Updates 6/20/22

above: the striped house-cat in his natural habitat – the catio

Hello! Here are my updates as of 6/20/22:

Photo IDs

This past week I have primarily been working on photo ID requests for various COLA faculty, grad students, and staff.

We are currently planning to update the photo ID KB, and I am planning to create a document so this was a chance for me to get a sense of what I think may need be changed.

Almost all of the requests sent to me were perfect. Two graduate student images were missing, but I was able to contact them and have them successfully resubmit. I am currently waiting on one image to be resubmitted. I may need to send a follow up email if the corresponder does not respond at some point this week.

Here are the original images (left) vs. the cropped edits:

This image was very nice and needed very few edits. I up’d the saturation a bit to keep her skin from looking too cool.

Similarly – the LAITS photography is very professional and looks great. I up’d the saturation and contrast a bit to render the color a bit more cheerful.

For this one, the outside lighting rendered the professor a bit dark and was leaning a bit too heavy on the green scale. I up’d the exposure slightly (avoiding making the background too bright), and slid the color balance medium slightly over to the red so it was more neutral.

 

This one was definitely the most challenging. It seems like the staff member used a blue-magenta filter over the original selfie, which I had to balance out. I played around with color balance – focusing on making her face more neutral and avoiding too much blue-ish shadow in her hair. I was also able to cancel out some of the purple hues by using a yellow gradient filter over the image. The biggest challenge was not making the beautiful UT landscape behind the staff member so vibrant that it overpowers her, but I feel I was able to genuinely keep her the focal point.

 

This snazzy graduate student had a perfect photo!

 

I really love the composition and lighting over this image. The textured background really complements her outfit. The initial image was a bit dark and may be hard, especially since this individual is a staff member and the images are smaller when you are scrolling through. I was able to up the brightness while also keeping the contrast about the same.

 

Similar to the last COLA professional photo – I just up’d the saturation a bit. Looking back, I’m not entirely sure it was even necessary.

Another perfect photo!

This image doesn’t generally follow our guidelines (we usually prefer images to be centered) however the image was nice and showed his face well, so we decided to keep it. I up’d the contrast and saturation a bit to keep it in line with the other images.

 

This image was really nice, but a bit tricky to work with due to how low the exposure was. I ended up going back and forth quite a bit with how I wanted it to look. Now looking back, I do think I went a bit too light, but hopefully it still works for its purpose.

I am also currently working on a photo for one professor who had a very interesting photo where her hands are showing:

The hands really give a lot of character to the image, so I sent two versions over to Suloni and Valerie to look over. Suloni decided that the one showing her hands works better.

Which one do you prefer?

Psy Labs Banner

I am still continuing on the Psy Labs banner. Our client did not like the more realistic look that the hand details gave the original drafts, so I ended up scrapping all of the detail lines and using the paper cut-out style of graphics that is often used in advertising/UI/UX use.

Here are two separate versions that I created, one with colors and designs I personally liked, and one with the UT colors:

Our client will most likely prefer the bottom colors, but may want the shapes from the top version. However, I do like the top colors and feel they look a bit more mature.

Other projects I am working on:

• Last week I helped Suloni and Adrian organize and find some of our old course graphics and animations to show clients. This mostly involved me rendering out some stingers we had in our after effects files.
• I have begun working on my profile ID for our basecamp orientation.
• I am going to read through some instructions for a potential powerpoint project we are beginning.

Week XXXIX

Texas German Dialect Project

Not finalized yet – but getting closer! This time the edits only took about an hour.

ECO 304L Introduction to Macroeconomics

Just another professor name edit. This one had some confusion because I was accidentally directed to the wrong course initially, which was missing some editables, so I spent a while on forensic reconstruction before realizing the mix-up.

Course Design Menu Compendium

This one was fun – Suloni asked for course graphic design menus for a few of our flashier courses, which fortunately I had already made. Except, they weren’t very compact, so I consolidated them into a smaller format (the originals had huge empty spaces where the clients hadn’t requested certain graphics from the template).

Basic Training: Research for Meaningful Brand System

Finally, after several weeks and about 6x the suggested total hours, I’ve done everything I possibly can with my ‘downtime’ training, constructing my own brandbook.

Copying some questions I answered on Basecamp:

• As ornate as parts of might look, I was even more over-ambitious at the start haha. It was a good lesson in streamlining. The wordmark logo is a good example of that. I wanted to make something as snazzy as I could with as few actual moving parts to rearrange as possible.

  Plus, public domain old art is a really good resource! Credit to Wenceslaus Hollar.

• The main technical thing I learned was that image trace is MUCH more economical than a manual pen tool for making vectors in organic shapes. I still have a lot to learn with vectors.
• This was one of the most fun trainings, just open ended enough to allow a lot of creativity but focused enough that I could compare mine to other STAs for reference. I took much longer than prescribed but I made good use of the time.

Week XXXVII

Texas German Dialect Project

Newest draft!

Maddy had suggested scooting the captions into the right column, so the images have much more breathing room now. The images are tweaked to be consistently sized, which means the spacing is slightly inconsistent – it’s an endless battle but sometimes you gotta compromise!

CoLA Web Refresh Support Documentation

I am guilty of getting through these very slowly… A lot of the work is scratching my chin and guessing how to reorganize messy pages like this that were auto-migrated from Cascade.

That’s not too new for me, but it turns out Cascade can’t be accessed anymore! Rest in peace old buddy o7

Since I can’t access the older versions of the sites, progress is a little slow deciphering what order the screenshots were originally in, and between which steps, but I don’t mind some slow work this summer.

