Dana Center: Infographics

Project: Dana Center Infographics
Client: The Charles A. Dana Center
Completion Status: In progress…
Staff Guidance: Maddy Kaniewski, Suloni Robertson
STA Team Members: Cristina (it me)
Description/Plans: In brief, the Charles A. Dana Center wants us to make some infographics on their policies, curriculum, etc, keeping in mind their audience will be people who don’t know the dana center. They want us to help them understand what they do.

 

First, I started off drafting a style guide and a basic layout…

 

 

But then, I realized that the infographics would likely need more color and some more arrangements…

 

 

 

However, starting out with the style guide was not the move. So Suloni suggested we paused this progress. After that, I started focusing on the layout rather than the style, and the following images are some of the things I came up with after realizing that my original idea did not properly convey the topic hierarchy that they set to prioritize:

1. Who we prioritize

2. (1.5) Vision

3. What we do

4. 3 core values

5. mission

 

Here, I tried defining the hierarchy in different manners, such as through font size, through box positioning, and through box size.

 

 

However, I was then given some more advice and then asked to put this project on pause to redirect my attention back to the Swedish Language Promo Designs…

Swedish Language Promo Designs Pt. 2

After getting feedback on my original layout idea that was based on the VW’s Lemon ad, we came to the conclusion that I couldn’t follow through with that format since it iconically came from German inspiration. So, I started looking for ways to reformat that concept into a different minimalist style. Here are some ideas I tried out:

 

 

The following two images are what we eventually showed the client in order to get feedback from them. One of them is a product of this minimal content style we had been shooting for, and the other is a very rough draft of a maximal content idea the client and Suloni had considered and suggested I try out.

Fun Fact: the green grid was a guide for me to symmetrically place elements on the design, but I accidentally left it visible in one of the drafts I uploaded to Basecamp, and that mistake was actually well received and I was asked to leave it for future drafts, lol.

 

 

After sending these over two things were clear:

1. The maximal content version was scrapped.

2. I needed to revamp the minimal content version into a more ornate 19th century matchbox… more on that to come.

 

Swedish Language Promo Designs

Project: Promo Designs for Swedish Language Course
Client: Smyth Johansson
Completion Status: In progress…
Staff Guidance: Suloni Robertson
STA Team Members: Cristina (yo)
Description/Plans: To create 2 layouts (a minimal and a maximal content approach) designs for the Swedish department to be printed in order to promote their language course.

 

Here are some of the pictures I took for inspiration:

 

 

 

Finally, following Maddy’s advice, I took these two pictures of a match box. This was an exercise to learn how a light source would affect the box’s shadow. But I don’t think I took the pictures with a good enough light source… Nonetheless, here’s my attempt:

 

Scandinavian/Swedish Design Article: https://www.webpals.com/marketing/scandinavian-graphic-design-guide-tips/

 

Design & WebDev STA Showcase

On Wednesday we had a small STA Showcase for the Design and WebDev teams to show some of our favorite things we’ve done working at LAITS to honor our Director Joe TenBarge and his last days here before retirement. Though bittersweet, it was fun to present these projects of my own and to get to see what my peers have also worked on as we sat beside the man who started it all. (I got to see Suloni in person for the first time though, that was fun!) Anyhow, here are the slides of the projects I presented… I hope you enjoy them as much as I did when making them 🙂

 

presentation by Cristina Villarreal Núñez

Germanic Studies Flyers Pt.3

After the past round of feedback with the client, his team met up and were able to discuss some more changes they wanted to see from the flyer. They said their favorite version was Option 2 in Red, so I took that as the base design to make the new requested changes, such as:

 

1. Using brighter/more saturated colors
2. Adding a round sun with rays
3. Adding round clouds
4. Adding the Berlin TV Tower
5. Fixing “GER 604: Accelerante First-Year German,” and
6. Adding a QR Code Placeholder

 

 

I’ll let you know what they think of this as soon as they respond. For now, that’s all folks! 🙂

PSY 341K Course Graphics

Project: Course Graphics for PSY 341K
Client: Dr. David Yeager
Completion Status: In progress…
Staff Guidance: Suloni Robertson
STA Team Members: Cristina (yo), Abriella, Sheryl, and Rachel
Description/Plans: Full plan is to make course graphics for this class. Short term plan, we had to make various different drafts for the digital backdrop so that the professor can choose and use one ASAP.

 

These are my drafts…

 

Oh, and as you might have noticed from those designs, that image is not one of our usual template “professors” to test out the backdrops. That’s because that person is actually the professor for this course. Following advice from Suloni, I took his image from our LAITS files and edited it into a new template, so that he himself could see the a more realistic version of what his classes would look like with our backdrop designs. Here’s that image: