STA Blog

Week 4 – Isa

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✨🍓 Week 4: Training Progress 🍓✨

✧⋆ Helpdesk Place Card Redesign ⋆✧

✧⋆ After showing the last designs to the client, they loved it! 
✧⋆ This card will be placed in over 1,000 classrooms this Summer to help UT faculty and staff. I'm so honored to be contributing in a way that will help UT faculty and staff get the information they need!

✧⋆ Passion Project ⋆✧

✧⋆ Last week's STA meeting we covered how to present properly. I learned that a vital part of presenting is storytelling, to be able to walk the audience through an entire project from start to finish assuming they knew nothing about it is key.
✧⋆ My passion project involves the work I've done with the Texas Cultural Trust! I won't get into too many details, but this project has taught me a lot about how to communicate more effectively with stakeholders.

✧⋆ We learned that the project was out of our scope. We needed to tell our client a more realistic goal, but this only happened deep into the project. Our team had already expressed these concerns way before, but we never talked with the client about these concerns. I took away that I needed to not be so afraid to speak up and not waste anybody's time.

✧⋆ I have presented to my organization who are already aware of many of the details, so having to present this project in front of people who had no context was both a challenge and very helpful.

✧⋆ Tier 3 Course Studio Graphics ⋆✧

✧⋆ I was tasked with making an animated intro for a class of my choice. I decided to go with an informatics course called Online Communities. I started ideating with my iPad, sketching out general placement and icons I was thinking of including.

✧⋆ Storyboard: I wanted to have each icon rotate back and forth in the animation
✧⋆ Final: I decided to make the course name and number look as if it were a message and I animated it like one! I made it so that only the white icons rotated back and forth as I found it too much with every graphic. I went to Illustrator first to make all the graphics, made each layer separate and named it properly, and brought that into After Effects to animate.

✧⋆ Overall ⋆✧

✧⋆ Having to present was really useful! I need to improve on my storytelling and rehearsing beforehand would help me with my stuttering issue and confidence.

✧⋆ I haven't used After Effects too much, so having to animate studio graphics was out of my comfort zone. It was really interesting to learn and I am a lot more comfortable with making keyframes now!

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– Spring 2026 STA Presentation –

Lower Thirds

In March and April, I worked on the lower thirds for the Spring 2026 STA Presentation, and since the theme is museum related, my first iteration went in the direction of museum tickets.

However, we noticed that this design was quite similar to a previous lower third design which had a movie theater theme, with the lower thirds being the tickets, so we decided to change directions. We ended up on a paint brush design, where the brush is painting a stroke with the STA names and roles in it:

Final iterations and template creation:

– Tier 3 Course Graphics –

Course Intro

In early April I worked on some leftover Tier 3 trainings. In After Effects, I created a short looping intro for one of the previous Arabic courses I had taken.

https://sta.laits.utexas.edu/blog/2026/04/07/56384/

Week 2

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Tier 2 Course Graphics: For this training, I have explored creating Studio Graphics and have experimented with creating unique course graphics based off my past experience taking this course.

Status: Complete

Inspiration

I started by creating a mood board with images associated with the content of the class, the professor’s website, color scheme, and other supporting visuals.

Creating Studio Graphics

I found sources from Adobe Stock to include in the graphics and altered them to fit templates, create backgrounds, and support my theme.

Feedback

After creating all the studio graphics, I got feedback that the background for the wall monitor was a bit too dark. I tried different color overlays and images, so the professor wouldn’t blend into the screen, but wasn’t happy with any. So, I got more feedback from Lila and finally added a bluish overlay to brighten and balance the bright neon green.

Revision 1
Revision 2
Revision 3
Final Wall Monitor Mock Up

Final Sheet

After adjusting all the studio graphics, I put them into the template file.

Reflection

This was a good experience for me to explore creating a visual identity for a course. Although it was very structured and had many pre-existing templates, I think the iterating process was helpful and could be applied to future projects.

Week 3 – Isa

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✨🍓 Week 3: Training Progress 🍓✨

✧⋆ Tier 2 Studio Graphics ⋆✧

Last week I spent a lot of time making the Digital Wall monitor for this tier, once I had that set in stone, the rest of the graphics came quickly!

I was a lot more focused on simplicity this time around. I made sure to stick to a single primary color, that being the red, and made sure that was consistently shown throughout all the graphics. It was interesting to have to think about the wardrobe the professor would have to keep in mind. I never thought about it before, but it’s true that they could clash with the background with certain colors. For example, wearing red for this studio set would surely clash, but a green or blue would help the professor stand out.

Helpdesk Place Card Redesign

This is my first project where I’m working with real clients! I was tasked with redesigning the current Helpdesk Place Card. This is the current design:

They are usually on grey desks, and the current design makes them blend in, so I needed to make them stand out whilst still adhering to the LAITS Style Guide. This would mean sticking to their color palette, using the right fonts, and the right logo.

