So here it is. Today is my last day as a Design STA. It hasn’t quite sunken in yet and I’ve been distracting myself from writing this post.

It’s been such a beautiful experience working here. I truly enjoyed working with each person in the STA program, and I’ve grown a lot in the year that I’ve been here. I’ve grown a lot as an artist, as a designer, and as a person. I’m so grateful for Chloe for introducing me to this program and for helping me get to where I am today. The folks I have met at my time here have been amazing and I’m so appreciative and grateful for their existence. I’m so thankful for my fellow STAs for tolerating me and for teaching me and humoring my questions. Everyone has impacted me so immensely and my life is all the more better for it. If any of my fellow STAs are reading this, know that I am misty-eyed right now and that I’m so glad that you all exist. From the bottom of my heart, thank you so much for being a part of this period of my life.

And I am going to always be eternally grateful to Suloni. I’ve been so spoiled, truly. One can only dream of having such a caring and kind and wonderful manager. Suloni has curated a space that is fun, but also enriching and challenging. I am so grateful for her and all that she does for everyone in the program. Suloni, if you are reading this, thank you so much. Your thoughtfulness and kindness and expertise has influenced me greatly. Thank you so much for granting me the opportunity to work here.

My experience here at LAITS has been amazing. I really do love everyone who I’ve met through this program and I’m grateful to them. I will carry my memories of my time here at LAITS always and forever. I hope that my growth here at LAITS will carry on in all my future endeavors. I hope to become a medical illustrator someday and the skills I’ve picked up from being a design STA have certainly made a stronger, more well rounded student, graduate applicant, and human being. I am forever grateful. Thank you.

For fear of this post being too sappy, here is an image of me on my last day. I hope you got a chuckle out of this selfie.

Last. Blog. Post.

Wow… I can’t believe my last day as an STA has finally come. Words can’t quite fully grasp my experience here at LAITS over the past 2 years. I’ve grown so much as a designer (literally didn’t know anything about Adobe Creative Suite!!!), as well as a person in general. Over 2 years ago, I was pondering about what I would be doing professionally, while enjoying what I do. And coming from a biology/science background, I felt like I was restrained in a pre-health profession. B U T, donut fret – I have heard about medical illustration, and the thought of even approaching the field wouldn’t have been possible if it wasn’t for my Design STA position at LAITS. I’m proud to say that I can capable of drawing lines and shapes in Photoshop! Hooray! 😉

But in all seriousness, I sincerely wanted to thank Suloni & my STA team, as well as all the LAITS fam bam. They have been more than patient, kind, put up with my sarcastic jokes and weirdness, and they never hesitated to answer my dumb questions or to teach me new skills. LAITS is a special place, where we don’t just provide aid to the UT community, but we also help EVERYONE grow, both as professionals and as good human beans. I am so grateful for my opportunity, and even though I am frankly nervous to enter the ~real~ world as an adult, I am ready to take on the world with all the skills and experiences I have built up over the past few years.

So here’s to looking back at all the great mems that made me who I am, and to all the great future endeavors to everyone at LAITS and beyond!!! Thank y’all for everything.

Virtual Labs Media Breakpoints

Today and a bit of yesterday I worked on hashing out the media breakpoints for the Virtual Labs UI. The menu posed some issues because it does take up a bit of space being that there are 12 labs. I managed to bring down the pixel width to 1330px before the menu has to be compressed into a collapsable hamburger menu by at 1700px reducing the combination mark logo down to just the pictorial mark logo.

Cascade: Updating the Lockup and Logo

I was tasked with updating the lockup for the Latino Research Institute on Cascade. In addition to uploading and publishing the new lockup, I had to make edits. Once I was done I made a post in the STA Knowledge Base detailing the process I went through to edit the lockup in Photoshop and upload it to Cascade.

CREATING MY STA WEBSITE

The theme of my website was about insects with a few random link to things I like and my art. I decided to use bugs as the theme because they are a little bit of a hobby for me right now. I like to go out and identify different insects as well as read news articles about them when there are outbreaks or new discoveries. Besides the theme of this, this website was slightly difficult for me to put together because I have never used cascade before, but for being a first time user I think the end product was a success. Some things in this page screenshot is pending to possibly turn into other things as final edits upload and I keep practicing more things on it. The next step is to make edits to the instructional tutorial so new STAs can find it an easier experience to put together. Hopefully those things will be up soon in an upcoming post.

Check it out for yourself: https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/sta-6/index.php