STA Blog

isaiah ~ week 027

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week twenty-seven...
OCTOBER 16th - FEBRUARY 16TH

     this week,  i :
      • emailed nineteen UT Psychology Lab professors about upgrading their website's UI
      • began migrating university websites from Drupal and WordPress to Pantheon with Dev Team
      • ran tests on Canvas' Tower Tools Dashboard application1 using BrowserStack2
      • met with Stacy to discuss tasks prioritization regarding Texas 
Domestic Slave Trade Projects' From Slavery to Freedom website

     impediments :
          • when testing audio playback in Canvas' video stream, B-Stack3 :

            • omits volume control functionality for mobile browser testing and
defaults all of its cloud-linked devices to a standard listening volume
            • eliminates audio transmission altogether
for Samsung devices via its web browsers
          • after testing unsupported web browsers in B-Stack, :

              • UC Browser Turbo4 does not load the Dashboard application's
main course page; still troubleshooting
              • we're considering local device testing as a work-around

       

          • 1 Canvas' Dashboard Application is responsible for UT courses' online video stream and live communication.
            2 BrowserStack is a cloud-based testing platform that is compatible with multiple web browsers across a variety of devices.
            3 B-Stack is a term coined by me as to serve as an abbreviation for BrowserStack. s/o to Gretch, I made fetch happen.
            4 UC Browser Turbo is a web browser

      • Adolescent Health and Academic Achievement Study  ( AHAA )
        Website in Desktop Dimension

       

  • Adolescent Health and Academic Achievement Study  ( AHAA )
    Website in Desktop Dimension

     

  • Adolescent Health and Academic Achievement Study  ( AHAA )
    Website in Desktop Dimension

     

 

Psychology Lab Template

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Psychology Lab Template

Start: Feb 4th, 2023

To be Completed: N/A

Staff Guidance: Stacy

Client:  All future psychology lab clients

Project Description: While there are requests from the psychology lab to update their current websites, the design team and the web dev want to develop a more efficient workflow to provide several templates for the clients to choose from. The goal of creating the template is to save time in developing “customized” websites for the lab clients. Therefore, the design should be neat to fit the common sections/contents for a research lab as well as easy to develop in WordPress.

Home Page

old website

I started to draft out the home page according to two different types of needs. Some professors tend to showcase the lab mission or other essential information related to the lab (ex: announcement, current research, etc) at first glance without scrolling down to the bottom. Other professors request to obtain certain sections on the home page besides the top navigation bar. So I created two main pages – a scrolling page and a page layout.

To align with the UT color palette and emphasize professionalism, I only utilized burnt orange and dark grey to play with the information hierarchy.

Here are drafts I created during the process.

Team Page

old website

The original idea for the team page is to have a team list and a separate bio page. The audience can check out different types of employees in the lab and click inside to check out their interested team members.

After talking to the web dev team, they think that listing out all the information on one page is easier for people to navigate. Therefore, I create sections to divide the teams and play with the standardized form and extended information on the team page. The whole page is a column layout whereas different sections occupy different portion of the column to fit in. I also use typography for the information structure in the Alumni section.

Draft pages

The next step is to implement all the designs into WordPress.

Week 2/12 – 2/16

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Summer Marketing

Client: LAITS
Staff Guidance: De’sha

Speedway Banner: FINAL! I can’t wait to see this hanging above Speeday by Gregory Gym in April. Creating this banner was a fun experience because Summer Marketing has never had a banner as a marketing asset, so I had some creative freedom in the overall design–although we did connect it back to the postcard/digital display imagery so the summer campaign appears cohesive.

11×17:

      • reduction in bottom disclaimer text
      • URL changed to white
      • courses offered changed/removed

Digital displays:

      • replaced the $500 sticker to match the Spring Postcard
      • right-aligned “TX Residents”
      • still need to decide whether to keep “TX Residents” in color (relative to their color scheme) or in burnt orange.

 

 

Animated Pre-Roll:

      • changed out courses

 

Minors PDF:

      • change/removed courses and their respective semsters offered

Shriya – Week 2/12 – 2/16

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UTFC Banners: 10.1 Québec & 9.5 Port Villa

START: Feb 7, 2024 

COMPLETED BY: Feb 14th, 2024

DESCRIPTION: This week I was tasked with creating UTFC Banners for two different units. 
 
10.1 Québec 
Step 1. Images Cutout
For this section I started with these three images and used photoshop to erase the background.
  
From here I put the cutout images into Illustrator and used the image trace feature 
to create vectors of each of the images. 
  
Once I had image traced versions of these photos I created a layout that would compliment 
the banner text and center Tex & Tammy.
 
 
  
  
  

9.5 Port Villa
I repeated the same process for Port Villa to get this final result:
  
 
  
   

WHAT I LEARNED:
Through this process I learned a lot about being very attentive to detail. 
Going through multiple rounds of feedback and iteration for these banners, I was able to learn the expectations for these projects and how to apply them properly.

Week 4

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Week at a Glance

This week, I continued working through training work, and was introduced to my first project.

Create Pixel Art in Illustrator

Programs: Illustrator

Using the KB tutorial, I created pixel art of Hippopotamus (“William”) from the Middle Kingdom, 1961-1878 BC, sourced from the MET museum website.

Using this image, I created the following iterations:

 

 

Following this project, I moved on to Learning the Principles and Elements of Design.

 

Learning the Principles and Elements of Design

 

Using the KB tutorial, I created a slide deck of each design principle and element with examples pulled from famous artworks. After collecting examples, I went into Illustrator to outline the area where the principle/element is displayed.

 

 

 

Project Work

In between my training work, I was able to work on my first project assigned to me – 11.1B Music, Art and Theatre. Using a predetermined vocabulary list, I collected image options for each and placed them into the google sheet. I am currently still waiting on approval for the image options.

 

 

Week 3

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Custom/Studio Course Graphics

Programs: Photoshop, Illustrator

This week, I worked through creating a custom set of course graphics based on the below prompt:

 

Course name & number: ART3800: Twentieth Century Art
Professor Title: Dr.Fabiola Martínez Rodríguez
(Fake) UT Department:College of Fine Arts, Department of Art and Art History

Professor Request
“Please look at what artists and pieces are in my updated syllabus to draw inspiration for your design. I don’t specialize graphic design personally, however I do think you may be able to draw inspiration from the Bauhaus artists of the 1920’s and 30’s. I also take my students to tour the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum each semester, which may bring you inspiration as well. Thank you…”

 

Using the prompts and the KB tutorial, I first focused on creating a visual direction for the entirety of the project. To better communicate this part of the process I created the following moodboards:

 

From the directions outlined above, I moved forward with the second moodboard with a revised color palette. This helped me to create the digital wall monitor, canvas callouts, digital desk skirt, studio mockups, vertical monitor, canvas homepage banner as well as the iPad overlay.

 

Following this project, I began working on tasks from the Introduction to Design History and Styles categories.

——————————

 

History of Design

I moved on to the History of Design module, where after reviewing the different eras of art and design, I chose the arts and crafts movement to base a design on.

Following the KB tutorial, I was able to create a seamless design graphic–

 

 

Basing the elements off this color palette, I was able to create a sense of unity and depth.

 

This week, I was also able to begin working on the next task– Advanced Training: Create Pixel Art in Illustrator.