Dana Center: Infographics

Project: Dana Center Infographics
Client: The Charles A. Dana Center
Completion Status: In progress…
Staff Guidance: Maddy Kaniewski, Suloni Robertson
STA Team Members: Cristina (it me)
Description/Plans: In brief, the Charles A. Dana Center wants us to make some infographics on their policies, curriculum, etc, keeping in mind their audience will be people who don’t know the dana center. They want us to help them understand what they do.

 

First, I started off drafting a style guide and a basic layout…

 

 

But then, I realized that the infographics would likely need more color and some more arrangements…

 

 

 

However, starting out with the style guide was not the move. So Suloni suggested we paused this progress. After that, I started focusing on the layout rather than the style, and the following images are some of the things I came up with after realizing that my original idea did not properly convey the topic hierarchy that they set to prioritize:

1. Who we prioritize

2. (1.5) Vision

3. What we do

4. 3 core values

5. mission

 

Here, I tried defining the hierarchy in different manners, such as through font size, through box positioning, and through box size.

 

 

However, I was then given some more advice and then asked to put this project on pause to redirect my attention back to the Swedish Language Promo Designs…

Swedish Language Promo Designs Pt. 2

After getting feedback on my original layout idea that was based on the VW’s Lemon ad, we came to the conclusion that I couldn’t follow through with that format since it iconically came from German inspiration. So, I started looking for ways to reformat that concept into a different minimalist style. Here are some ideas I tried out:

 

 

The following two images are what we eventually showed the client in order to get feedback from them. One of them is a product of this minimal content style we had been shooting for, and the other is a very rough draft of a maximal content idea the client and Suloni had considered and suggested I try out.

Fun Fact: the green grid was a guide for me to symmetrically place elements on the design, but I accidentally left it visible in one of the drafts I uploaded to Basecamp, and that mistake was actually well received and I was asked to leave it for future drafts, lol.

 

 

After sending these over two things were clear:

1. The maximal content version was scrapped.

2. I needed to revamp the minimal content version into a more ornate 19th century matchbox… more on that to come.

 

Project: HTRI Logo Drafts

Description: designing a logo for Dell Health Transformation Research Institute

 

• Educating and training the next generation of health-focused scientists, including in the execution of clinical and population research, in collaboration with the Biomedical Data Science Hub
• Improving access to electronic health data for faculty and trainee investigators
• Building and nurturing bridges to clinical partners, community partners and across UT Austin to maximize research opportunities
• Fostering a culture of inquiry and investigation to maximize impact of work across Dell Med’s education, care and community-focused pillar

Dell has a clean, modern look, so Maddy and I wanted to lean toward something like this to support the concepts of centralizing/simplifying/disseminating research and/or building bridges/connections:

First draft:

Arkansas Templates

This week, I primarily worked on created drafts for the Dana Center Arkansas project. My task was to take the drafts they gave me and turn them into something that fit the template that I created last week.

These are the drafts I was given:

 

In order to fit these into the template we designed, I integrated what I had already designed for Carnegie with the specifics of these layouts. This primarily meant coming up with how, for example, the dual column myths vs. facts table would look in the style I developed. This was a fun experiment, and having a template with a style already laid out really helped!

Ultimately, the first drafts ended up looking like this:

Right now we are waiting to hear back from the client about any changes we are to make for these. My next step will be to create the second infographic for the final part of this project, which I will begin working on today.

 

Iconography Training

As well as working on the Dana Center project, I also began working on the Iconography Training. The goal of this is to create custom graphics for either COFA or McCombs business school, based on the concepts of “communication, videos, readings, networking, and deadlines.” I chose to create icons for COFA, which have the notorious black and yellow button style icons. My first draft of these looked like this:

After showing these to Maddy, she pointed out that every single one of these had a main singular image in the center apart from Communication. To fix that, I ended up making communication simpler and having it just be one big bubble:

The next step for this will be to actually make these in illustrator. Stay tuned for that!

Week XXIV

Just a quick biweekly (sorry!) update: CoLA Refresh phase 3 has started with some preliminary content checking, but I’ll wait til we have a little more material to cover that. In the meantime I’ve been working on a couple of course graphics.

Project: Course Graphics – SPN 367D Business in Hispanic Life and Culture
Client /Prof: Mina Ogando Lavin
completion status: WIP
staff guidance: Stephen J Lundy
STA team members: N/A
description/plans: Design course graphics for SPN 367D Business in Hispanic Life and Culture
To be completed:Thursday 2/3/22

This one was pretty straightforward; the client requested a photo that showed contrast of ultramodern business and traditional Latin America, so I chose this cathedral in Mexico City.

Project: Course Graphics – SPN 367D Business in Hispanic Life and Culture
Client /Prof: Mina Ogando Lavin
completion status: WIP
staff guidance: Stephen J Lundy
STA team members: N/A
description/plans: Design course graphics for SPN 367D Business in Hispanic Life and Culture
To be completed:Thursday 2/3/22

This one is a WIP, and I got a little more creative with the graphics (i.e. I got to throw in my new favorite trick, a grainy paper texture. Also, refreshing myself on how to publish slideshows on WordPress, since I like flipping through the version history of this one.