COLA Web Refresh

Things have been slowly but surely speeding up for this project. I’m going to help a new CM STA onboard Wednesday morning, and in the meantime I have been going over existing Pages tasks and making sure everything is in order as well as helping Adrian and Rahul with any questions. (I’ve also been making some edits to the spreadsheet since the workflow is still a bit wonky.) We’ve been making sure to add alt text for image components as well as double and triple check that links aren’t dead. Pretty soon, I will start drafting and reviewing client communication emails to be sent out to the relevant contacts, detailing what’s been done and any outstanding issues or suggestions (updating links, removing arcane info, refreshing graphics) we may have.

On a related note, Suloni reached out to Angie and I on making some guidelines for photo editing for CM STAs, who have varying degrees of proficiency in PS. The graphics question is becoming a big one, especially for the Dean’s sites that we’re migrating now; many of them haven’t been touched in years, far less than department or center sites, and so several images and graphics are suboptimal (low res, out of date, wrong size, ugly). For CM STAs who are more web dev-y, the guidelines will be a basic guide to using adjustment layers in Photoshop as well as guidelines on resizing / cropping photos (and when not to). There is also the possibility of more complex graphic refreshes, which may either be completed within the CM STA team or by a design STA.

Photo IDs

I’ve been continuing to complete photo IDs, as well as contribute to a collaborative updated photo ID guideline doc w/ Angie, Megan, Abriella, and Suloni to detail procedures for trickier photo ID situations + client communication.

HIS 315K PPTs

I’ve been working on reformatting powerpoints whenever they come in for Zamora’s HIS 315K class (usually a day or two in advance).

Misc

• I’ve been looking at web dev documentation from Estella and Thuy and copyediting / trying them out myself :~)
• More low priority, but I’ve been editing the animation script to include a list of characters, styles, bgs in each scene

This week, brrrrr

This “cold” front was an absolute godsend. I got to read for about 30 minutes before my shift on the Gearing patio, and it was awesome.

This week, I finally finalized my quiz stinger animation and I worked on revamping the photo ID training, a display for the GRG department, the new PR project, and photo IDs.

 

Photo ID training

 

I’m glad we’re updating the photo ID training and client communication — there’s a lot of situations I run into with them that aren’t necessarily spelled out in the training. Knowing how to handle these comes with time and experience, but it’s always nice to get guidance early on. Here’s one thing Suloni pointed out that I added:

 

The top photo is my original 200×300 edit, before Suloni pointed out that Naval Science faculty (like this man) have medals that should probably be visible in the ID. I went through and updated the other Naval faculty with this format, but it’s a good example of when to not follow the guidelines exactly.

 

Quiz Stinger

 

I also finalized my quiz stinger:

 

GRG Display

 

Project: Display for GRG dept
Client /Prof: GRG department
completion status: Started Sept. 22 2021
staff guidance: Valerie Tran
description/plans: Make a 1920×1080 display advertising a (new?) GRG course on extreme weather events. Use client-provided photos and a previously-used aesthetic and basic layout.
To be completed: ~ Sept 30 2021

Here’s the draft we sent to the client:

 

Project: COLA Website Refresher
Client /Prof: N/A (College of Liberal Arts)
Completion Status: Started August 25, 2021
Staff guidance: Michelle Vanhoose, Chris Rankin
STA team members: Ingrid, Adrian
description/plans: Start migrating data from the old CMS to the new CMS
To be completed: TBD (long-term)

 

Hello, everyone. This past week I’ve just been migrating actual content over from the old CMS to the new CMS. I’ve done my best to maintain a lot of the same structure,  but sometimes it doesn’t translate as well or the original structure wasn’t the best to begin with. I’ve dropped down a few of the pages that I’ve migrated below.

Some of them are identical to the original page while the structures of others are the different.

I have also started the HTML and CSS basic training and it’s pretty interesting. I’ve always wanted get more experience with HTML/CSS/Javascript so the training is a great way to do that and build a foundation. Here is my progress so far:

 

Overall, I’m excited to continue doing this training as well as more content migration tasks.

 

Photo IDs pt. 2

I finally finished the photo IDs I was working on the previous week.

 

 

 

 

 

Machine Learning Icon

This week I have mainly been working on the completion of the Machine Learning Icon. This design went through many iterations, but we finally come to a design.

When researching a potential design, I wanted to create something the incorporated the brain for learning and something with wires for the machine part.

These were my first two designs:

We decided to go in the direction of the brain that was split with the nodes inside. The main edits were to get the brain to have more of an oblong shape and to find a different way to incorporate the magnify glass.

 

This was the direction we decided to move towards. But we wanted to change the white circle with an opacity of 50% and to make the nodes inside a cutout to match the background of the image.

 

This was the final draft:

 

A slower week, and starting a new project

I haven’t done a ton this week, seeing as I took Wednesday off to see a doctor (no uveitis here, y’all). This week, I nailed down the sequence of the quiz stinger animation with the help of De’sha, worked on photo IDs, and began a cool new project from Maddy.

 

Quiz Stinger

 

Wrapping up the quiz stinger feels nice — I feel like I took way too long with it, but I refreshed what little After Effects skills I had and did something productive all the while.

 

Photo IDs

 

Ingrid and I both had some photo ID troubles, so much that Abriella’s writing up new client communication email templates. Faculty and graduate students alike are trying to submit photos that aren’t in the same universe as our photo ID guidelines, yet are insistent on replacing their older photos (the irony here is that the older photos often do match the criteria). Thanks to carefully worded emails from both of us, the many of the questionable submitters gave us new photos to work with and upload.

 

 

New Project

 

My new project, courtesy of Mike and Maddy:

Project: Public-facing articles for LAITS website
Client /Prof: internal
completion status: Started Sept. 17 2021
staff guidance: Maddy Kaniewski
description/plans:Write 3-4 new articles for the LAITS website about cool and impactful STA projects, like Chatter. Interview full-timers and STAs from all departments to get a better idea for possible features and get details cleared up. Find media to embed in Cascade page.
To be completed: December 2021

I’m super excited to spend a lot of my time here this semester learning about other departments (audio, video, studio), the cool things they’re up to, and how they work!