Farewell post (I’ll probably be back)

BYE!

Being an STA for the 2022-2023 year has been such a great experience! Spring semester I received a larger variety of projects (image sourcing, course graphics, posters, logos, etc…) I’ve been able to learn so much from my fellow STAs and Design managers. I’ve also been fortunate to receive other design/art opportunities where I can apply what I’ve learned at LAITS. I plan on coming back in the Fall (from Italy haaaha) and designing more projects for LAITS!! Hopefully, I will see everyone after a restful and enriching trip to Italy ( I’ll try to take pictures to share). I’ll miss the fun polls on the board and having a group of design experts to ask for help though.

Thank you to Carrie, Leilani, Lorena, Luisa, Adrain, Thang, Daniela, De’sha, and Isaiah for being a supportive and welcoming team of graphic and web designers! I have learned so much from y’all and for that, I am so thankful. I’m always inspired by everyones’ work and hope you guys have a great summer!

BIG thanks to Maddy, Valerie, and Suloni for hiring me and allowing me to work on the design team at LAITS. I’ve gained invaluable skills and knowledge from this job and you guys!

 

Projects I’ll be Handing Off:

• R.A.C.E. Lab logo: I believe Maddy was taking over this project since she and I worked together on the initial drafts and final picks. But if another STA picks up the logo design, we are making a logo for Professor Ibekwe-Okaforwork’s research website. Her research will focus on the effects Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems (family, social, and cultural relationships) have on black children’s development.
  • • key terms: access, resilience, systems (Brunfenbrenner), education, early development, adversity, & black joy
    • steer away from explicit political imagery and colors (red and blue)
    • color: neutrals, earth tones, greenery
    • layers and systems to the way people develop

 

• UTCF Backdrops/Image Sourcing: I am currently working on 7.5 Hair and Make-up image sourcing and the images I have found thus far have been logged in the spreadsheet, box folder, and PowerPoint. I think 4.1 Professions and Occupations still needs to be signed off by either Maddy or Valerie. As for backdrops, I sourced for UTCF modules 5 & 6 but couldn’t find any images for 6.2 Bamako. Leilani, Carrie, and I have tested those images in the studio. The PSD template for modules 5 & 6 are in the box folder and still need to be edited a bit (I think Leilani was going to do this).

Me shocked to be in Cairo :0

Lorena is Leaving? [ TBD, might be clickbait ]

Hi everyone! This may or may not be my last blog post as an STA, so I’m unsure of how I should be feeling as I write this closing post. My time at LAITS has been so much fun, and I’d be sad to leave but we’ll see where life takes me!

 

My Journey and Shoutouts!

I started here at LAITS as a Content Management STA in December 2021. There I worked on the COLA Web Refresh Project, in which our STA team managed design and content transfer of the UT College of Liberal Arts site to a new operating system. In September 2022 I made the jump over to the Design team, and the rest is history! I’m so grateful for LAITS and the STA program, I feel that I’ve learned a lot here and met so many great people!

 

To the other Design and Web Dev STAs, Adrian, Thang, Louisa, Carrie, Lelani, Marissa, and Daniela — I loved working with all of you, thank you all for a great year! And also of course De’sha in the Fall 2022 semester, thank you for inspiring me and having been such a devoted member of the team! To our new member Isaiah, it was great to have met you and I hope that your time in the Web Dev team will be great!

 

To our STA managers Maddy and Valerie — thank you for being the backbone of this team and doing such a great job guiding us through these semesters. You are both so talented, and seeing how you guys address different design projects and are able to phrase feedback so effectively has been really eye opening to the possibilities of everything design!

 

What I’ve Learned!

Through my time as an STA I’m really grateful for everything I learned, from skills like professional communication and time management all the way to navigating Adobe programs. I feel as though I’ve especially grown more comfortable in Adobe Illustrator as I’ve figured out how to use more of the really great tools the program presents, as well as Adobe After Effects with these more recent animation projects I’ve been assigned.

 

The Near Future!

This summer I’ll be participating in UTLA, which is a UT program in which I’ll be spending the semester in Los Angeles! As a Radio-Television-Film major, I’m really excited to be getting a film-related internship this summer and experiencing LA.

 

I don’t want to make any promises as my Fall 2023 semester is still a little up in the air, but I’m hoping to start working on my big Connecting Experience project to complete my Digital Arts and Media certificate requirements. Basically this project is sort of similar to a capstone or thesis course, but it’s more of personal project that I have a good amount of flexibility with. I’m keeping my project idea under wraps right now, but I’m hoping to do something that really challenges me as a designer and writer, working as a testament to everything I’ve learned at UT!

 

Closing Remarks

And that’s about it! To all the Lorena fans and supporters, totally feel free to follow me on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/lorena-chiles). I’ve really enjoyed my time as an STA and am so thankful for this program. As I mentioned, I’m not sure if I’m coming back for Fall 2023 yet, though y’all will know what I ended up choosing if you see this blog being active again! Bye everyone! <3

AI in Healthcare Course Graphics

Client/Prof: Department of Computer Science, Masters of Science in Artificial Intelligence
Completion Status: Started on April 5
Staff Guidance: Maddy
Completed on: April 27

As I’m leaving for the summer, here’s my last update in this AI in Healthcare project! The following is my animation and design menu with all the assets I made for this course.

UTFC Backdrop Image Sourcing

Project: UTFC Image Sourcing
Client: UTFC
Completion status: started 4/11/23
Staff guidance: Maddy & Valerie
STA team members: Carrie & Leilani
Description/plans: Search for photos of specified cities (natural color, cityscapes, landmarks, skylines) and put them into a PSD template to test as backdrops for UTCF. I went to screen test the module 5 UTCF backdrops with Leilani yesterday. I learned some things to avoid/look-out for in images for the backdrops from Leilani!

5.4 Tunis & 5.6 Caire

 

Vocab Image Sourcing

• some of the new images I sourced for UTCF 4.1 Professions and Occupations

 

 

UTFC Reverse Image Search

Project: Reverse Image Searching
Notes: As I have some downtime this week, I moved onto a PPT I’ve done in the past to see how that image sourcing goes. So far for the UTFC project we need to find images that we’ve used in the past for image crediting. The main goal of these assignments was to get a feel for how time-consuming they will be & start making a case for alternatives like purchasing photos, etc. I ended up finding 20+ images for each module and formatting the links into the table below.

 

UTFC Greenscreen Edits

Project: Greenscreen Image Sourcing
Due On: April 20th
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. As a newer update, I finished this module, meaning I found 24 images for the PowerPoint!

 

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. This time around, another STA, Marissa Devivar was the model and I edited!

AI in Healthcare Course Graphics

Client/Prof: Department of Computer Science, Masters of Science in Artificial Intelligence
Completion Status: Started on April 5
Staff Guidance: Maddy
Complete by: May 1

Still working on the new AI in Healthcare online course, which will be available through edX. This course will teach the positives of using AI technology in healthcare to reduce human error and make doctors more successful and efficient in their work. This last week I’ve mostly been working on the logo and animation:

 

And I’ve made the following animations that we’re going back and forth on:

 

Additionally, I also cranked out some of the other course assets:

And here are all the assets together on a design menu: