If you’re familiar with STEM education to introduce and promote careers in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, you may have noticed the recent addition of an extra letter—A—for the Arts. Or “Awesome” if you ask us.
We’re obviously in favor of the improvement, especially when we have opportunities like our recent project with Ferguson Elementary in York, PA. The STEAM program at Ferguson is a partnership with Penn State York, and provides activities that allow the students to experience real-life career application of STEAM subjects.
Duckpin presented the “A”mazing field of Graphic Design to Ferguson Elementary Grades 1-8 by helping them design their very own STEAM logo.
Working with coordinator Jan Martin, we selected a group of 7th and 8th grade students to be the school’s team of “Art Directors”. We created a lesson plan and worked with the art directors in two separate in-school sessions to guide them through the steps in the logo design process.
In our first session, the art directors learned how to use word clouds to brainstorm ideas they associate with STEAM careers, and objects that represent those ideas. When we left, we tasked them with using the steps we provided to work together and do their own brainstorm to create 20-25 thumbnails of their logo ideas.
The students did an incredible job. Check out some of their thumbnails below!
In our second session we staged a critique, and each student voted on their top 3 choices from the thumbnails. We discussed design principles, such as composition, and refined their thumbnails down to three final sketches for Duckpin to render in Adobe Illustrator.
The three final logos were presented to the entire school to vote. And the winner is…
