STA Blog

STA Work Blog

STAs: Student Technology Assistants

Who We Are
LAITS: IT and Facilities Director, Joe TenBarge initiated the Student Technology Assistant program in 2004. STAs are UT students who work on a variety of projects in collaboration with UT faculty and LAITS staff members. STAs assist College of Liberal Arts faculty members and administrative staff with print and web design. From building presentations, to creating audio/visual works, and producing online classes in the LAITS film studios, STAs are instrumental in helping COLA faculty realize their vision for multimedia projects that enhance their teaching and the students learning experience. By the end of their student careers, STAs have portfolios which demonstrate their accrued technical and design skills.

Prospective STAs:

Creative and technically inclined students are appointed as STAs for one year, with the possibility of being rehired as long as they study at the university. Applicants for the program are hired before both long semesters. Interested students may look for postings on Hire-A-Longhorn when positions are available. Positions will have Student Technology Assistant (illustrator or web designer) in the title of the job post.

Faculty and Staff:

Faculty & Staff with questions about services, please contact us.

https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/laits/contacts.php

  • Audio Services: Michael C Heidenreich, Director of Studio Operations & STA Program Coordinator
  • Video Services: Kelly Webster, Video Production Supervisor, Video STA Supervisor
  • Graphic Design & Web Design Services: Suloni Robertson, Art Director / Design & Coding STA Supervisor

More RGT

By

I made some more edits for the RGT map project. I made 9 different versions because I wanted to give our client options. The changes I made included making the path and its arrows slimmer, removing the outline around the stops, making the compass bigger. The drafts are below. Just gonna wait and see which of the versions they like.

Opaque tour path + colored UT tower
Opaque tour path + black & white UT tower
Opaque tour path + no tower

Low opacity tour path + colored UT tower
Low opacity tour path + black & white tower
Low opacity tour path + no tower
No path + colored UT tower
No path + black & white UT tower
No path + no tower

RGT Map updates

By

This has been a recurring project for me as of late. I’ve made a bunch of different versions of this map and learned more about Adobe Illustrator along the way! A lot has changed since my last post about the map project. I’ve made variations of the path on the map, changed the actual pathway changed the font, changed the color of the stops, and added a compass! Here are the drafts:

Map w/ bolder path and arrows

f

Map w/ less opaque path
Map w/ no path
Map w/ no path and a colored UT Tower
Map w/ no path and a black and white UT Tower

1-29-19

By

Second Week Back

Over break I decided take a few classes this semester part-time, and luckily I was able to get into some good classes at the last minute, which means I’m able to continue working as an STA (this is my second week back).

I spent last week finishing up the Cascade documentation, all of which has now been moved over to the UT site:

https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/web-admin-help/index.php

Then I got an assignment from a client to update the logo/word mark for the Laboratory for Ethnic and Race Equity (LAESER) website. Their current logo looks like this:

The original design was low resolution and grainy, so the client wanted a new version at a higher resolution and a new font, but with everything else kept the same. I made some mockups in Illustrator yesterday using the fonts she specified and saved it as a viewable PDF, which I sent over for approval:

I traced the triangles with the pen tool and used the eyedropper to get the colors from the original. To get the triangle shapes to be more precise I drew lines over them using the line tool, then Windows > Pathfinder > Divide to slice and delete the excess area, using the original as a guide underneath.