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isaiah ~ week 003

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  Week 3

shrek the third

MAY 1st – 5th

 

This is my third week as a Web Development and Design STA,  I worked on a few more trainings. I also worked alongside Thang on a web development project.

 

One of the trainings I completed was HTML & CSS 02: Basic Web Pages. I was able to learn some new things about the innerworkings of a website by creating my own webpage from scratch using HTML and CSS in Visual Studio Code. It took me some time to research how to adapt the tutorial’s instructions, for they were designed for Atom; yet, I enjoyed working on the assignment and am excited to learn more about the magic behind websites. I left some screenshots of my work below.

 

 

I also worked on the Introduction to Websites tutorial from the LAITS KB. Here are some screenshots from the ppt activity I worked on.

 

Week LXXIV

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Week LXXIV

Biostats logo

So shortly after last week’s meeting, Leilani and I drafted several more ideas. Drawing logos in sharpie is very fun.

This was the suite we sent to the clients:

Who liked 1 and 3 the most. So I started drafting 1. It started off a little skinny…

Maddy suggested thickening the dna strands. It was still not very well standardized though.

I ended up redoing all of it on a precise 50 x 50 grid.

Here’s how it looks in white!

Currently working on animation, which will be… interesting!

Week 5/2 -5/8

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Biostats Logo

Project: edXBiostatistics Assets
Due On: May 12
Notes: The goal of the logo is to get students to draw a connection of the course Biostatistics to the logo. I talked with a fellow STA, Adrian, about what logos we liked and narrowed our choices down. We both sketched a few and image-traced potential ideas. Maddy, our design director gave us some helpful image ideas to keep in mind like health (like DNA, cells), and statistics (like charts/axes, graphs). here’s our first iteration and combined logos:

 

Then after some feedback from Maddy, I expanded on some other ideas of mine.

 

Then Adrian and I then combined our logos for the client to choose.

Biostats Backdrop

Project: edXBiostatistics Assets
Due On: May 12
Notes: The goal of the logo is to get students to draw a connection of the course Biostatistics to the backdrop. For the backdrop, I removed the TEXAS logo and replaced other images with a mix of bio/health/stats images from stock photo sites. I referenced a template Maddy provided and placed each image as they fit.

 

UTFC Greenscreen Edits

Project: Greenscreen Image Sourcing
Notes: A handful of STAs were tasked with finding royalty-free images and uploading them into a PowerPoint. As a team, our responsibility is to insert the correct copyright info into a Spreadsheet our Art Director, Maddy, had made. Overall, I found the process therapeutic and gives a means to paying attention to detail when finding images.

Week 4/27 – 5/1

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UTFC Studio Testing

Project: Backdrop Color Testing
Notes: Since UTFC plans on recording its lectures this summer, I had the opportunity to go inside the recording studio to test backdrops for the lecturer. It was a cool and fun moment to get a hands-on experience with the other side of this assignment! I could see the backdrops in real time and edit them to the correct display such as altering contrast and saturation inside Photoshop. So far we’re almost done with the first course for recording.

 

Biostats Logo

Project: edXBiostatistics Assets
Due On: May 12
Notes: The goal of the logo is to get students to draw a connection of the course to the logo. I researched different statistical methods that analyze health data as a reference. So far I have quick thumbnail sketches of some possible ideas.

See You Later

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Shoutout to my team

Hey everyone. Here is my “last” post before I flew back to my country and visit my family. But no worries, I think I’ll be back in Fall 2023 and continue my journey as a design STA. From the 2022 Fall to the 2023 Spring, it has been a great year working as Design STA and meeting all of you! Thank you, Leilani, Luisa, Lorena, Thang, Marissa, Adrian, Daniela, and De’sha, for always being on my back of me and encouraging me to be a great designer and person. You guys are so nice to me and I love working with you!!! Isaiah, I hope you can have a great summer semester with this wonderful team, and let’s see if I get the chance to work with you (since I’m working on web design a lot)!

Valeria and Maddy-I are so grateful for your’s help in the entire year. I’m so glad that you can be my STA Manager and Art Director. You guys can always give me useful feedback by seeing my design with new eyes and being open to all design possibilities, and guiding me via different approaches. You teach me not only how to succeed as a designer but also how to be a more proactive, organized, and inspired person! Thanks for hiring me as an STA and allowing me to engage in these wonderful design projects and work in the team.

Also thank you to other LAITS staff and STA from other departments, as well as all the clients, for trusting me to work on all of projects and providing effective communications in terms of it.

What I’ve Learned

I’m glad that I can be one of the design STAs in LAITS and I’ve learned so much in the past year. I was a graphic designer as a design student but I’m interested in user interface and experience design. I appreciate that Maddy, Valerie, and our clients gave me the opportunities to work on CTX Retold, the UTFC website, and the Precursors, and help me out each time I stuck. I can tell I improve a lot from the experience and get more comfortable to use Figma for websites. I hope I can do more projects related to that shortly.

I also like other design tasks I did in the LAITS studio. I’m able to see some behind-screen story and a studio can work out with each component. I’m especially thankful for the STA presentation. It was my first public speaking in front of such a large group and I did it! It’s a tough process but my design team and Mike helped me succeed in the presentation. I hope I can do it better next time (if I get the chance!)

My journey..

I’ll go back to Shanghai, China soon to visit my family and friends soon! I haven’t been back for two years and I’m getting excited about it. In China, I’ll also be a product design intern in the AI team at Tencent. It’s a Chinese Internet-based platform company and I believe that it’s getting more international these years. I’ll also spend several days in Los Angeles for vacations before I went back to Shanghai.

Thank you for this team! It’s really a greta time to work in LAITS as design STS and hope to see you guys soon! Here is my Linkedin and Portfolio Website! Feel free to walk through and connect with me. SEE YOU!

isaiah ~ week 001 & 002

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Week 1 – 2

my 1st week!

APRIL 21st – 28th

 

This was my first week as a Web Development and Design STA 🙂 🙂 🙂 let’s gooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!

 

I trained one-on-one with Thang and published my first ever website! We used WordPress to update the university’s Psychology Lab webpages. Thanks to Daniela, we were given an up-to-date template to work with. After taking a look at how previous content was transferred, we cloned the new template site using the NS Cloner plug-in. We then copied content from the ten-year-old site into its new template using block coding. I also learned how to edit the website’s backend using HTML and CSS in Visual Studio Code. The Psych Lab pages will soon be ready for client review once they’re cross-referenced with the design team for crisp visuals.

 

Here are some screenshots of our work :

 

new sample template

 

 

 

psych lab reference site – draft 01

 

 

original psych lab site

 

newly published site – draft 01 

 

 

 

I also began working on the banner design for my STA Blog Post page. I started creating my official background in Miro. I am now developing drafts for typography using Photoshop. My end goal is to create a three-dimensional graffiti font.

 

color palette inspiration

 

 

 

drafts

 

 

 

official background & accents

 

 

 

current typography draft