My first iteration:

This was a nice direction and I was told to make a mockup of them, so I put them on a gray desk much like how it would be in real life. Here are the initial mockups:

I received the following feedback:

  • Align LAITS logo with the icons
  • Try capitalizing titles and increasing the size
  • Change the light orange and light blue to white
  • Make gray lighter in QR area

The alignment of the text/icons and whether the titles should be all caps or not were the main question. Keeping all this in mind, these were my next few iterations:

Centered
Left aligned
All caps, centered
All caps, left aligned

The favorite of all the iterations was this one:

I’m still waiting for more feedback, but I’m pretty sure this may be the final version we end up going with!

Overall

It’s so interesting to see how many iterations you have to go through before you end up landing on the one that everyone is happy with. Design is an iterative process and rarely is ever linear, so it’s been a really cool journey to see how a design can develop!

First STA Blog Post

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This is my first week at LAITS and I have gotten more familiar with the workflow and workspace. I’m still getting used to the login process, but I’ve had a good experience overall!

Overview of this week:

  • Completed STA orientation tasks such as creating a slide deck recap, banner, bio, and avatar
  • Had my first weekly meeting and talked about apples!
  • Tier 1: Course Graphics Training

Orientation Tasks

My Avatar

About Me

Slide Deck Recap

Tier 1: Course Graphics Training

For this training, I chose a past course I’ve taken and got the hang of using specific Illustrator and PPTX templates for course graphics.

Canvas dashboard with image
Powerpoint slide with image

Reflection

Overall, I’ve had a good first week and I’m excited to continue learning through trainings and projects 🙂

Welcome to the STA Blog!

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Hi Julie! Welcome to the STA Blog! This the page where your blog posts will published.

Toward the end of your STA Orientation, you’ll design and upload a banner to go at the top of this page.

Upload a Blog Banner

Step One: Design Your Banner in Photoshop

Use these Photoshop specs when you’re making your banner:

    • Your banner should be 780 pixels wide (the height doesn’t matter)
    • Must include your name, your major, and your expected graduation year
    • Your banner should reflect who you are (your personality, interests or major)
    • Make sure to save your banner for the web (i.e. File > Export > Save for Web (Legacy))
    • If you save your banner as a JPG, make sure sure the quality is high (i.e. at least 60)

Step Two: Save Your Banner

  • There are two places you can save your completed projects: UT Box and the LAITS server. You’ll be given a personal folder in both locations. For now, you only have to save your banner to UT Box, but you may have to access the server at some point in the future.

Accessing UT Box

Accessing the LAITS server

    • Accessing the LAITS server from off-campus is slightly more complicated.
    • You’ll need to be registered with Duo if you aren’t already (you can register here).
    • Then you’ll need to connect to the UT VPN and the LAITS server. The videos below will walk you through how to do that:
    • Then navigate to your STA volume folder and save
      • smb://file.laits.utexas.edu/sta/Julie Brandt
    • Save your banner both as an image and an unmerged PSD

Step Three: Upload Your Banner to the STA Blog

  • Log in the the STA Blog here. You should’ve received an email confirming your new WordPress account with your username and assigned password. If didn’t get it or you can’t log in, ask De’sha or another STA.
  • You’ll be able to change your password anytime by going to Users > Your Profile > Account Management > New Password.

Uploading media and banners in WP

  • Read these links before you upload your banner.
  • They will walk you through how to upload media to your blog.

How to Upload a Homepage Banner

Adding New Posts and Media

Make Your First Blog post

  • Reflect on the day. You blog posts will be a documented experience of your time as an STA with LAITS. They can include anything you want to share about the projects you’re working on, and the more media (screenshots, images, links, videos, gifs) you can use, the better.
  • For today, write a bit about about yourself and what you did during orientation.
  • If you haven’t already, upload your banner.

Things to Remember

Image Specs

  • You should never copy and paste images into to your blog. Always upload images into the media section of blog first (Click on the add media button), then insert the image from the media folder to display on your blog.
  • Don’t use the thumbnail version of your images.
  • Use images that are 72 dpi
  • Screenshots are fine
  • Images that are 780 pix wide format nicely above or below text blocks

Always Categorize Your Posts

  • Always check the category “Fall 2025 – Spring 2026” on the blog posts you make this summer. This is the only category you need to check.
  • Make sure your posts are categorized correctly so that all of your work is documented in the correct semesters.

Commenting on Basecamp

Notification comments: etiquette, files, questions, feedback

Let us know when you’ve completed this task by adding a link to your blog to a comment in Basecamp.

Notes for all comments in Basecamp:

  • *Always address the person/people you are writing to by their names.
  • *Always use complete sentences.
  • *Always add links or paths to your design file in your STA folder.
  • *Make it easier for your collaborators and mentors to give you feedback on a design by adding screenshots to your comment.

Notify people in Basecamp by adding the @ symbol before their names (no spaces), otherwise they may not see your comment.

@ your STA mentor in your comments when you want to:

  • ask us questions about the mechanics of using the STA blog,
  • about the mechanics of photoshop,
  • to let us know that you have completed this task,
  • or that you would like a little feedback on on your banner design

Thank you & have fun!