Week LIX

Save the DATE!

Earlier in the week, I settled on this general layout (with MUCH feedback from Leilani) and tried out a splayed stack graphic.

Maddy commented that it looked more like a movie ticket, or at least not specifically ‘sporty’ enough, so I added some more flairs like a ribbon banner and an art deco font.

Ultimately, there will only be one final product, and two other STAs are working on it, so I’m not sure how directly any of this will be used, but I have plenty of iterations and material to go into it.

I also worked on a second graphic for the STA presentation, which is…

TOP SECRET!!!

(I could probably get away with posting it on my blog, especially since we haven’t started meetings yet, but hey, where’s the fun in that?)

TGDP Banner 4

There was a communication hiccup here (mostly on me), but we’re finally at the tail end of this one, just awaiting final approval. I had somehow duplicated an entire paragraph in the last draft you saw here.

STA Trainings Planning

This was a big thing this week, but sadly without any fun graphics to break up the text.

Valerie, Maddy and I have met twice now about how to better handle STA trainings. Some issues that have come up are:

• Trainings not being approved properly before they’re checked off
• STAs spending too much time on trainings (especially due to photo IDs not existing as a “filler” task anymore)
• Trainings can be dubiously relevant/redundant, depending on prior skills
• Training spreadsheet isn’t up-to-date

As for solutions, we’re working on streamlining it and having Valerie or me approve and more directly oversee (10 minute in person feedback) all trainings going forward, as well as writing up rubrics for scoring trainings, but it’s all still in the draft phase.

Weeks LIV-LVII

Oops, it’s been a little bit. I started drafting this blog post over winter break, and left it unfinished, so consider it my winter break summary.

GOV 312L US National Security

For the final version of this, we ended up with a purpleish-grey. The studio backdrop is actually sepia, but it shows up as purple-grey, and the rest of the graphics are sampled from that.

Texas Legislative Internship Seminar Asset Updates

This was just updating the dates for event promotional material. Some of the PSDs were missing, so I had to recreate them.

TGDP Banner 4

Finally working on number 4 – this is how the current draft is looking, awaiting feedback. The info is simple enough to lay out, 2 sections of text with a brief intro.

Schusterman Center for Jewish Studies banner

I get no credit for the circle logo, I believe that was Sheryl? But the department wanted an updated banner incorporating it, so this is what I’ve got for that. We’re leaning more on the bolder text. As of writing, I was just having fun exporting 16 different formats.

AFR 320

This course had pre-existing slideshows with black Arial on white, and wanted light on dark. I ended up going with a warm sepia-grey and an off-white, for the vintage look. Originally I wanted a slab serif font too, but that was too ambitious. I still learned quite a bit about Texas history from skimming these slides as I worked.

 

Week LIII

GOV 312L US National Security

I’ll keep it short. Just mostly worked on this.

Working with a request for red and green highlights, my first attempt was a little more archival/sepia.

We ended up going for a more “breaking news” look with red/green gradients.

However, as of writing it looks like I’ll need to rework these a bit. Wish me luck!

Week LII

GOV 312L US National Security

Most of what I did with this last week was getting a liiiiittle carried away with some stylized Canvas banners of a newspaper and… an old TV news reel?

It turns out the professor wants something more contemporary in terms of photo subjects, and presumably style, so I’ll be updating the studio backdrops and thinking of new Canvas graphics.

Tech STA Poster

This took priority on Thurs/Fri, let it be noted that I was only cutting out the student photos and putting them in. ALL CREDIT FOR ACTUAL POSTER DESIGN GOES TO LEILANI

Week LI

Flyer GSD360 for Spring ’23

This week, I started off with the original grid concept, at a tilt.

I also tried a tilt (shear), but didn’t love how the photos looked, and wasn’t sure if I wanted to spend the time tilting every individual frame separate from the clip-masked photo.

My other idea was to manipulate the photo background and caption block separately, which led to this. I made the photos smaller, tiled, and gradient-mapped.

Further clarification led to keeping the bahausy geometric elements and simplifying the design, plus making a wider one for screens.

GOV 312L US National Security

Project: Course Graphics – GOV 312L US National Security
Client /Prof: Jason Brownlee
completion status: WIP
staff guidance: Maddy K, Suloni robertson
STA team members: N/A
description/plans: TBA
To be completed: 12/5/2022

For this course, so far all I’ve done is draft some studio backgrounds. The professor wanted something that shows contrast between inconsistent points in American foreign policy, so the photos such as Rumsfeld greeting Sadam and the gulf war are juxtaposed. I played with sepia and greyscale, and various types of noise texture.

The studio team helped us test the backdrops, and we’re probably going with the noiseless sepia (now a purpleish-grey).