Last. Blog. Post.

Wow… I can’t believe my last day as an STA has finally come. Words can’t quite fully grasp my experience here at LAITS over the past 2 years. I’ve grown so much as a designer (literally didn’t know anything about Adobe Creative Suite!!!), as well as a person in general. Over 2 years ago, I was pondering about what I would be doing professionally, while enjoying what I do. And coming from a biology/science background, I felt like I was restrained in a pre-health profession. B U T, donut fret – I have heard about medical illustration, and the thought of even approaching the field wouldn’t have been possible if it wasn’t for my Design STA position at LAITS. I’m proud to say that I can capable of drawing lines and shapes in Photoshop! Hooray! 😉

But in all seriousness, I sincerely wanted to thank Suloni & my STA team, as well as all the LAITS fam bam. They have been more than patient, kind, put up with my sarcastic jokes and weirdness, and they never hesitated to answer my dumb questions or to teach me new skills. LAITS is a special place, where we don’t just provide aid to the UT community, but we also help EVERYONE grow, both as professionals and as good human beans. I am so grateful for my opportunity, and even though I am frankly nervous to enter the ~real~ world as an adult, I am ready to take on the world with all the skills and experiences I have built up over the past few years.

So here’s to looking back at all the great mems that made me who I am, and to all the great future endeavors to everyone at LAITS and beyond!!! Thank y’all for everything.

UTDL

The past two days, Suloni has asked me to make branding mockups with the UT Deep Learning icon that Tate has created. I was to save the icon itself, icon + “UTDL”, and icon + “UT Deep Learning” into 5 different formats: .ai, .psd (white background), .png (transparent background), .eps (outlines), and .pdf (white background). Since our office mainly uses Photoshop, it was nice playing around with Illustrator and googling bunch of stuff I didn’t know, such as making lines into shapes, and saving text as shapes so it doesn’t get messed up with you send the design to the printer!

With the finished products, I was able to make mockups on t-shirts, mugs, and tote bags:

And I also made a website mockup for the professor:

It’s been awhile since I’ve worked on a design project, so it was definitely nice to take a break from vlabs and focus on something entirely different!

I’ve just mainly been working on vlabs this past week! That includes both making my own and also reviewing others’ (mainly Maddy’s) psd assignments. Here are a few that I’ve done/ edited:

I also learned how to make a transparent background in .psd (for artboards), so Suloni has asked me to make a basic training instructions for others. I have uploaded the simple instructions on the Knowledge Base:

http://sites.la.utexas.edu/kb/2019/08/12/how-to-make-transparent-psd-backgrounds/

On Wednesday, Tate and I were filmed by Jacob & JP’s Video/Audio STA crew for the LAITS Documentation Series for the Mellon Scholars Seminar we led. It took about 2 hours, and Jacob asked us both personal and work-related questions, and he made it very easy for us to come up with our answers naturally! Overall, it was a very fun time, even though I was a bit nervous to get in front of the camera. We asked some of the other STA’s to pose for our BTS (Behind The Scene) photoshoot – thanks, yall!!!!

Nothing really special has happened over the past week. Just the usual vlabs psd/png assignments. Valerie trained me how to review other STA’s vlabs work, so I started on that yesterday! Few screenshots of the ones I’ve been editing/ reviewing/ making from scratch:

And here’s my 8bit gif!!

Vlabs

I’ve mainly been working on vlabs the past week; here are some screenshots of some of the psd/png assignments I’ve done:

<lab 10 | sec 4>

<lab 12 | sec 4>

& there are a lot more, but you get the idea!

!!!!LIFE UPDATE!!!!

My roommate adopted a new puppy, and we are 98% going to name him Barton (after Barton Springs) – Bartie for short. He’s about 3 months old, and he was being cared at a foster home after he got hit by a car 🙁 He limps still, but he can now go up and down the stairs by himself!!! I love him, but he’s been peeing on my room carpet… so I’m a bit sad. But I’m sure he’ll learn to potty in no time!!

Today, the fellow STA ladies took a trip to check out Ellsworth Kelly’s “Austin” at the Blanton Museum. The weather was just perfect, and we had a great time exploring the art that represents the beauty of our city. Let’s jump into our field trip !

This was my second time visiting “Austin,” and I was reminded of how amusing it was to see the way light plays with the stained glass, as well as the 14 marble panels that were imported all the way from Italy – the same marbles used by Michelangelo!!!

We then went inside the Blanton Museum to check out Jeffrey Gibson’s This is the Day exhibit. His use of beads, punching bags, paintings, garments, and other daily objects worked well with the exuberant colors, patterns, and materials with text. I love museums!!