STA Blog

Emily Park

Emily Park

Vlabs UI

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Virtual Labs UI Update

 

Here is an update on the UI design for the Virtual Labs site. Since my last update we have decided to use only one color of the four presented. We went with the teal color as we believed it offered the bet contrast for screen visibility. In addition, Suloni had some notes for me, primarily reemphasizing the lab numbers in the navigation bar and main menu. Below are the changes out into effect.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I spent some of Friday updating my mockup and prototype of the site. I made sure everything was consistent with the styling of the interactives. This entailed small changes including updating the font size, line height, padding, etc. Below you can see all the pages laid out in the order of their flow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

As of now, I have a mockup for the homepage and what a lab section will look like. This week I will focus on designing a couple more pages and assets needed for the new site’s design. This includes a resources page, glossary, credits, and a min-max button. You can click on the homepage below to navigate through the prototype.

 

 

 

HRC Visit

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Rise of Everyday Design at the Harry Ransom Center

 

On Monday I went to the Harry Ransom Center to visit their Rise of Everyday Design exhibit. I had never gone to an exhibit in the Harry Ransom Center so I was eager to head over from my shift and see one, especially because it was on design. When I went in I was excited to see the exhibit was focused on the Arts and Crafts Movement. Last year, I took a course called The History of Design and it focused primarily on the Arts and Crafts Movement taught by Dr. Monica Pennick. Walking through the exhibit I saw lots of familiar names. In class we had learned about Ruskin, Pugin, William Morris, etc so I was excited to see these names and pieces we had learned about in person. It was crazy to me that UT has such an amazing resource like the HRC on campus for students to use.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What was so interesting to me about the exhibit and the Arts and Crafts movement is the struggle between elevation in design and high-quality craftsmanship versus egalitarian design. The Arts and Crafts Movement was centered on the fundamentals of handcrafted and well-made design. However, over time and increasing popularity of Arts and Crafts products there was a push for manufacturing products for the masses. I wonder if craftsmanship should be sacrificed for the purpose of making it more accessible? Was the Arts and Crafts movement tarnished when it made its way to the US and became a product of capitalism? On the other hand, is it right to limit “good design” to only those who can afford it? In the end, I think that design, different from art, is more responsible in making products that are “good design” but also egalitarian. There can be fine art, but it is a designer’s job to make art more accessible to the masses.

Final Poster

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Final Draft for History Department Poster

 

Here is the finalized design for the poster I was drafting a couple weeks ago. Since then, I added a tear effect to blend the two images together and formatted the text to look more symmetrical. I’m really glad with how it turned out!

 

 

History Poster

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Department of History Promotional Materials

 

I got assigned to work on promotional materials for the Department of History last week. I worked with the same client not too long ago on the Churchill poster and I’m glad to be working with him again. I have a lot of fun with these posters because it sometimes is a challenge working with the photos they give you but it forces you to get creative.

 

The event for this poster is a lecture called “Cathedral Cities and the Territorialization of Spanish America”. I was provided one photo off a map and so I started playing with that to see what I could come up with. I chose to use the map as a sort of overlay that blends in and out with a picture of a colonial Spanish cathedral. This is only one concept but I will work on ideating some more on Monday!

 

 

 

Department of History Promotional Materials and Some More Vlabs

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Department of History Promotional Materials and Some More Vlabs

 

I was able to come in this week to work on some promotional materials for an event hosted by the Department of History. The event is a talk featuring historian Andrew Roberts on Winston Churchill. I liked the look of a sleek and simple black and white poster for a powerful historical figure such as Churchill so that’s what I went off from. I have a couple of iterations and here are some of them.

 

 

One of the iterations features just a simple high contrast black and white photo of Churchill that blends in to the background. The other one features a portrait of Churchill composed of text from his infamous “We Shall Fight on the Beaches” speech (however, I do not know how well it reads…). Lastly, the flyers contain a little more body text about the speaker so I decided to add a picture of him however I’m still trying to come up with solutions on how to combine both Churchill and the speaker into a more cohesive layout.

 

VLabs Interactives

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Virtual Labs Interactives

 

The interaction layout seems to be able to adapt to each individual interactive which is great! It’s really all up to figuring out how to execute some of the trickier interactives. But the layout will be as follows: