Photo IDs

Today I tried out some new techniques when it comes to color correcting.

VLabs Last Looks, Final Stages

VLabs (Virtual Laboratories of Anthropology online) is due ~the end of November. It’s serious crunch time and there’s a lot left to do. Unfortunately with the tight deadline we have to ditch a lot of stylistic issues and focus on getting everything on the site with accurate info. It was a sad day for the designers.

 

 

I’m training Thuy and Abriella how to do Last Looks, which Olivia and I split into 2 rounds: content accuracy and student experience. We picked them because they both have a great eye for detail. After, Olivia and I will do a final sweep and fix all the problems they found in each lab.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Left to do:

• 8 PSDs yet to be made (that we know of, we find 1-2 new ones per lab during Last Looks)
• 30 PSDs awaiting review
• 11 interactives ready to be assembled
• 5 interactives with major problems
• all 12 labs for last looks!!!

 

 

McCombs

We met with the McCombs team last week to go over design options and settled on some new ideas. We decided the wall monitor behind the prof should be a photo of McCombs, since its less jarring than a lot of text. The photo I chose is not 100% cohesive with the rest of the theme, but I am really waiting on McCombs’ feedback.

 

 

I created Powerpoint templates, Canvas graphics, and an opening animation idea for each video. This is my first project working directly with clients at LAITS so I’m learning a lot about how in-person client comm works.

Geography Flyer

Had a very quick turnaround with this badboy (two hours!) but sometimes that’s what it takes in the Biz. This was a perfect chance to use my favorite graphic element: the topographic map. Used colors from a previous LAITS graphic for the Geography department, and used photos provided by the client.

 

German Retractable Banner

I’ve started designing a big retractable banner for the German Department. Draft 1 an ideal mockup done at a proportionally smaller size but now I’m running into some issues making the full size version.

 

Mainly, I’m not totally comfortable building large files at a high DPI. One issue is font size – the printing company told me 10pt will be legible, but in Draft 2 the body copy is already 46pt and seems very small. I still am not sure if that is a file size or DPI issue (I think the former). I’ll just have to eyeball what looks proportional.

 

Another issue is the provided images are small – the images at the bottom of Draft 2 are sized about 6-7″, but since the banner is 33″ wide, they’re too small for this design. I may need to do a collage, which I fear would look chaotic with all the grainy black and white photography. I’m waiting for some new photos from our client.

 

Update as of 12/10

 

Final design incorporating client feedback. They sent over new photos and we removed the white headers/footers because they drew too much attention.

 

 

McCombs Online Courses

I’ve spent the last few weeks attending client meetings for some of McCombs’ massive open online courses (MOOCs). McCombs already has a pretty robust comm+branding team but I’ve been able to explain to them what design options LAITS has for making a well branded course. I went through the McCombs brand book before designing some of the mockups.

 

#1 – McCombs network pattern:

#2 – Photography:

WIP

 

Project: McCombs EdX launch
Client/Prof: McCombs School of Business
Completion status: started September 11th
Staff guidance: Suloni Robertson
STA team members: Just me so far
Description/plans: Creating digital and studio assets for 3-4 online courses
To be completed: End of October(?)