Portfolio of Lina Högberg Wahlström
lina.web.development@gmail.com
During the years 2020-2023 I studied to become an Information Architect and Front-End Developer at Högskolan Borås in Sweden. I am doing a career shift from the transportation industry working as a operational manager and a bus driver, and also as a personal trainer on the side, to do something more suitable to my ambitions and to be able to work with things that I am passionate about and find energizing and inspiring. I am a creative person that always does the best I can in a project and I want to be professional in my deliverables. The bachelors program gave me a lot of new skills, and also a more in depth knowledge in subjects I already had an interest in, like video animation, graphical design and web development.
You can read more about me in the presentation page.
School Projects
The task desciptions and teachers comments are translated from Swedish with Google tranlate.
Second Year Web Development Project
Task Description:
The task is to create a fully functional, "real" website for a real company or organization. You yourself are responsible for finding any business on which the project job can be based. It is important that the business you choose provides you with the necessary conditions for you to be able to design the website according to given criteria.
Revise an older website or build a new one?
Revising an existing website is just as easy as creating a completely new one. If you choose to redo an older website, however, it is important that you do a proper redesign of the old website and an adaptation of the entire website's structure, appearance and content. In other words, it is not possible to make only marginal changes. There may of course be material in the form of images, texts, logos, etc. which can or must be reused on the new website, but it is then important that you ensure that this material is of a sufficiently high quality, and that it is adapted to the requirements of the users and the business. Keep in mind that we are assessing your ability to adapt the website's design and content and that it is then important that you can show that you have independently made such adaptations.
Collaborator:
Bushido Akademin IF is a local karate association since 2011 with around 50 members. Their need was to get a more modern website, with general information about the training, the schedule and other relevant information. They wanted a place for new potential members and another for old members. The association was also in need of an updated strategy for social media and search engine optimisation. The initial contact was a request to design a new logo for the associatoion and have been used on merchendise and marketing products.
Old website
The old website was a static site, with some yearly changes for announcing session times.
In the progress of recreating the webpage a content evaluation took place, to see what could be kept and what should be rewritten. The results gave the knowledge that the texts mostly was about the sport and the origin of kyokushin karate, and less about the association and the members, and the familliarity and sence of connection in the association does not shine through. The website was also bland in the color scheme, not giving the attitude and strong feeling sorrounds the training sessions. An initial survey was sent out to all the members to give them the opportunity to make inputs on what was important to them, since the webpage was supposed to be for them.
New website - bushidoakademin.se
To let the power of the sport take more place in the new website the three traditional colors red, black and white was used. The aim for simplicity in the culture of karate was also a big influencer in the project together with the input from the members and the goal to have a relevant textual content. One big aspect was the need to have a good forum for announcements of new information, therefore a new Facebook page was created, going from a closed group to an open business Facebook page. The page and the pre-existing Instagram page was integrated in the index page of the website, making the first page the most dynamic in nature of all the pages, and making the management of the page less complicated. Some of the most frequently asked questions to the coaches in the association was about the schedule, so to fill this need a Google Calendar was created and also integrated on the index webpage.
To make the pages more readable on tablets it was made with a single column layout and the web builder tool used at one.com had a usable mobile view, so the website is also readable on mobile devices. The website was also made with a SEO strategy in mind, to make it more visible on the web. As a side project, out of scope for the school project, a marketing strategy was created together with videos and footage to upload to social media. One of the goals for the association was to get more new members, and during 2023 they had more than 60 new try out sessions generating in around 40 new members, 2 new beginner classes and 1900 new webpage users with an average engagement time of more then 1 minute (source: Google Analytics). One of the reasons could definitely be more visibility locally through social media ads and a locally strong brand.
Additional media created for the association
These are some of the videos created for marketing purposes. They are intentionally a bit unpolished, with the aim to make them more authentic, and for the respect of the members in the clips not wanting to have a camera and lights in their face while working out. It is also a way of shoeing the viewers how the sessions actually are in real life and what they could expect when visiting the dojo.
