STA Blog

Course Graphics Training

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Course Graphics Training

I began Course Graphics Training, starting with designing Style A/Style B graphics. For my course graphics, I chose to use the course “Intro to Design Thinking,” which was a class I took last semester.

For each style, I created:

Canvas dashboard/homepage graphics

Canvas buttons

Powerpoint resources

Stinger slides

Style A

First Drafts

For my Style A graphics, I decided on the green background because I felt it complimented the picture of the professor well. I created these graphics with the templates provided to me in the dropbox.

Canvas Graphics

Powerpoint Graphics/Templates

Canvas Buttons

After this, I received feedback to:

  • Change the bottom bottom bar of the Canvas graphics to an accent color that compliments the course and primary color

Incorporating Feedback

After receiving feedback, I decided to change the bottom bar to a darker blue to compliment the course and primary green.

Style B

First Drafts

Here were my first drafts for Style B. I decided on having a photo with a wall of sticky notes as the background photo because when I took the class last semester, our whiteboards often looked like that when we brainstorming/ideating our ideas.

Canvas Graphics

Powerpoint Graphics/Templates

Canvas Buttons

After this, I received feedback to:

  • Put “Intro to Design” in the first line of the Canvas Homepage graphic and “Thinking” on the bottom. Also, to shrink the green background box to match the length of the text.
  • I forgot to change the background of one of my Powerpoint slide templates, so to add the sticky note wall to Slide 2.

Incorporating Feedback

After receiving feedback, I shrunk the background box and changed the text formatting on the Canvas Homepage graphic. I also added the correct background to my Powerpoint slide template.

Stinger Animations

I also made Stinger Animations for this training—which I had never done before—so I was very excited to use Adobe After Effects for the first time! It wasn’t too challenging to use, and I look forward to using it more in the future.

Final Menus + Final Thoughts

Here are the final menus for my two sets of course graphics:

Style A

Style B

Overall, this training taught me how how to navigate the LAITS server and how to use the course graphics templates. It taught me how to pick appropriate colors for the graphics I’m creating and was my introduction to Adobe After Effects!

September and October

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Been a while since I updated my blog so there’s a lot to go through! I’ll start with my first assignment.

ARH Custom Stinger Animation

This assignment was pretty fun as I was requested to make an animated stinger intro for a TA. The class’s style uses animated images which I don’t work with frequently but I think the style is very charming. Here’s the finished stinger. I really like how it turned out!

STA Posters!!

Our team was requested to make new STA team posters and to make it a special surprise, they were going to be inspired from real movie posters! This was an especially fun project as emulating movie posters is always very charming and I was given the task to make posters after The Breakfast Club and Clue.

The Breakfast Club was surprisingly challenging as the students in the poster were wearing very similar colors.

We eventually decided to change to a different poster type and change the colors of the students clothing.

My supervisors helped a lot with the coloring and changing the STA shirt colors but eventually it was good to send. Next was the Computer Support poster. Here are some of the iterations.

These were fun to do and I love the computer motif

GOV Intro

This was a pretty basic animation assignment. All I had to do was to reboot an existing intro with new assets. I ran into some issues but it came out well. Here’s how it looks.

CSMS Logo Animation

New CS Logo animation! These assignments are always pretty intimidating at first since the topics are hard to visualize, but I was given helpful reference images and a good dirstcion to go off of. Here are some of my initial concept sketches.

The client really liked the look of the graph logo and I got started on the animated intro. Here’s how it turned out.

I really like the graph animation and the client did as well!

My Summer

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It’s finally back-to-school season, and the “How was your summer question” is at its peak on campus. This is the part where I say. “If I had a dollar for everytime someone has asked me about my summer…”, but I am not going there.

So, I have a prepared line that summarizes my summer in 5 words, India, Singapore, Internship, singing lessons, and yoga.

I visited my grandmother and my extended family in India. There was good food, beautiful scenery, and great conversations. I was also able to meet my friends in Singapore when I had a 1 day lay-over in the journey from The US to India. Reconnecting with my friends and learning more about their experiences in college was such a joy.

After returning to Texas from my trip, I interned at a Fiber Glass Manufacturing company. I was able to learn so much about the Electrical Engineering side of manufacturing. I used specialized software like AutoCAD Electrical to update existing drawings of the system and digitize drawings. As an engineering intern, I learned a great deal about design. And design affects every facet of your job. The design of your machine, the safety considerations and mechanisms, the accessibility of your design, the functionality of your machine. As I sit here writing my summer reflection, I can’t help but think that design is such an instrumental part of our life, and an important part of my job as an STA at UT Austin! As I design websites, I think about the accessibility of the website (thank you past STA’s for your training), the functionality of the website, and of course how secure is a website. These are considerations that govern how we make choices. What I learned from my engineering internship is that, design thinking is applicable everywhere –– from engineering to web-design to even our life.

