The Digital Studio (DS)
Some of the work I've done
In the eight months that I've spent working in the Digital Studio, I've had the opportunity to work with many students on different projects, ranging from logos for campus organizations to photo collages for a job portfolio to magazine spreads to ads for restaurants, etc. The people who come in for help vary in skill level, so sometimes I end up giving a student an overview of the basic features in Adobe Illustrator, InDesign, or Photoshop, and then sit with him/her to figure out together how to bring his/her vision to life, while at other times I am mostly there to be a second opinion for someone who knows how to use the software already. Regardless of the person, however, when we are discussing design choices, I try to bring the conversation to audience considerations so that we are thinking about the composition in the context of the rhetorical situation at hand.
Aside from this, I have also run digital software workshops for classes at the request of professors (below is a testimonial from an iMovie workshop that I led recently), and I led an hour-long InDesign tutorial for other tutors working in the DS.
Testimonial from Dr. J. Perry Howell
"Esther Kim led a 75-minute workshop for my ENG:4815 "What is a Text?" class during the spring 2018 semester on making a basic "Ken Burns style" documentary slideshow and soundtrack with iMovie. The Digital Studio has gone above and beyond the call of duty in their help with this project, which is not the sort of thing that is traditionally done in this class. My students, even those with virtually no prior video or audio experience, had been requesting for some time more "hands on" technical projects. They were excited, but also very nervous, about this project. Esther's workshop did wonders to reduce the anxieties of those who had done little or no video and audio editing before, which, somewhat to my surprise, turned out to be a majority of the class. She was very patient with beginners, and her explanations were so clear that everyone (even me) could follow along and create something. By the end, everyone present seemed to have the basics down, which allowed me to concentrate in class on the writing and aesthetics, rather than on the technical side, which was a huge savings of class time. Esther was a joy to work with and helped to humanize the Digital Studio and make it more approachable for my undergrad students, who will now be much more likely to use it for help with this and future digital projects."