STA Blog

Current Sta

The ChiLDS Lab

By

The ChiLDS Lab Site Redesign

Client: Maria Arredondo, The ChiLDS Lab

Task: Complete a site redesign for The ChiLDS Lab. The client wanted to keep most of the content, but wanted a refreshed and “cuter” design overall.

Status: Complete, Project has been handed off to client

The Old Site

This was the initial site. The client wanted to move away from the standard university template and make it feel more invited and on theme with her lab. Since her target audience were parents of potential participants, researchers, and students, she wanted the website to be cute and attention grabbing, while still being professional and polished.

Logo Redesign

I started by creating a new logo. I took a lot of inspiration from other child-oriented brands and took note of both their typography and color choices.

A moodboard

Initial designs

Abstract Banner

I also created content dividers as an easy way for the client to add personalization to the website.

Possible Site Mock-Ups

Several options of implementations of the above assets.

Client Feedback

Receiving edits and revising.

The client ended up choosing the “lego block” logo design, with some minor edits. After revising to meet her requests, the logo ended up looking like this:

Low-Fidelity Mock-Ups

Lastly, I used my revised information architecture to mock-up some low fidelity prototypes of what the website could like, before handing it off to the client for implementation.

September 2025

By

SEPTEMBER 2025

— Roster Poster Continued —

I continued to work on the Fall 2025 STA Roster Poster. Many many more iterations were pumped out. At this point, I was also considering having the poster be horizontal after getting the exact number of STAs for the Fall.

Keith Haring Style:

Comic Style:

A prevalent struggle I had while iterating was finding ways to make the comic style poster just as strong as the Keith Haring one. De’sha and I continued to discuss and explore ways to put them on even footing.

— Zapoteco Book Cover —

I was tasked with creating a illustrative book cover for the Zapoteco Pressbook. The client requested an illustration highlighting significant animals such as the Alcaraván bird depicted below. Due to time constraints, I had to shortcut the bird illustration by applying a filter in photoshop over the original image to give it a hand drawn effect. The left is my first draft and the right is my final.


STA Roster Poster

By

This week I worked on some concepts for the title of the Spring 2026 STA Roster Poster. Im trying to go for a more “quick tag” look on the title, however I’m not so sure yet on the readability aspect of it. I will probably also try a few bubbly looking ones to see how they read:

Spring 2026 STA Roster Poster

By

Spring 2026 STA Roster Poster Project Overview

For this project, I have to make the poster which displays STAs from the various departments within LAITS. With the theme being graffiti, Im choosing to go with a more traditional tag-like style in order to have the most readability and not distract too much from the STA’s headshots. Here are a few design styles which I am thinking about incorporating:

All three of these styles have a distinct look to them, but have the ability to be meshed with hard edged text and other assets, making them good for this particular project. As a very quick 5 minute idea, I am thinking of incorporating a graffiti design somewhere which says “LAITS STAs”:

September 2025

By

Title IX Resource Documents

Project Details

  • Recreate the documents in a updated and editable manner. They want a redesign of the existing PDFs that eye-catching, simple and clear to understand. They also want to ensure that they can easily change the information in the charts using adobe acrobat.
  • The client likes the original design but they are open to use explore new options that better represent the information. The title and the subtitles don’t change on the document when they make edits, only the resources themselves. Therefore, solid background colors would work best. 

Here are the original designs:

This is an alternative design that attempts to make the text more organized and readable.

And these are recreations of the original design with minor changes to the colors, addition of a gray branding bar at the bottom, and removal of the longhorn logo in the background of the wheel.

After ensuring the text is editable in Adobe Acrobat and getting feedback from my Art Director, we decided to stick with the original designs and sent them off to the client!

Updated STA Bio and Caricature!

Starting Tasks

By

After two weeks as a Design STA, I’ve finished up my orientation and have gotten through a solid amount of my trainings. This past week, I started my first project and have been receiving feedback from my fellow STA. I’ve enjoyed working on this project as it’s a text logo, something which I could improve my skills on in Illustrator.