STA Blog

Weekly Recap

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Weekly Recap

Since this is my last workday for this week, I just wanted to give a quick summary of what I’ve been working on. Most of my time has been spent on feedback rounds and drafting the new KB homepage. Have a look! I have also been working on nonvisual groundwork for the upcoming animation project (brainstorming, meeting with the team to establish roles and responsibilities). This week also contained a debrief meeting for OCIL. In the coming weeks, I anticipate a lot more work for these two projects (animation and OCIL), as well as a potential new training (revamping the old “PSD Character Design Illustration” KB training).

 

KB Homepage In The Works

 

Feedback and Testing of “Shape and Pattern” KB Training

 

The Animation Project

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This week I attended a few different meetings for the Short Animation Team Project, Latinx Pop Lab site, and one more one-on-one meeting with Maddy today regarding the same project. I’ve been working on layout design for the Latinx Pop Lab in earnest on Figma. In between this, I’ve been working on KB edits for the Shape and Pattern and Web Accessibility trainings. Next week, I am only working 12 hours but I look forward to working more on this.

https://sta.laits.utexas.edu/39598-2/

Research for Meaningful Brand Systems: Feedback & Test Run

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Research for Meaningful Brand Systems: Feedback & Test Run

Since we have the KB lessons project going on to create and refresh our STA trainings, we are also doing a feedback and test run set of rounds to make sure that the KBs are up to par. Recently, I was assigned to do that for Athena’s Branding: Research for Meaningful Brand Systems KB.

 

I won’t bore you with the details of the feedback I gave, but the following are my results for the activities as I performed the test run:

 

Instructions: Stop and Reflect

After learning about UT’s brand guidelines, take some time to reflect. Does your perception of UT align with the identity UT sought to create? Why or why not? Do you have any specific examples in mind of how you noticed UT manifesting its principles? Let us know in the Basecamp comments.

 

My Reflection

I believe my perception of UT aligns with the identity the University has sought to create. I think UT has been very successful in bringing the essence of audacity into all levels of the brand and institution. I also think they’ve done an excellent job at balancing the identity of a sports school and a research school by unifying professionalism and community through their brand guidelines.

 

 

Instructions: Stop and Reflect

What are some of the ways brands use brand identity and strategies to execute their values? Comment one or two ideas on Basecamp.

 

My Reflection

Ways brands use brand identity and strategies to execute their values:

– To target a specific audience

– To position themselves against their competition and stand out

 

 

For the Conducting a Brand Audit activity I collected a bunch of different images for logos, social media pages, slogans, blogs and news, and color schemes. Then I wrote the following for how these things contribute to the Visual Identity of the College of Liberal Arts:

 

All of these are great examples of ways the College of Liberal Arts visually represents their brand identity, mainly seen through cohesive colors and similar typography. It in not only successful on unifying the brand identity within COLA, but also with the general UT identity.

 

 

Last but not least, here is my final brand book for the Fairy Forest Cafe prompt in the Applying the Concepts activity.

 

 

Here’s a better look at the menu:

 

Lab Page Update

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Lab Page Update

This was an easy task. Basically, I just had to rephrase the following sentence into a new one for the Lab Page:

 

Old: “The Mezes 4th floor computer lab equipment check-out services have ceased until further notice. No reopening date has been established.”

 

New: “The lab equipment rental services at the Mezes 4th floor are temporarily closed until further notice.”

Photo IDs

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Photo IDs

You know how this goes. This is the latest photo IDs I’ve had to edit:

 

For the first one the lighting was already pretty good, so I just increased the blue color balance a bit to balance the warmth, I decreased the saturation a bit and increased the exposure, too. For the second one, the lighting was already pretty good, so I just adjusted the tone to increase the vibrance.

Update 6.14.2021

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LatinX Pop Lab logo

Last week, I was assigned the logo of a professor’s lecture series that covers, analyses, and discusses the Latinx’s cultural impact on the US. The professor specifically called for an alternative graphic that didn’t include the face on the middle of the logo (acting as the O in POP):

Here are some initial versions, which would be edited due to the O being too far apart from either P:

Here is a more finalized version, which has a wider O and a more accurate off-black color chosen in the original Ai file:

Course Graphics for GRC 401C

A professor in the Department of Geography & the Environment requested course graphics with the following notes about the color palette and style guide to be used:

The color palette matches what I could use to differentiate among the subsystems: Atmosphere (yellow), Hydrosphere (light blue or blue), Lithosphere (tan), Biosphere (green).

This class is all about the earth, a Geosystem, comprising the four subsystems above. So the earth from space (the Big Blue Marble), clouds, weather systems, tornadoes, hurricanes, volcanoes, mountains, rivers, coastal features, sand dunes, rock formations, lakes, pretty landscapes of any kind (from deserts to tropical forests to glaciers), pollution, climate change, plants, animals, etc.”

The professor requested the following course graphics:

  • Studio Graphics:
    • Digital Wall Monitor, Custom Design
  • PPT Slides:
    • Lecture Segment Title Slide
    • iPad Overlay (faded or color)
  • Canvas Graphics
    • Dashboard graphic
    • Homepage banner
    • All standard Style B buttons

I initially created four different versions using images from Unsplash that would fit the professor’s request:

Studio backdrop:

iPad Overlay:

Dashboard GFX

Homepage Banner:

Style B Buttons:

After some feedback from Poonum, we could agree that the image used as the background for the third version is the most fitting but needs a couple of adjustments for it to not look too glary. Below are three images showing the original, first edited, and corrected versions of the image:

Fun Tuesday Activity

This is the first-ever STA Fun Tuesday activity, making pixel art out of formatted cells in Google Sheets. Go team Mona Lisa 🙂

OCILL

While I don’t have much to show other than notes and communication, the OCILL transfer project is under way as we prepare to transfer lecture content for a professor’s OCILL website to Canvas! I’ll have more updates on this on my next post.