STA Blog

Week 10/18 – 10/24

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UTFC Greenscreen: 6.1B Academic Disciplines and Specializationslist

Project: UTFC Greenscreen
Due On: October 21st
Notes: For this project, I was assigned to find pictures of the disciplines in Dakar, or Senegal, but stock images can be used as long as they reflect an African-centric context.

 

UTFC Greenscreen: 6.2B Campus Activities

Project: UTFC Greenscreen
Due On: October 21st
Notes: For this project, I was assigned to find pictures of campus activities in Bamako/WestAfrica.

 

UTFC Greenscreen: 7.4B Clothing

Project: UTFC Greenscreen
Due On: November 4th
Notes: For this project, I was assigned to find pictures of clothing items and features in Kinshasa, the Democratic Republic of Congo in Central Africa.

 

 

COLA Tasks

Project: Hans Boas Graphics
Due On: October 24th-25th
Notes: For this assignment, I was asked to insert the extra “c” in four words labeled the word “Construction.” Only in the big box on the left should be spelled “Constructicon” along with the phrase starting with “Addition to Construction” at the very bottom under the arrow leading to the big box on the left.

Week 7

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Project: Elements and Principles of Design

Start: Oct 20th 2022

To be Completed: N/A

I started a new training this week by identifying what elements and principles of design are and how they function. I’m asked to find an artwork or design work that contains the relationship with one certain element or principles. Through the process, I’m able to learn how to arrange elements in a way that is visually more effective and aesthetically pleasing.

 

Project: French Connexion

Start: Oct 21th 2022

To be Completed: Oct 30th 2022

Staff Guidance: Maddy

UT French Connexions is a new online French course being developed by LAITS. It will live on the language learning site LingCo. Aside from language learning, the course is placing an emphasis on the culture of French-speaking countries beyond France (Europe, Africa, Carribbean, middle east, Canada, etc). I’m asked to make a website for the project that showcases all information about UT French Connexions, which including lots of action call and the online courses resources.

I started this project with building styling of typography, color scheme and interactive elements in Figma. I referred to the French textbook Design Asset and UT brand color & Typography to get inspiration.

However, the dark tan looks a little dated as the background color in this context of a website and dark blue button is dark and listless. So I make three experiments on the site:

  • experiment #1: I tried the family of blue and  go lighter than the A5bDD (the brand color of UTFC) by lowering opacities of it. The more subtle background colors of a website is more modern and better.
  • experiment #2: Stay with tan, but has the lighter shades of tan.
  • experiment #3: Custom Color without considering the UT brand Color and UTFC textbook color.

 

Finally Maddy and I decided to work on the custom color scheme since the light background works well with the light blue.

 

 

 

Week 7

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Tockify Calendar Mockup

Client /Prof: Professor Grayson
completion status: Started on Oct 13
staff guidance: Maddy
STA team members: Thang
To be completed: TBD

Last week I worked more on the Tockify calendar mockup, the goal being to make a calendar that displays academic and religious holidays to spread awareness of holidays that faculty, students, or staff may be celebrating. Here is the calendar embedded again:

Alternatively, here is the link to the calendar on a more regular webpage view.

 

The above embedded might revert back to not being customized after the premium trial runs out in a few days, so further videos on what the calendar is meant to look like at this stage can be found here.

STA Trainings – History of Design

Completion Status: Started on Oct 20
Staff Guidance: Valerie
To be completed: TBD

I made a first draft of the history of design training, where I chose the Swiss style. I did this in Photoshop, and for the colors I used the “blending options” popup and edited the RGB settings. The full tutorial can be found here. 

 

….and then I also tried my hand at the STA blog banner, but I’m assuming we’re not meant to show progress on that to keep anonymity.

Week 7 – Thang

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Week 7

Project: Exposure Therapy Lab

Started on: October 10c, 2022

Completed on: October 13, 2022

Staff Guidance: Ruben, Marianne

Description:

  1. For this project, I was asked to add a column to query and display the research paper for different topics. I also sorted the topic alphabetically.
  2. I also added mobile responsive feature to the website so that the column can display accordingly to the screen size.
  3. I am working on pagination of the website so that I can limit the display of the posts to probably 10 posts at the time, and the users need to click to go to the next page.
  4. I also need to redo the banner for the consortium members.

 

Project: French Connexions

Started on: October 20, 2022

Completed on: October 20, 2022

Staff Guidance: Ruben, Marianne

Description: For this project, I will add 4 different pages that display 4 different topics including Vocabulary, Phonetics, Grammar and Interview. I was asked to add videos and modified the layouts so that it looked visually appealing.

Week 7

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Week 7

project: PSY Labs Site: Imagination & Cognition Lab Banner Design
Client /Prof: Dr. Jacqueline D. Woolley
completion status: Started Oct 19, 2022
staff guidance: Valerie
description/plans: Create/design a new banner that will be placed on Dr. Woolley’s new website. She wants something related back to her research, yet whimsical and colorful.
To be completed: Oct 31, 2022

Inspiration from Woolley and her team: woolley banner inspo

Current website: https://labs.la.utexas.edu/woolley/

 

1st Banner draft:

  • After Valerie and I discussed the elements Dr. Woolley wanted in the header, I decided to make the research aspect of the banner more explicit. I also wanted to incorporate some of the symbols (sparkles, thought bubbles, etc.) that were repetitively shown on the inspo pdf. I was also told that Woolley wants something refreshing for the new website, so it was fine to stary away from the old design.

2nd Banner draft (submitted for feedback):

  • Updates: Currently, I am still waiting to hear feedback from our point of communication between us and the client, but hopefully we’ll receive some soon.

 

Project: Early Voting PSA

Start: Oct 18, 2022

Complete: Oct 19, 2022

Staff Guidance: Maddy

I was asked to revisit the Early Voting PSA now that the early voting period is coming up. The main priority was just updating the existing graphic with new additional voting info provided by Mike. This included making 3 variations of the graphic in both the blue and tan color scheme (6 graphics in total). The main struggle of this assignment was organizing the text in a way that was still visibly friendly, and not too cluttered. I tried to keep in mind the text hierarchy of the overall graphic. Color blocking and changes in font family/color ended up helping in separating text yet creating a cohesive graphic.

 

   

   

  

 

STA AUDIO POSTER (final)

Project: STA Audio Team Poster

Start: Sep 13, 2022

Complete: Oct 18, 2022

Staff Guidance: De’sha and Leilani

The STA Audio Poster finally came to a close last week:,) This project took so much trial and error on my part, but I was very thankful for the support I had from my fellow STAs with feedback. The only major change in this poster from last week’s update is that there was a crest change. I also got to learn more about formatting a PDF for printing by Maddy. I also had to import the individual objects into PS, because going from Illustrator to PS somehow messed up the quality which wouldn’t have looked very pretty when it printed (very pixelated).