June 28, 2010

I received an e-mail today from the BYU-Idaho reps about their portion of the articulation conference presentation. It's funny- when you work so hard on something and then someone says "We liked it better the way it was." aka "you didn't need to change anything about it". To me it just feels heavy and out of place. It's funny- with design- there are people who like your work and those who don't. I understand - I can relate - I have an aunt who is a chef. Most of her food is great. Some of it, though, I could pass on. Art and design is the same way.
Sigh - you have to work with other people's opinions or well, they don't want to work with you anymore. It's good to learn how to communicate clearly and kindly so that others don't feel threatened or odd about their ideas or suggestions.

June 25, 2010

Today I touched up both the PowerPoints - yet again.

June 24, 2010

Mark visited me at my desk today again! We finished the edits and really cleaned things up. It's incredible to see what has changed since I started. I couldn't have done this on my own - that's for sure! Having additional "eyes" looking for things to edit is how you find everything. I'm so grateful!

June 23, 2010

Today I went through the articulation conference presentation to make sure everything is uniform and that we have all the updated information. I e-mailed each of the CES schools to find out any changes or updates they want for their portion of the presentation. Yesterday James and I looked at the pro's and cons to doing a chart vs. a time-line to display the dates and deadlines for admissions:vs

Thoughts?

June 22, 2010

Today Mark came over to help me edit the BeSmart PowerPoint. It is SO helpful to get other people's perspective on how things should be worded ( not that it is my job to word things - it's Mark's). We accomplished a lot: cleaned up the BYU-H portion and made sure everything is uniform and up do date.

June 21st, 2010

Worked on designing the new Besmart website again today... Lot's to do - just not sure where to go with it yet. Kind of like writer's block for design... hopefully it passes soon.

I edited the BeSmart Presentation with some edits that were e-mailed to me from BYU-I. I'm so glad that I have other "eyes" to help me edit. Looking at the same thing over and over gets old and I don't catch everything. Wahoo for team work!

June 18th, 2010

Helped gather edits for a website and created some new pages for the Articulation conference presentation.

June 17th, 2010

Read through a lot of the internal resource - kind of a slow day.

June 16th, 2010

I helped another of the associate director's to put together and clean up a powerpoint presentation today. It's nice to have people come to me with problems and be able to quickly fix them.

June 15th, 2010

I got in this morning and James said that Kirk e-mailed him the 3 First Presidency videos that we had been looking for. I wasn't sure how to go about getting something out of the archives and into digital format... let alone how to edit video for powerpoint. I originally had Daniel helping me to locate and format everything. But - WE GOT THE VIDEOS!!! YAY!! It turns out that the Institute rep got them and edited them. WAHOO!!!
I love tender mercies.

June 14, 2010

Again we are editing the internal resource. woo!

June 11, 2010

Kirk took the BeSmart Presentation to a big meeting with the other admissions directors for the CES institutions. He came back and told me this morning that they were all impressed with my work and that they appreciated working with me. WHEW!!! That makes me feel more confident in my ability to interact and receive feedback. I have learned a LOT about critique and working with other people to come up with a presentable final product.

June 10, 2010

We have been going through to correct errors in an internal resource for our division. That will take quite a while. It's literally reading through each page and looking for grammatical, policy, and content errors. Not much to talk about.

June 9, 2010

Today I worked on the BeSmart powerpoint just a tad. I added this guy to it:
I also put together a quiz for a training meeting.... exciting I know..

June 8, 2010

Edited a few pictures; corrected lighting and adjusted levels. Transferred the presentation to Kirk's computer for his meeting on Thursday. Hopefully everything goes well!

June 7, 2010

I edited the presentation today. Not too exciting. Worked on a Organizational Chart for the Admissions Services Office. woo!

June 4, 2010

I must brag a bit - I did not understand the organization in Photoshop very well when I started. I think I'm starting to really get the hang of it now!...and whether or not someone else can understand my organization within photoshop is besides the point. =)
James and I talked about ideas for a new BeSmart website. Something more clean and simple... It may or may not happen, but it's been a great opportunity to play in Photoshop and combine different ideas:
I browsed through a few University Websites to find good navigation and organization. This is what we decided would work best ( as you can see by the tabbed mock up above):

MIT's nav is not that fabulous:

Neither is the U's ( ...lots of random navigation. A patron would not know where to look first, second, etc. A lot of mumbo jumbo all over the place.) Really... did you expect any thing else?

June 3, 2010

The BeSmart Website was on the docket today... I worked on revising a lot.. but ended up totally revamping. I really like how clean the Mac design is. No confusion with what you are supposed to be looking at. With that in mind I played with ideas.

Here are some samples of an opening screen for the website:
Which do you like better?
1

2

The animation will move to the side and a website description and a list of options will appear:

Once you select an option here is what will happen - for Application:

For Church Schools:

Then within Church Schools, BYU is selected:

I know it doesn't look like much, but I worked realllllly hard on it today! Not sure if we'll actually use it - that would be a TON of work to redesign the WHOLE thing (plus James has a TON on his plate already)!

It's fun to play with though!

June 2, 2010

This is a bit of what I did on Wednesday at the office. It doesn't look like it would take that long, but it took me a long time to get to this. I originally wanted a reflection of the web page below it. Once I got that done, it looked funny... so I started over. It's odd how often that happens - I'll have an idea - design it and then think - "That just looks weird" or it doesn't flow. So I start all over again. It's best to get a good design - even if it takes a few tries.

June 1, 2010

Memorial day weekend was wonderful (three-day weekend). Today has been good. I arrived this morning to an e-mail from BYU-Hawaii with great additions for their portion of the presentation.

I edited and added them to our template:

I added Katy's picture here for BYU's Most Notable Advantages: