The advisor for the Design Club, Mr. Reed, was the kind of teacher that always smiles and makes your day a lot better. I was in the class last year and it was a great experience for me to meet a great teacher who loves to design. More than that, he loves to teach students with a lot of passion.
I first asked Mr. Reed, how did the Design Club start? When and why?
"The club has been around for a while—since 2017. The club itself is very inclusive and has a lot of members. On a production run day, there might be less students making shirts but, on the free t-shirt day the members will come in and get their free t-shirt," he says.
What is Design Club?
Mr. Reed is part of the club as a way to connect students to their creativity. Designs from students can be used to help people on our campus and community. Typically students in the graphic design pathway of CTE are in the club, but you don’t have to be part of the CTE program or the class to be in the design club.
As Mr. Reed says, "We typically have a lot of club members so the most club members they’d ever had is 60 which shocked me. This year the club has around 40 students." Everybody is welcome.
The club gives a lot of opportunities for students to learn how to brand, to design, and how to make T-shirts. This club chooses a charity piece each year, they’ll find a club or team that needs something printed or made. They usually do a project for them and that is a fantastic way to truly help the people on our campus and community.
Some of the activities and merchandise the club has done include:
Fall festival illustrations turned into pin buttons and the club shared them within our campus
They have repurposed a large plexiglass piece that was used for social distancing (COVID) and it now displays some of the students' artwork over the years
They aim to make one shirt for themselves every year
Tote bags with designs displayed
Benefits of the Club
To students the benefits are that it lets them have the chance to learn new things and practice design skills. Students will have a creative outlet outside of class, and It helps them think like a business person, if they are thinking of selling merchandise. Students can also make lots of things that can be gifts.
For Mr. Reed, the benefits are great. He says, “It benefits me because I get to form a sense of family. It's a big group of us. We all get to communicate and work together.”
His favorite thing about the club is seeing the process of a design. “I love producing things, making things, love seeing things become real that come from either a hand-drawn design or a digital design”
Join Design Club
Meetings are held during lunch time on Fridays and it’s called “open design hours" so students can come in and just work on something. Also, on the last Friday of each month they have more formal meetings where they vote on things and decide what they are going to do as a club.
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