Vignett project
Task Description:
The task consists of creating an animated title sequence/vignette for a self-invented film or TV series. So it must not be a film or TV series that already exists.
Select a particular decade or era of the 20th century, as well as a genre or theme that interests or appeals to you. The choice is quite free.
Process:
I decided early on to make a vignette into a kidnapping-themed thriller because I personally like horror and thrillers. Next, I did a simple storyboard sketch to have an idea of what kind of material I needed to look for. By reading the course literature, I also thought a lot about which principles I should use and what could fit together with the story.
To find inspiration for my final design, I have used the films the Conjuring, the Game and Rosemary's baby and I am also a fan of Bram Stokers Dracula and the series Penny Dreaful. The production company name is a reference to me just having my second baby while creating this assignment. It was a intense time period, I had fun with this assignment!
Synopsis:
The Sect is a mini-series about an extreme Christian congregation in the American countryside and the era it takes place in is the 1970s. It's a small, urbanized town with a hundred or so residents, dilapidated buildings, bankrupt businesses and a rather tired police force. There is a broad culture of silence, you don't like to pry into other people's affairs, and a strongly rooted Christian faith where you are expected to follow God's word. But in this context it is in a negative angle. A child is abducted at the beginning of the series and for 20 years he is formed into the congregation through occult ceremonies and there is physical and above all mental abuse in the picture.
Music:
I have created the music using sources from freesound.org, using three sounds together with the two sound effects that were requested in the task description. The main track I call the theme music, the one that has a dark sweeping bass sound along with a lighter one that goes in different waves, not sure what instrument it is but maybe some kind of digital string instrument.
Then we have a pulsating sound where the purpose is for them to simulate a heartbeat with a slightly higher frequency and thus increase the tension level of the listener. The beats follow the metronome's 60 beats per minute, and together with the pause it becomes 120 beats per minute. The idea is that it should sound like your own heart would beat when you get a bit of stress. The last main track is also a pulsating sound, more mechanical and dull like a giant factory or machine working hard and slow.
Tools and sources:
Adobe After Effects, Adobe Audition.
Pictures is open source from pexels.com
Teacher's feedback:
In my opinion, you have created an excellent vignette, with a very complete and professional expression. In fact, I have no difficulty imagining that this is a vignette that could belong to a current TV series. The mind immediately goes to both fairly modern horror films, and also to thrillers or detective stories with occult themes and content, such as True Detective. You use very subtle means to create a suggestive and unpleasant mood - images, movements as well as music and sound effects as well as visual effects interact extremely well to create a mysterious, suggestive and well-coherent whole. Your content-rich report also testifies to the fact that you put a significant amount of work into creating this whole and its very well-thought-out and well-planned components. From a practical perspective, you've done an excellent job overall, and I have no objections at all when it comes to the technical side.
Multimodal product
Task Description:
The idea with this assignment is that you should investigate how it is possible to influence people's interpretation of information, using multimodal communication. You must create two information graphic images that present the same subject, but in two different ways.
Process:
Since I liked working in After Effects I wanted to do an animated inforgrafic project.
I created two infographic short films on the theme "Equality". It is intended that they should function as opinion-forming advertising in connection with an information campaign, either on someone's website or as a television advertisement, and that they should be part of a collection of material but also function independently without context
Modalities:
The films are structured with two modalities, text and image, which together with movement convey whether Sweden is equal or unequal. A final modality is missing in the project, spoken text with information about what is shown, which could not be added due to lack of technical conditions.
The symbols are self-produced and designed to resemble conventional images and information already used in society.
Tools and sources:
Adobe After Effects, Adobe Illustrator.
Teacher's feedback:
No argumentative info-graphic
Yes argumentative info-graphic
Very nice information graphics, which effectively convey your messages! Nice to see that you worked with moving images, and that you have made great use of this in your animations. It would have been interesting to hear a bit more about your choices when it comes to the particular moving parts of the report, but overall you have very interesting and relevant reasoning.
Malin Billqvist Ung, Universitetsadjunkt