Category Archives: Basic Trainings
Accessibility in UX and Graphic Design
“But consider for a second that all design is fundamentally assistive.” — Margaret Andersen Good design provides for its users. Every step of the visual design process considers how best to make its content both beautiful and understandable. On a … Continue reading
How-To Make Immersive, Replicable Info-graphics for Online Instructional Material
The main goals of online instructional graphics:– Attract students’ attention– Aid with retention– Enhance understanding Choosing the correct type of graphic to portray your information is important in creating an engaging experience and make the audience feel the piece is … Continue reading
Principles of Design | Shape and Pattern
Shape is a formative element in design. Movements you have learned about like Art Deco and Bauhaus put major emphasis on shape and form, which inform how we use shape today. Although it often goes unnoticed, shape is everywhere, from … Continue reading
Branding | Logo Design
Here at LAITS, you may be asked by a client to design a logo to help brand themselves, their course(s), or their program(s). Some courses also create printed material on mugs, bookmarks, buttons, etc., which is why we would like … Continue reading
A-Z from Building a New Cascade Site to Client Communication
Creating a New **UNIT** Site in Cascade After receiving a confirmation email from the client with all of the necessary information (site acronym, site admins, site type) to create their site, this will be the first step. 2. Cascade CMS: … Continue reading
Branding | Research for Meaningful Brand Systems
Introduction This training will introduce to you the concept of brand systems and shed light on some of the research processes that can be undertaken before working with a new client or creating a brand. By reading through some of … Continue reading
Photography | Photo Sourcing and Color Grading
Design often relies of photography to better communicate its ideas – a picture is worth a thousand words and all that. Subtleties in a photo from subject matter, to layout, to coloring can have a big non-verbal impact on how … Continue reading
Animation | Motion Graphics (Advanced)
Introduction / Review In the first KB training on Adobe AfterEffects, you learned how to create simple animations for Online Course Graphics. Fundamentals that you were introduced to include: storyboarding the AE User Interface and creating compositions setting keyframes (position, … Continue reading
Animation | Logo Animation (Advanced)
1. Introduction This lesson explains how to use the logo you created on How to Design a Logo and turn it into a motion graphic using Adobe After Effects (AE). This activity aims to provide STAs with multiple tools with … Continue reading
Animation | Keyframes: The Very Basics
One of the fundamental concepts in working on After Effects is working with keyframes. These are markers in time that allow you to tell After Effects where you want to change the value of an effect or transformation, such as … Continue reading
Principles of Design | Color Theory
The purpose of this lesson is to get a full understanding of how color works and interacts for the purpose of improving design. By the end of this training, you will: History of Color One of the first people to … Continue reading
Typography | Create Custom Wordmarks using Bezier Curves
In this training, you will be creating a Custom Wordmark for a Logo using the Bezier Curve in Adobe Illustrator. By the end of this training, you will: Be able to manipulate anchor points and handles to achieve the desired … Continue reading
Typography | Type Hierarchy in InDesign
Typography can be an effective design all by itself. By the end of this training you will: Learn how to set up an InDesign document Create an event poster for a particular brand using only type Direct the reader’s gaze … Continue reading
Branding | Iconography
Creating an effective Icon The purpose of this basic training is to go over how to create an effective icon. You will be using Adobe Illustrator to create your icons. Icons are symbols used to communicate an idea, actions, or … Continue reading
Typography | Intro to Typography
Fonts are an integral part of graphic design. Behind every bit of text that you see – on websites, billboards, and even your phone’s keyboard – lives a designer who spent time choosing the perfect font that fits the texts’ … Continue reading
Intro to Design Styles | History of Design
Introduction This is an introductory lesson that elaborates on the different movements, eras, and styles that influenced graphic design and designers throughout history until the present day. The aim of this lesson is to introduce STAs to the beginnings of … Continue reading
Web Design | Web Accessibility Standards
Awareness and understanding of disability has certainly deepened in recent years but there is still a great deal of work to be done. Disabilities span the realms of physical, mental, cognitive, and developmental, just to name a few. People with … Continue reading
How to Process a Cascade Help Request and Train the Chatbot
As STAs, we have all completed our Cascade and Web Editor training, but staff and faculty members do not have those formal training. So, when staff and faculty members have questions while editing their sites, they would submit a help … Continue reading
Principles of Design | Learning the Principles and Elements of Design
One of the first steps to better understand the principles and elements of design is to identify what they are and how they function. The elements are the building blocks of a work of art or design. They are the … Continue reading
Publication Design | Infographics
. Adobe Illustrator is a vector graphics editor and design program that is popularly used to create beautiful designs that can go anywhere—print, web and apps, video and animations, and more. In this training, you will be using AI to … Continue reading
Basic Training: Project Time Estimates
When do I need a Project Time Estimate? Hello STA! At some point, you may be asked to estimate the number of hours you think you will spend on a “Service Center Project” before starting actual work. Service Center Projects … Continue reading
Intro to Design Styles | Create Pixel Art in Illustrator
In this training, you’ll take an image (either a photograph you’ve taken or a famous painting) and turn it into pixel art using Adobe Illustrator. What is pixel art? It’s a style of art that mimics retro computer graphics created … Continue reading
[Archived] Basic Training: HTML and CSS
In this training you will be introduced to HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, the languages that can be used as tools to help you develop simple websites. This training is quite involved and can be frustrated or confusing, so be sure … Continue reading
Photography | Cutting Objects Out in Photoshop
Not all images are created alike, which means some pictures are harder to cut out than others. This tutorial allows you to cut out more intricate things, like curly hair and feathers with Levels and smoother objects with Quick Selection. … Continue reading
Basic Training: Custom Studio Course Graphics
Courses taught in LAITS studios One of the main services LAITS provides is online course production. Studio courses are recorded by the LAITS production team, including Video STAs, Audio STAs, and Design STAs, and are offered to students either live … Continue reading
Basic Training: How to Create an Interactive Game Using Canvasser
Canvasser is a building tool that allows you to create simple animations and interactives that can be displayed on the web (in both desktop or mobile view). An interactive is essentially content that changes depending on the input of a … Continue reading
Photography | Color Correction
Photoshop Color Correction The purpose of this basic training is to go over the various ways in photoshop to manipulate the light and color of a digital photo. When editing a photo for work, we tend to mostly want the … Continue reading
Basic Training: Make a Magazine Spread with InDesign
InDesign is a powerful tool for typesetting (arranging type) and document creation. It is best for creating books, brochures, flyers, and magazines. By the end of this training you will: Create a 4 page spread Use INDD’s master pages tool … Continue reading
Photography | Image Trace
This basic training will introduce you to the image trace tool in Adobe Illustrator. The tool allows you to quickly convert any raster image (.png, .jpeg, .psd) into vector artwork (.pdf, .eps, .ai) without having to manually retrace the image. Vector … Continue reading
Basic Training: How to Create Canvas Buttons
Canvas classes sometimes request a set of buttons to function as external links on their homepage. The buttons are used for things such as tech support, professor’s email, or outside websites that are used frequently for class. In this tutorial, … Continue reading