Summer!

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Summer!

I spent most of my summer working here at LAITS; however, when I wasn’t working, I spent my time exploring Austin alongside my friends who also resided here over the summer. We visited many of the local coffee shops, shopped at thrift stores for clothes and knick-knacks, and tried many restaurants!

Another thing I dedicated a lot of time to was working on projects for my portfolio. I decided to revamp my entire portfolio to better showcase my best work to try and land an internship for the summer going into my senior year.

After the end of my summer session at LAITS, I returned home to Houston while I waited out the gaps between my old and new apartment’s lease. A week or so after moving in, I went on a 3-day trip to New York City with some friends! It was the first time I went on a trip with friends so it was very exciting.

This was the first summer where I spent most of it away from my family. I did miss them, but I felt like this summer was great for allowing me to grow more as an individual! I hope I can continue to keep this up throughout the school year!

Summer in the City

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Summer In The City

My Corporate Era

This summer, I had the incredible opportunity to intern at Siegel + Gale’s New York City office as an Experience Intern. It was an extraordinary experience to work in such a big city at one of the top branding agencies in the country. Additionally, the chance to explore my passion for user experience and user interface design in a real work setting was truly invaluable. This experience allowed me to find how much I did actually enjoy UX/UI and how badly I want to keep working hard so post-grad I can return to NYC with a job in this field.

The Internship consisted of two main responsibilities one being the intern project, a prompt given to all the interns to complete as a team, and second being the client work assigned by manager. While both challenged me in different ways these tasks allowed me to grow as a designer and see where I have room to improve as well.

Overall, the friends and connections I made throughout this experience were invaluable. Working alongside talented professionals and fellow interns not only expanded my network but also provided me with a wealth of knowledge and support. The collaborative environment and mentorship I received greatly enriched my understanding of the industry and helped me refine my skills. I am excited to leverage these connections and lessons learned as I continue to pursue my career in UX/UI design, with a clearer vision of my future goals and a passion to contribute to the field of experience design.

The 5-9 After The 9-5

Along with the incredible work experience I gained, I also had the opportunity to live in New York City for three months! Exploring the city’s food scene, hanging out with friends, and soaking in the energy NYC has during the summer made every moment outside of work truly unforgettable. When coming to NYC I had the goal of going to a different coffee shop every chance I got and rating them all so I have a collection of pictures and notes. I am happy to announce that I did complete that goal and have succeeded in making the best list of NYC coffee shops!

Being in New York City for the summer has always been a dream of mine, and I feel incredibly fortunate and grateful to have had the opportunity to experience it. The combination of an enriching internship, city life, and meeting friends made this summer truly the best one ever. This experience has not only reinforced my passion for UX/UI design but also made me more motivated to continue my hard-work this school year. I will cherish these memories forever and I look forward to carrying these experiences with me into the future.

Shriya – Week 3/1 – 3/9

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SAVE THE DATE:

2024 STA PRESENTATION EMAIL INVITE FLYER

 

START: March 7, 2024

COMPLETED BY: March 14th, 2024

 

BRIEF:

This week I was tasked with creating the email flyer for the 2024 STA Presentation. For this flyer they wanted a concert/festival theme to match with the rest of the graphic assets.

IDEATION:

To start this poster I first wanted to outline my vision for what I wanted this 600px width graphic would look like. For this, I referred to a mix of both Last year’s SAVE THE DATE flyers and other concert festival graphics and posters.

From here I took the direction of a wristband style that would use the idea of concert wristbands to display the required information

Inspiration Picture from the 2023 INCHEON PENTAPORT Rock Festival

LAITS 2023 STA Presentation Email Flyer

DESIGN + ITERATION:

Through this process of design and iteration, I experimented with various elements to capture the essence of a concert/festival theme while drawing inspiration from the festival wristabnds and last year’s SAVE THE DATE flyers. Iterating on this concept, I refined the layout, color scheme, and typography to create a visually striking email flyer that resonates with the spirit of the event along with icons that represent the multiple different sections of LAITS.

FINAL PRODUCT:

WHAT I LEARNED:

This project challenged me to think creatively and adapt design principles to fit a specific theme and audience. By exploring different visual styles and experimenting with layout techniques, I gained valuable insights into effective communication through graphic design. Overall, this experience reinforced the importance of flexibility, iteration, and attention to detail in creating impactful design solutions.