Research for Meaningful Brand Systems: Feedback & Test Run

Since we have the KB lessons project going on to create and refresh our STA trainings, we are also doing a feedback and test run set of rounds to make sure that the KBs are up to par. Recently, I was assigned to do that for Athena’s Branding: Research for Meaningful Brand Systems KB.

I won’t bore you with the details of the feedback I gave, but the following are my results for the activities as I performed the test run:

Instructions: Stop and Reflect

After learning about UT’s brand guidelines, take some time to reflect. Does your perception of UT align with the identity UT sought to create? Why or why not? Do you have any specific examples in mind of how you noticed UT manifesting its principles? Let us know in the Basecamp comments.

Instructions: Stop and Reflect

Ways brands use brand identity and strategies to execute their values:

– To target a specific audience

– To position themselves against their competition and stand out

For the Conducting a Brand Audit activity I collected a bunch of different images for logos, social media pages, slogans, blogs and news, and color schemes. Then I wrote the following for how these things contribute to the Visual Identity of the College of Liberal Arts:

All of these are great examples of ways the College of Liberal Arts visually represents their brand identity, mainly seen through cohesive colors and similar typography. It in not only successful on unifying the brand identity within COLA, but also with the general UT identity.

Last but not least, here is my final brand book for the Fairy Forest Cafe prompt in the Applying the Concepts activity.

Here’s a better look at the menu:

Lab Page Update

This was an easy task. Basically, I just had to rephrase the following sentence into a new one for the Lab Page:

Old: “The Mezes 4th floor computer lab equipment check-out services have ceased until further notice. No reopening date has been established.”

New: “The lab equipment rental services at the Mezes 4th floor are temporarily closed until further notice.”

Photo IDs

You know how this goes. This is the latest photo IDs I’ve had to edit:

For the first one the lighting was already pretty good, so I just increased the blue color balance a bit to balance the warmth, I decreased the saturation a bit and increased the exposure, too. For the second one, the lighting was already pretty good, so I just adjusted the tone to increase the vibrance.

Web-Dev: How to Create a Card Layout KB

The Web-Dev project is a large effort with the following two objectives:

1. Create a training package for new STAs joining the Development (Coding) team.

2. Have a streamlined / organized KB section for the STA dev team to use as a resources on projects

As a primarily Design STA, I’m not one of the organizers for this project. However, I was tasked to write a tutorial on How to Create a Card Layout on Cascade, based on the Ethics Project Website Request that I full-filled with Thuy, a fellow STA (details on that are mentioned on a previous blog post, if you’d like to check that out).

As with any project I’ve worked on here at LAITS as an STA, I was assigned someone to review my work for feedback. That is always a helpful tool. Though, for this specific project I didn’t need much feedback, all in all. I sailed through this project quite easily. However, one challenge I did have to face was when attempting to upload the gif file I was using for the banner. But I asked for help from one of our coordinators, and was able to resolve that issue in less than a work hour.

Anyway, here’s the link to the final KB for this project: https://sites.la.utexas.edu/kb/2021/06/04/how-to-create-a-card-layout/

GIF

How to Write Project Summaries KB

For this project I was tasked to create a template/instructions/banner for the Project Summaries effort and add it to the KB. In case you might not know what these project summaries are, let me explain. Here at LAITS, project summaries are something we start working on a few weeks before an STA Semester Showcase. During this event we are tasked to summarize the most important projects we’ve worked on during that time. In theory, it is kind of similar to the STA Blog. However, while the Blog works mostly as a storytelling platform, Project Summaries encapsulate the complete journey of a project including the STAs and other team players who took a part into its development, in a complete and presentable way to an audience.

Also, project summaries are divided into two phases; the approval phase and the presentation phase. Both of these are better explained in the final KB I made.

In relation to other KB’s I’ve made, this one was relatively a short an easy project. I was assigned an STA to provide feedback for me, and so they did. But from start to finish including drafting, initial feedback, the banner creation and feedback, and the final KB development, the project lasted about 2 days to complete. (My personal record..? Maybe?) Anyway, I’m proud of this project and I hope it gets to help all STA’s in the future.

Finally, here’s the link to the KB: http://sites.la.utexas.edu/kb/2021/06/02/how-to-write-project-summaries/

Lesson 7: Logos Update

If you’ve been thoroughly following this blog you might remember that throughout the semester I worked on the Concepting and Sketching section of Lesson 7 on Logos.

As a general reminder: the purpose of this Lesson creation project is to make a bunch of whole new lessons and tutorial specifically on different topics future STAs will learn from and use as reference when getting to work on these projects. As you can see, this is the lesson 7 out of 9 or 10 that will be part of the new STA curriculum, and Lesson 7 is all about logos.

On the last post I made on this topic I mentioned that we were still in need of feedback and yet to draft the KB. Well, since then we got a bunch of really helpful feedback and suggestions to add into the KB (mainly refining references to the original KB we incorporated and expanded upon in this new KB). And so, I got to write out the official KB! Here’s the link to that: http://sites.la.utexas.edu/kb/2021/05/25/7-logo-concepting-sketching/

We are yet to go through the feedback and test run rounds, so everything is still subject to change. Also, my partner for this project won’t be working at LAITS during the summer as I am, so I’ll be taking the lead on this project for the time being. I’ll keep you updated on what’s to come!