Health Transformation Research Institute Statistical Literacy – RAZ

Project: Health Transformation Research Institute Statistical Literacy
Client /Prof: Rebecca A Zarate
completion status: WIP
staff guidance: Maddy K, Suloni robertson
STA team members: N/A
description/plans: TBA
To be completed: TBA

Still in the very early stages, but eventually I will be designing a powerpoint for this course. Whether adapting slide content from scripts or reformatting premade slide content is still up in the air. I attended a client meeting to take notes (a first!) but so far, nothing visual to show.

UTFC graphics

More of the same, but I’m learning a lot about Francophile geography and places that look like Wes Anderson stills!

 

Summer Weeks 3-4

I had a shorter week last week (because of the tie-dye event), so I decided to lump these two weeks together into one blog post. I begin working 20 hours this week, so a lot of my work will probably go by faster!

 

Psy Labs Banner

The main project I am working on is for the new Psy Labs banner. I picked up on where Cristina left off in mid-may, and have started a new design based on what our clients have requested.

Cristina’s last draft before she left looked like this:

Our client really liked the hand-holding with the smart watches and blue color scheme, but requested something closer to this composition:

They also requested I use imagery that represents their lab’s purpose (family, socializing, technology, data).

My first step was to keep this in mind and draft up a mockup with images I thought may fit inside the phones in the image. I used the reference photo and brought in some stock images:

My goal here was to show a variety of different types of families and communication with technology. The client liked the general setup, but felt that only having people in the images may be too congruent with the idea of social media, and not science. They requested we use some images of data or graphs as well – I will wait on receiving actual graphs from the clients, as we do not have any and do not want to inaccurately convey the type of data they work with at the lab.

Additionally, the client requested we:

• Show two hands holding – at least one that has a smart watch on
• Use hands of different sizes
• Use a specific color palette that they listed

Keeping this all in mind, I decided to start a draft of just the hands without any images within the actual phones or smart watches. Once the client is happy with the general composition, we can then focus on the secondary images.

I began by drafting a general idea in illustrator without focusing as much on using the correct colors, just trying to pin down the general feel:

Right after submitting this, I realized I wanted to make the “detail” lines on the shirts smaller to match the detail lines on the fingers. I also needed to implement the colors our client requested, and use some variation in the hand sizes:

After reviewing this, Suloni felt it would be good to have me implement a few more hands to convey perspective (and family!):

 

In this version, I also used a curve tool on some of the detail lines to make them more organic. After looking at this, Suloni and I decided the middle left hand looked a bit clunky compared to the others. I ended up renovating that one, and adding a few more details:

I ended up completely redoing the bottom of that hand, and adding more details overall (mainly nails). I sent it over to the client, and will update as we get feedback!

Wardrobe Powerpoint

My next major project was to create an editable powerpoint for LAITS to use as a brochure for professors’ wardrobe options. I began this in March, and picked it up again recently.

I pulled a collection of fitting images of individuals in business casual, and picked several different powerpoint template themes my supervisors to pick from:

My supervisors ultimately liked the first template the best. The title slide was approved as well, although I was requested to make a version of its background without the blur effect.

I then went on to create a version of the template with 2 models on each slide:

I believe this powerpoint will remain as an editable google slide where the text can be replaced over time. If there are any more changes made to this, I will update later on!

 

Hand Rigging Project

My final project I am beginning is an animation assignment by Tate. Currently, I am working on creating a hand rig in illustrator that can be used in after effects. I have never created my own hand rig before, so this was a very educational experience!

Here is the rig Tate sent me as a reference:

And here is the rig I am currently working on:

Currently, I’ve mapped out all of the pieces, and am now working on making anchor points for their movement (the circle things.) After that, I can import them into after effects and essentially animate hand however I would like. Tate recommended I try making the hand type, and I am also interested in seeing if I can get the hand to do a bit of a stretch motion. I will have more updates as I continue on this!

Week XXXVII

I have 3 tasks this week, in descending priority from 1-3

Texas German Dialect Project

Finally got some client feedback, and spent a whole day grappling with the difficulty of sizing and spacing elements consistently in InDesign. My first attempt had all the images at a consistent size that worked for the smallest text boxes, but left a lot of awkward space.

After that, I decided to line image up with the top and bottom of each text box, making them vary with the length of each text (which is still eyeballed, since the box size is adjusted manually, but the spacing between boxes is automated).

The result is sort of better, except that first thing next week, I need to almost all of it to adjust for a header mistake, and split step 8 into a header and subheaders, as well as maybe making the titles and image captions separate text boxes, so I can readjust the image sizes to the top margins of the header text boxes and the bottom of the caption text boxes, and then reset the image border width to 2 since that changes upon resize, and then fine tune the alignment again since changing the border width alters that. Whew!

Priority level: 1

Basic Training: Research for Meaningful Brand System

As mentioned, I’ve been taking my time with this, and making the graphics as fancy as possible. The booklet is heavily derived from a 17th century Bohemian woodcut; I used content-aware fill to make a blank version of the paper background for some pages and kept a low-opacity version of the illustration for others.

I estimate it’ll be done the next full shift I work on it.

Priority level: 3

CoLA Web Refresh Support Documentation

Another small task I picked up, this took longer than expected, because I am writing the documentation from scratch, and am quite rusty on a lot of Refresh features. I have only written up 1 page so far.

I will be doing more testing/research and writing more next week.

Priority level: 2

Project: Population Wellbeing Initiative

With: Suloni, Estella, Thuy

Remake the website based on Thuy’s design, using the existing content. Website made a draft and when done and approved will be published all at once.