Week XVII

I’m numbering these based on work weeks, not absolute time, which means I’m catching up on the past 3 (2.5) weeks of work. Most of that has been my first real design project, which amounts to five projects so far. I’ll start with the first two:

Project: Course Graphics – MAS 374 21st Centruy Latinx Literature
Client /Prof: Professor Julie Minich
completion status: Completed
staff guidance: Colin Pittman, Heather Van Ligten
STA team members: Ingrid
description/plans: Design course graphics for MAS 374
To be completed: Monday, January 10

These two courses were pretty similar in scope. Both requested a Style A graphics package, and I finished the main graphics in just over one workday.

I took a bit longer to figure out the formatting for slideshow templates. I actually made a template in PowerPoint, first, before remaking it in Google Slides.

I also learned some After Effects, at least enough to edit simple animated stingers.

Project: Course Graphics – E316M American Literature
Client /Prof: Professor Julie Minich
completion status: Completed
staff guidance: Colin Pittman, Heather Van Ligten
STA team members: Ingrid
description/plans: Design course graphics for E316M
To be completed: Monday, January 10

The second course I worked on concurrently, since many of the graphics were so similar that I reused the same PSD templates.

Unfortunately, this created somewhat of a hassle later, when it came to organizing the files in Box. Sorting all that out took me about as much time as creating the basic graphics in the first place.

As of writing, I’m in the midst of adjusting to remote work. I’ll provide more updates throughout the week, though the other 3 courses are WIPS ranging from near finished to hardly started.

TxPEP Website Design Research

Teammates: Valeria, Abriella, De’Sha

Description: Design research for The Texas Policy Evaluation Project website. Exploring illustration style, font, color palette, and overall feel of the website. Client asked for something formal but relaxed.

Infographic Final Version

Went with a more illustrated style:

Week XIV

CoLA Refresh Project

CoLA is really quieting down now, with Rahul on break, but I did get to meet the 2 of the 3 new CMSTAs! Ingrid and I are working on developing some plans for weekly CMSTA meetings, and I’m excited to share more details about that once we have any solid ideas, which I definitely do not yet.

Intro Training: Style A&B Course Graphics

Maddy is helping me train up for some design work over the winter break, and one thing I’ll be doing is course graphics. I’m no stranger to Photoshop anymore, but all the online course formatting conventions are pretty LAITS-specific, so this training was very informative. I learned 2 standards for course graphics: Style A, which uses flat colors, and Style B, which uses background images. Picking the palette was fun, and I got to choose the courses, so I did 2 of my recent favorites I’ve taken.

Shortly after finishing, I got assigned a real course to do graphics, which is my very first official design project that’s not a training or CoLA Refresh. Exciting! I’ve basically finished at the time of writing, but I’m waiting for feedback to make some finishing touches, so I’ll be sharing it here once that’s done.

TBH: Site Explorer Page Update

Okay, so this week I had a mayor revelation regarding this project. Turnes out, that because the Site Explorer page was developed as a final version (not thinking future additions would ever be made), there are two problem in the way it is currently set up on Canvasser…

Taking into account that the site explorer page looks like this:

 

Let me explain the two problems…

 

1. The top part (the one with the map, image and site info) was made by compressing all the visible elements into a single image, as opposed to having the map as one part and the site info as an independent cutout. This is a problem because, considering each of the current sites has a flat image as such (aka there are actually 65 versions of the same map), I would need to edit each of those compressed images in order to add the Hendrick & Ware location point on the map and make it visible even when the user browses other locations.
   • After discussing this with the team, we gathered that a quick solution for this issue would be to break the format by individually overlaying the new Hendrick & Ware location point over all the site images on Canvasser. However, though efficient, this solution is not sustainable, therefore we don’t recommend it if more sites will be added to the Explorer page down the road. (Something the client has yet to clarify).
2. The second obstacle regards the addition of the new site on the list. It seems like the word bank is also a compressed image (not text that automatically moves accordingly if you add a new space in the middle). This is a problem because the list is alphabetically ordered. Therefore, to add the new site as “Hendrick-Ware” (naming convention decided by the client) in the H section, I need to build a completely new list and reprogram each name on Canvasser.
   • This time, the short-term solution the team I and I came up with was that I could just add the “Hendrick-Ware” name at the end of the list. It won’t be alphabetically correct, but it would be a quicker fix. For aesthetics purposes, I could additionally switch around the “Hendrick-Ware” name into, “Ware-Hendrick,” considering the last three locations also start with a W. But one, we need approval from the client, and two, this would ultimately not be a sustainable long term solution either if more sites were to be added. (Especially since there are only 2 or 3 more spaces left on the list).

 

So, that’s where we’re at right now…