STA Blog

Week 2/9 -2/15

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UTFC Logo Design 

Project: Connexions Francophones Logo
Notes: For this new project, I was assigned with developing keywords/symbols and sketches for the French Online Textbook logo. The main goal of mine for this logo design is to create something timeless, advertiseable, and something like a trademark. It’s not supposed to relate to France itself but to the French language. Overall, it’s a fun challenge I’m having fun exploring.

 

 

STA Poster 

Project: Spring 2023 STA Presentation Poster
Due On: February 28, 2023
Notes: For this week, I’m still focusing on compiling multiple layouts for the STA poster. I discussed many more ideas with peers and coworkers, and because of that, I think I’m going in a much better direction thanks to all the helpful feedback.

Week 15

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Faculty Search Committee PPT Redesign

Client /Prof: Professor Hunt
Completion Status: Started on Jan 30
Staff Guidance: Maddy
STA Team Members: Adrian
Complete by: Feb 17

Recently I’ve mainly been focusing on redesigning a PowerPoint presentation that is presented to faculty to show statistics on hiring a diverse workforce.

So far, here is a comparison of a few of the original slides to the new ones (in progress still!):

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

Week 15 – Thang

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Week 15

Project: Conference Website 

Started on: Feb 3, 2022

Completed on: Feb 3, 2022

Staff Guidance: Maddy, and Stacy

Description: For this project, I was tasked with designing a sample conference website from scratch. I went online to search for inspirations or something that could implement in my website. I found some interesting designs that I could implement in my Figma design.

 

For the project, I used black and white as the primary color palette. I want to limit the use of colors in order to see if my design still stands out, and for now, the color and design match really well with each other in my opinion.

The website has three important sections that every conference website has: introduction, speaker and agenda. I plan to add Demo Page in which it instructs the client on how to change different components of the website like the color, the font and the image. However, before going into too deep with the details, I want to stop to ask for feedback regarding the content and the design, so I stop on Friday after mocking up the design.

 

Week 14 – Thang

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Week 14

Project: Texas German Dialect Project

Started on: Nov 24 , 2022

Completed on: Nov 27, 2022

Staff Guidance: Maddy, and Stacy

Description: For this project, I was tasked with redesigning Testimonials Section for the page.

I come up with different layouts and designs for the project. At a first stage, I proposed three different layouts.

  1. Grid Layout with cards
  2. Grid layout with chat bubble
  3. Accordion layout: when the user click on the user row, the text below it will expand.

 

 

 

 

But after taking with Stacy and Maddy, we went ahead with version 1. However, through the process of designing, Maddy suggested a design with bigger portraits. Therefore, I try to explore and see if I can make the design looks better with images of people. Again, I come up with different layouts.

 

 

After a lengthy discussion, I settled with the first design and here is my final outcome.

The final outcome involves a column that displays 3 cards. Then, the user has an option to read more when he or she clicks on Read More button. It will direct the user to a new page that contains 3 different cards and more cards below it in a grid layout.

https://www.figma.com/file/UsknIkSZ4JkwQkOccviCUj/TXGP?node-id=0%3A1&t=vw2XrKNLIDXX8vY2-1

 

Save the days

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Save the Date

Start: Jan 18th 2023

To be Completed: Jan 25th 2023

Client: LAITS

Staff Guidance: Maddy

Description: This project aims to create a design in the form of sports tickets and invite people to watch the event via e-mail for 2023 STA presentation. The necessary information on the tickets includes:

  • Title: 2023 STA Presentation
  • Date and Time: Friday, April 14th, 3pm
  • Location: CAL 100

Maddy also includes some additional text to be add on or as decoration elements with low hierarchy:

  • Save the Date
  • Learn about the fantastic things LAITS does!
  • Audio Video Design Web Development
  • College of Liberal Arts
  • Student Technology Assistants
  • 25 years of LAITS (confirm)

For the first draft, I utilize the color code from the LAITS logo as the background and play with black and white to limit my color palette. Since there is no image to place on the ticket, I’d like to use typography to evoke the expression and emphasize the important information. In terms of the title, I used an extra bold font with black color to create contrast between other line decorative lines and other low-hierarchy info on the green background. I also divide the tickets into two sections with its form of stub and main ticket. On the left ticket, I explain on the content and context of the event whereas the right part only showcase the time ad location. I also enlarge the date and location to capture the attention from the first glance.

The use of font and use of color, black and white, has high contrast between each element and therefore creates the sense of illustrated/graphic look in the first draft. However, The STA presentation has a sports theme and therefore needs a more photo-realistic/collage/textured look.

  • One to approach the vintage style is to add more flowing ribbon or plaque-type elements from the 19th or 20th centuries.
  • At the same time, utilizing art-deco fonts and complimenting color with the background color (as well as avoiding the use of black and white) portrays the sense of the age and times.
  • This time I replied with the typeface called Espiritu from Adobe fonts. The type family has three different styles with heavier strokes as headlines, condensed type for the main content, and dingbats as decorative fonts (data point). I also use orange to distract the flow of black and make the picture full.
  • After research on other vintage tickets, I found out the ponderous line weight is more suitable for art deco fonts and therefore used a 2px line weight for decoration. 

When I took a deeper look at the second draft, I realized that the use of black and white is too serious and differentiate from the antique tickets with poor printing quality and yellowing paper. For the new draft, I chose the lighter tone of blue from LAITS logo and play with dark shade color and complimentary color. 

The last change I made to the design is to make it more rectangular and blocky as a whole. I get rid of some additional texts but kept with the event title, date, time, location, associated department, and the teams engaged in the LAITS team. I also prioritize the text in terms of importance by color, font weight and focal point of the tickets. I also made a simple mockup and added the antique texture to the tickets as the final outcome.

To fit for LAITS color scheme and emphasize the role of LAITS, I created five version with different team color and add LAITS logo on the side of the banner.

Final:

Week LVIII

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Week LVIII

This week, settling back in, was a lot of small stuff. I helped onboard a new STA, gave a tour, and troubleshooted my Box issues in terminal, between tiny course graphics edits and exports for old projects. Coming up for the spring, I have 2 big things.

Save the DATE!

Project: Course Graphics – 2023 STA Presentation
Client /Prof: LAITS
completion status: WIP
staff guidance: Maddy K
STA team members: Leilani, Louisa, et al
description/plans: TBA
To be completed: TBA

So, we have our first official STA presentation since… 2019? The theme is sports, and I’ll be in charge of a lot of prep and graphics, but for starters I’m just drafting a promotional ticket stub. Most of the text isn’t done yet, but I spent a lot of time getting the shape perfect.

Basic Training: Create your own 8-bit Animated GIF

With most of our After Effects human capital departed, I’ve been suggested to start some animation trainings. This one was short and simple, and I’ve done similar stuff before.

Something that did come up was our organization system for STA trainings, and the forgotten training spreadsheet… Valerie, Maddy and I are meeting this week to draft up some better organization systems.

Intermediate Training: Animate Simple Course Graphics

This is where the actual Ae skills come in. I haven’t gotten past the drafting stage, with Save the DATE! taking precedence, but my idea is making an intro for Introduction to Greek Archaeology, one of my favorite electives I’ve taken at UT.