STA Blog

Shanda Horm

Shanda Horm

March 2025

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MARCH 2025

— TYPE HIERARCHY IN INDESIGN —

In my downtime, I explored training in software that I didn’t have much experience in. Before doing this training, I only used InDesign once to create a more creative resume. It gave me a lot of trouble, so I used this opportunity to get more comfortable with this app.

For this training, I was to make a typography-only poster for a fake event. I’ll admit I had trouble balancing the elements of the poster and adjusted the type multiple times. I thought about decorating the poster with assets I would create in Illustrator, but I wanted to see what I could do with just InDesign.

Here is the result:

— PHOTOSHOP TRAINING —

This was a quick Photoshop training I did where I made flashcards:

Flowers (Khmer):

Created by Grafix Point from Noun Project

Created by Kristina Margaryan from Noun Project

Created by Made from Noun Project

Mushrooms (Malay):

Created by Rike from Noun Project

Created by DioRama from Noun Project

Created by Lars Melertoberens from Noun Project

Grass (Lao):

Created by arie from Noun Project

Created by Tere II from Noun Project

Created by Adrien Coquet from Noun Project

Trees (Thai):

Created by Gabriella from Noun Project

Created by rasendria from Noun Project

Created by ProSymbols from Noun Project

Bushes (French):

Created by madness stock from Noun Project

Created by Agung Pamuji from Noun Project

Created by wahab marhaban from Noun Project

— STA PRESENTATION WALK-IN ANIMATION —

Animation Proposal

Asset Creation

Working on the Animation

Problem 🙁

Unfortunately, I got news that someone else did a walk-in animation. I had to stop working on the project.

— 2025 LAITS SHIRT CONTINUED —

Final Design Picked!

The turtle design was picked! Now it was time to rearrange the assets and explore different color options.

Shirt Mock Ups

A note I got is to explore the idea of a pink or brown shirt– so I would experiment with different color palettes for those. I would also try out different shirt colors that I think would suit the shirt.

December Updates

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DECEMBER 2024

At the beginning of December, I was tasked with creating a logo for UT.AI marketing. I was a little surprised when I was assigned this since I never made a logo before and only recently began training for it in my downtime. However, with the consistent feedback from De’sha and Leilani, I know what to expect in the future if I’m assigned a logo design again!

Regarding the actual creation of the logo, it took many back and forths to find the direction for the logo. Here are my sketches:

The direction of these two sketches was going in the right place and I got approval to iterate them further:

Color Iterations:

Vectorized:

The second logo was favored the most. I was asked to do one last adjustment before it was sent to Mike:

Before going on winter break, I was assigned to work on some illustrations and icons for the IPE project! These icons and illustrations would be used in animations created by Lila.

I was on a bit of a time crunch since I only had 6 days of work before I was out for winter break. I began with making sketches for the icons. Here are the sketches I was able to do:

After creating these sketches, I was to focus on creating characters, environments, and scenes for Lila to animate.


Here is the final character lineup:

These are the final environments I made:

The last thing I did was get started on a couple of scenes that would be animated. These are the ones I managed to complete before my last shift ended for the semester:

When I went on break, De’sha finished up my end! I was happy to be assigned this project because it allowed me to see how I’ve grown in Illustrator. Overall, I look forward to getting projects like this one again in the future, but hopefully we won’t be on as much of a time crunch as this one!

November Updates

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November Updates

This month I was assigned a new animation project where I worked alongside Lila. We began our training by designing a simple and detailed character. Here are the ones I made:

Soon after we created our characters, we received feedback on our detailed characters. Our detailed characters needed a few adjustments to look like they were in the same design “family” as the characters below:

Here is my character with the adjustments made based on De’sha’s feedback:

Lila and I received more information on our upcoming project and were given example scenes to animate. We got premade Illustrator files to work with, but the layers weren’t separated correctly. However, this gave me more practice with how to separate a scene’s layers for easier animating in Adobe After Effects. Below is my first pass at the animation:

De’sha suggested more subtle changes in the expressions of the characters, meaning more practice separating the layers in Illustrator (which wasn’t too hard)!

Here is my second animation with the feedback implemented:

Lots of Logos!

I began some logo training during my downtime to get more practice working in Illustrator! Here are some I have made so far.

This first set of logos is for the iconography training.

October

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October

After being out for the first week of October due to being sick, I was left with one less week to work on the Early Voting animations and the rest of the animations. While I was able to get the Early Voting animations in on time, I feel the animations could be better if I had more time for a couple more rounds of feedback.

It was then time to move on to the last two animations: “Tomorrow is Election Day” and “Today is Election Day.” I was able to complete these rather quickly because I was able to use assets and animations from the previous animations. A few adjustments later- I officially completed all of the Voting PSA animations!

Here are the final icons used (Credits to De’sha for the vote early icon!):

And here are the final two animations:

Overall, I felt like this project allowed me to really get comfortable in After Effects! I had fun experimenting with different animations and learning the best workflow for me.

9/23/24 – 9/26/24

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9/23/24 – 9/26/24

I was still going back and forth between working on the STA poster and the Early Voting PSA animations.

Regarding the latter, I spent a lot of time working on the icons since I planned for this one to have a lot more than the previous animation. Below is my first pass at the icons and what I submitted this week for feedback.

The struggle I had with these icons was making sure they looked like they’re from the same family. For my first attempt at them, I believe I did ok- but the icons that have black in them do stand out from the rest.

The STA poster was also due soon, but I became sick around that time and couldn’t do the final edits; however, here is the final version of the poster!

9/16/24 – 9/19/24

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9/16/24 – 9/19/24

This week I was juggling two projects: an STA department poster and an early voting PSA animation. I would go back and forth between what I would work on depending on if I was waiting for feedback for one or the other.

Regarding the STA department poster, I tried to complete this one first due to the deadline. I was assigned the Lifecycle crew and I was to create a poster inspired by the movie “The Usual Suspects.”

In regards to the early voting PSA animation, this week was largely planning. I worked on and submitted an animation proposal. I drew from my past experience with working on the register to vote PSA animation- so I was able to get that done quickly!

Here is the proposal!

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1oiEeN1PeabH7Jo1S21zhQ6oUVQsyt4cjrPWaHawbL34/edit?pli=1#slide=id.p

One last minor thing I did earlier this week was synch up two different versions of the register to vote PSA to the animation I created for the first one!