Roughly 250 people flowed through the third floor of Building N at Santa Fe College’s Northwest Campus on Thursday night for “AMPERSAND,” the college’s newly named Graphic Design Student Exhibition.
According to an April 14 SF press release, AMPERSAND reflects the moment of transition that SF’s graduating students are experiencing as they transition from the college’s degree program into the next chapter of their lives.
Presented by SCAD Media, the free event showcased work by graduating and undergraduate students in SF’s Graphic Design Technology A.S. degree program.
In an interview with Mainstreet, Shawna Mansfield, associate professor for Graphic Design at SF College, and one of the organizers of AMPERSAND, explained that the Graphic Design Technology program is a two-year career and technical degree geared toward workforce readiness.
“In our degree, we cover a lot of things,” she said. “There is advertising, motion graphics, website, interface, UI [User Interface], UX [User Experience], print design and social media. We cover a lot of stuff in a very short amount of time.”
As part of Thursday’s event, 14 graduating Graphic Design Technology students had the opportunity to showcase the portfolios that they spent the last two years working to complete. For some, Mansfield said it was even quicker.
The graduates set up personalized stations in two separate rooms on the third floor of Building N. Mansfield said this was for networking purposes.
“It’s not just family and friends [here],” she said. “There are tons of professionals here, our sponsors. These are people who hire our graduates that are here in our building right now. And so, they’re going around [and] meeting all these graduates, and you never know what’s going to happen from that.”
Connections were exactly what graduate Johnel Pastor was hoping to get by participating in the event. With that, he said he wanted to make a lot of money.
“I want to live off of this [graphic design],” Pastor said. “That’s what I’m here for.”
Outside the two rooms and on most of the walls on the third floor were more than 100 pieces of student artwork chosen after the second juried exhibition judging process, according to Mansfield.
“Each year, we have a juried exhibition,” she said. “Students enter, [and] it goes through two judging processes. “And this is the work that was selected after the second process. And it’s judged externally. We don’t judge that work. We have judges that we bring in for that, and they choose the pieces, and they also do the voting.”
Mansfield said there is a first, second and third place prize, with the winners receiving cash prizes and awards from the event’s sponsors.
In addition to chatting with students and viewing various pieces of work, attendees were treated to food that included pizza and sliders. There were also several different activities for guests to partake in, such as making friendship bracelets.
Mansfield said it’s essential to her that when a student goes through the Graphic Design Technology program, he or she is “more confident.”
“Because if you’re more confident in who you are, then you can succeed in anything,” she said.
Nick Anschultz is a Report for America corps member and writes about education for Mainstreet Daily News. This position is supported by local donations through the Community Catalyst for Local Journalism Fund at the Community Foundation of North Central Florida.