each iteration, I felt the least satisfied with the lighting. Yet, I believe I’ll feel better about it once I start editing the lighting of each STA.

February 2025

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FEBRUARY 2025

— 2025 STA PRESENTATION ROSTER POSTER(S) —

I was still working on the STA Presentation Roster Poster(s) going into February. The due date for the project was the 28th. I was grateful that I got the overall foundation of the posters done so all that was left was making edits to lighting, text, and props to decorate the scene.

Regarding the props, I went back to Illustrator to create some popcorn buckets and a drink.

Here is the first iteration of the posters with the props:

— IPE PROJECT —

I was back to working on some IPE assignments this month! Lila updated me on some scenes that were required and I went ahead and worked on them:

I also worked on additional icons needed for the animations. I created a calendar, phone, and pill bottle:

Overall, I like being able to revisit this project! It’s fun making scenes or illustrations and I love being tested on what I’ve learned in Illustrator up until now.

— 2025 LAITS T-SHIRT MOCKUPS —

My last project for February was creating high-fidelity mockups for this year’s shirt. I was provided 6 sketches from the project team and would use those as a reference.

The first shirt was based on the classic disposable cup design. This design was simple to recreate and helped me discover the select-color range tool in Photoshop!

The second shirt is inspired by the classic “thank you” bag. This one was also easy to recreate and I discovered another feature in Photoshop! I learned there was an outline option for text and used that for the “LAITS” red outlines.

The third was another callback to a classic design with this one being inspired by the iconic NYC coffee cup design. This design was a bit more difficult to recreate since I couldn’t easily do it in Photoshop. I took the design into Illustrator and recreated the design there since I could manipulate the assets without losing quality.

The fourth was the most difficult for me to recreate! This one was inspired by the Nintendo DS version of Pictochat. It took a while for me to recreate the design in Illustrator and having to restrict it to two colors was an additional challenge. Despite that, this one turned out to be my personal favorite!

For the fifth design, I was tasked with simplifying the poster design for the shirt. I struggled the most in balancing the elements of the design and having the catchphrases on the shirt make sense without including all of the original ones. I ended up with two mockups for this design: One that is the simplest and another that has more of the elements from the original poster. Looking at these, I personally feel there is still a bit of balancing issues, but I still like them! (The slack turtle is adorable)

The sixth design I took into procreate to draw. This design was also difficult because of the 2 color limit; however, Leilani’s suggestion of changing my lineart to gray helped the design standout on the black shirt.

March 2025

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MARCH 2025

— TYPE HIERARCHY IN INDESIGN —

In my downtime, I explored training in software that I didn’t have much experience in. Before doing this training, I only used InDesign once to create a more creative resume. It gave me a lot of trouble, so I used this opportunity to get more comfortable with this app.

For this training, I was to make a typography-only poster for a fake event. I’ll admit I had trouble balancing the elements of the poster and adjusted the type multiple times. I thought about decorating the poster with assets I would create in Illustrator, but I wanted to see what I could do with just InDesign.

Here is the result:

— PHOTOSHOP TRAINING —

This was a quick Photoshop training I did where I made flashcards:

Flowers (Khmer):

Created by Grafix Point from Noun Project

Created by Kristina Margaryan from Noun Project

Created by Made from Noun Project

Mushrooms (Malay):

Created by Rike from Noun Project

Created by DioRama from Noun Project

Created by Lars Melertoberens from Noun Project

Grass (Lao):

Created by arie from Noun Project

Created by Tere II from Noun Project

Created by Adrien Coquet from Noun Project

Trees (Thai):

Created by Gabriella from Noun Project

Created by rasendria from Noun Project

Created by ProSymbols from Noun Project

Bushes (French):

Created by madness stock from Noun Project

Created by Agung Pamuji from Noun Project

Created by wahab marhaban from Noun Project

— STA PRESENTATION WALK-IN ANIMATION —

Animation Proposal

Asset Creation

Working on the Animation

Problem 🙁

Unfortunately, I got news that someone else did a walk-in animation. I had to stop working on the project.

— 2025 LAITS SHIRT CONTINUED —

Final Design Picked!

The turtle design was picked! Now it was time to rearrange the assets and explore different color options.

Shirt Mock Ups

A note I got is to explore the idea of a pink or brown shirt– so I would experiment with different color palettes for those. I would also try out different shirt colors that I think would suit the shirt.