Anne’s Graphic: Online Course Production Timeline

Project: Online Course Production Timeline
Client: Internal LAITS Team
Completion Status: In Progress…
Staff Guidance: Maddy Kaniewski
STA Team Members: Cristina (at your service)
Description/Plans: To redesign this production timeline into a horizontal (16:9), color coded, more digestible version.

 

These were my original drafts…

 

But after finally being able to meet with Maddy to talk about the project briefing, we decided that was not the right direction, and I worked on a different one… And so, the Confusing Version was born…

 

But the Confusing Version was, of course, confusing. So I worked off the feedback I got from Maddy and Abriella to work on a new draft. Thus, I present to you New Version. I tagged Anne on this version to double check on the flow of information, and to make sure it was correct. Updates will come after I get feedback from her.

TxPEP Banner: Cutouts

This is a work in progress that I’m not sure is going to be assigned to me, but I think they needed to pitch a banner for the clients, similar to the following example bellow.

I was specifically asked to work on the cutouts by taking Suloni and Valerie’s suggested images, cropping out the people, and then converting them into solid color images. Here are some of the cutouts I worked on…

Finally, here is my starter banner pitch that I then forwarded to Valerie and Suloni for them to work on in needed before presenting to the client…

PSY Labs Site NEW: TIES Lab Home Banner Pt. 2

Project: TIES Lab Home Banner
Client: Dr. Adela Timmons
Completion Status: In Progress…
Staff Guidance: Maddy Kaniewski
STA Team Members: Cristina (c’est moi)
Description/Plans: To design a banner that projects the lab’s focus on couples, kids, and family, as well as their mission of tying technology with family & relationships.

 

As a recap from my last post on this project, the last thing I did was send the client some mockups of the drafts I’d been working on. Specifically, these two:

 

However, we got an unexpected response from them saying that this was not the style they’d asked for, although I was told there was not specific style to follow. So, to make sure we didn’t have any other communication issues, we agreed to have a meeting, which I directed. From there, we got ended up with the following notes:

• likes the duarte lab banner a lot
  • likes the overlapping feeling (but open to other ideas)
• likes muna lab banner
• abstracted style
• no photos
• maybe abstracted versions or silhouettes of families, couples, parent with kid?
• how to represent technology?
  • study family relationships by collecting data of their interactions
  • use mobile sensors
  • collect data from smart phones, fitbits
    • record conversations, psychophysiological data (heart, bp, etc)
• infer quality of interaction
• send interactions via smartphones and wearable devices
  • could highlight the wrist with fitbit, could add little wave pulse to show connection or recording ? keep it abstract
• family “ties”
• holding hands? symbolize relationship. one wrist with a fitbit?

 

• colors – can use blues from lab icon but open to colors from duarte lab
• next 1 month or so ideally
  • students look in summer for labs to apply to

 

Anyhow, after my research and finding cool inspo pics, I came across some cool imagery of hand holding that gave me the idea of doing a knitted or woven pattern with that and add some smartwatches to represent the technology of it all. Long story short, here are my new drafts that I’ve sent over for approval:

 

Immigration & European Soccer Course Promo

Project: Immigration & European Soccer Course Promo
Client: Dr. Hans C. Boas
Completion Status: Done! (And in about 4 days, I’m impressed)
Staff Guidance: Suloni Robertson
STA Team Members: Cristina (it me)
Description/Plans: To design and art-direct the promo material material for the GSD course on Immigration & European Soccer.

 

Client Direction:

Pick one of the following taglines, and add the call to action “Learn more about European soccer and immigration in GSD s310 IMMIGRATION AND EURO SOCCER this summer!”

 

– “For Immigrants, Soccer Is often more than a Sport”
– “Diversity at Play: Immigration and France’s Soccer Team”
– “What a Soccer Scandal Says About Dog-Whistle Politics”
– “Germany Wants to Unite People Hosting Soccer’s Euro 2024”

 

They also gave me the following images as inspiration and possibly to work with as well, but I didn’t see any of those as a potential good fit.

 

So I decided to look for images on my own that were for sure free to use, and I found this picture of some soccer shoes resting over a ball, in the middle of a field, which I thought showed great potential. Then I revisited the client’s potential taglines and noticed that they were not focused on a specific country. Some mentioned Germany, some France, and one mentioned the 2024 UEFA European Football Championship. SoI decided that representing a single country wasn’t enough, and decided to look for an image that represented European culture as a whole, and I stumbled upon the European Union flag. From there, an idea was born… (This was my original quick draft to propose the general idea).

 

I went through a few different iterations trying to edit the ball properly. First, I masking the shape of the ball was a challenge because of the pattern in the original image and the shading. I was able to remove the color, but with it, the texture and lines of the ball were messed up. So I looked for a different copyright-free image that was the closest thing to a monochromatic ball I could find, and used that to mimic the texture and shading of the ball. Then I had to fix the color of the overlayed image of the EU flag. Next, when I tried to translate this idea into the printed promo formats, the hues of the ball came off way duller than in the original. Turns out, that blue is one of the hardest colors to translate from RGB and CMYK. The more you know! 🌈⭐️ Anyhow, I compromised and remade the design fully on CYMK, since most of the deliverables required that color scheme anyway. Long story short, here’s how everything turned out!

 

KB – Basics of Client Communication Update Pt. 2

Project: Updating the Client Communications KB
Client: Internal/Design STA program
Completion Status: Done!
Staff Guidance: Suloni Robertson
STA Team Members: Cristina (it me), Angie, Ingrid
Description/Plans: To revamp the client communications KB.

 

To follow up with my last update (the one I posted on December 2021), let me just refresh you on the details of this project (although, feel free to go back and read that, because I got really poetic with my x-mas themed intro)…

 

A long time ago (October 2020, to be precise) I wrote my first KB: Basics of Client-Based Project Communication. Fast forward to the Fall of 2o21, Angie (a now former STA) was tasked to revamp this resource. So, since I was the original writer, I was brought in as a consultant and the lead designer to remake and improve the example images. Long story short, the project was in motion for a while and I made some progress. But as we got more important, client-based projects coming in, the project was put on hold for months. However, this week, Ingrid, our other collaborator, asked about the status of this project to see if it was ready to be checked off. So I went back to my drafts, checked my progress, and concluded it was done.

Here are the final graphics I worked on:

 

Before…                                                                                                          After…

And a bonus:

Sámi Culture Course Promo

Project: Sámi Culture Course Promo
Client: Dr. Oeyvind Bjoeru
Completion Status: Done!
Staff Guidance: Suloni Robertson
STA Team Members: Cristina (soy yo)
Description/Plans: To design the campaign promoting the Fall 2022 Sámi Culture course.

 

Yet another promo project I got to work on, this specific campaign was focused on promoting the Sámi Culture course provided by the Department of Germanic Studies, here at UT’s College of Liberal Arts. So, for those of you who might be like me and probably don’t know what The Sámi are an indigenous group of people who live in some places throughout Scandinavia, Finland, and the Kola Peninsula of Russia, and this course was designed to bring some more light onto their culture.

 

The project already was started out by a different STA and through some guidance from Suloni, but parting from there, and keeping in mind the proposed color palette, striving for a style that conveyed motion, and shooting for a sports-like design, these are the final prints and screen ad I made. Enjoy!