STA Blog

November Projects

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⋆˚✿˖° November Projects ⋆˚✿˖°

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Style A & B Course Graphics

Earlier this month, I got to create course graphics for any course of my choosing so I chose AAS 310! This was my first time working with Adobe Photoshop, so it was definitely a struggle understanding the nooks and cranny at first, but once I got the hang of it, it was such a breeze! I’d love in the future to actually get to create some course graphics Professor Jin could use as I feel like I could’ve incorporated more of the course’s elements and themes!

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Basic Training: History of Design

I did some more of my training checklist and one of my favorites was recreating this punk rock poster with a character from one of my favorite shows! A new feature of Photoshop I learned was its custom fonts and filters! It’s amazing how each time I use this software I learn something new!

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STA Self-Portrait

Lastly, is my self portrait for the STA blog! To be honest, I always have a hard time doing any sort of self related pieces but it was actually really fun getting to create like my own avatar/persona! My first month as a Design STA has truly been so wonderful and I can’t wait to continue this journey ◝(ᵔᗜᵔ)◜!

Woolley Labs Site Redesign

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Woolley Labs Site Redesign

Project: UT Psychology Labs: Imagination and Cognitio Lab

Client: Woolley Labs

Staff Guidance: Stacy Vlasits

Tools Used: WordPress

Started: Jan 14, 2024

Completed: Jan 16, 2024

The Task

This week I was asked to redesign Dr. Jacqueline D. Woolley’s Lab Website. The outdated structure of it was not built on WordPress and was very hard to navigate and old. With many of the links broken and interested student/participants not able to find what they need this site was definitely due for a redesign.

Old Website:

Starting Out

The ask was pretty simple with some small requirements that did increase the difficulty.

  • Finish the redesign in the span of 2 shifts (6 hours)
  • Incorporate the current header image

The lack of direction and the short amount of time definitely gave me a interesting type of challemge which required me to think in a quick efficient way creatively.

To start this process I very quickly, setting a timer for 10 minutes, reimagined how the key pages could look experimenting with different layouts of the nav and how the content was organized.

Moving to WordPress

After having this rough idea, I went to WordPress to bring my idea to life. This run of using WordPress was very interesting because they actually updated their editor interface. Luckily after a quick tutorial from Stacy I was able to learn the Template to Page structure

Using my own “Imagination & Cognition”

One of the key parts of this site I wanted to come through is taking the colors and themes from the header into the rest of the design. By sampling these colors as my pallete and using rounded croners on most things I was able to keep a clean theme throughout the site

The Final Design + Reflection

View the final site here: https://labs.la.utexas.edu/woolleylab/

Overall this quick sprint of a redesign taught me a lot. In this project I learned:

  1. How to utilize WordPress’s new Editor interface effectively
  2. Designing in a quick timeframe
  3. Learning how think creatively efficiently without much guidance or restriction

(1/13 – 1/17)

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IPE PPT QA

Project: Banner Design & WP content uploading for Prof. Xs, Instructional African Languages website
Client /Prof: Dell – Aguirre & Kwak
Staff guidance: De’sha
STA team members: Kate, Kyra, Lila, Shanda, Shriya
Description/plans: 9 PPT Modules to be reviewed and reformatted–make slides visually cohesive and match existing style guidelines (provided by De’sha in a standardized PPT example)

Nursing Module 2: recreate an animated graphic based on the client’s mockup. Also correct font sizes, spacing, etc.

Client Mockup

Recreated Graphic

Slide Animation

Summer Marketing

  • Spring 2025 Postcard:
    • New design with the Spring 2024 Postcard graduate image
    • New design with a new graduate image
    • New design with a new traveling image

December Projects ❆

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December Projects ❆

Studio Course Graphics

This training walked me through the process of designing and curating my own graphics for a studio setting!

My vision…

⇢ Utilize the Museum that the students get to visit during the class

⇢ Incorporate the art style that is being studied in the class

⇢ Make the graphic monochromic

It took a few iterations to get to this point, but that’s part of the process! Originally I was pretty lost when creating this piece because I felt like every version looked really busy, especially for a backdrop. I then decided to tone it down and make the design a little more simpler!

My Steps ˚⋆｡˚

✧ Make the base layer a dark blue color

✧ Found a high-quality photo of the museum interior and desaturated it

✧ Played around with the blending modes for visual interest

✧ For more depth, I decided to duplicate the museum layer, change the blending mode & opacity, and finally offset the layer from the original

Health and Society 301 Course Graphics

Summer Courses Instagram PFP

Final Version:

Notes

  • Had to Incorporate UT branding and “Summer Online”

  • Debated whether or not UT crest should be included

  • Tested out different color variations for a “summer feel”

Drafts: