The Give7Days organization set up a contest in response to the shootings at the Jewish Community Center. Contests designed buttons to represent themes that were tied into days of the week. Three students from BVNW had winning designs and were each awarded $250 in prize money.

Seniors Jonah Lee and Emily Fisher entered the contest as the result of an assignment for Graphic Design 2 taught by Stephanie Dalley. Although the students were not required to enter their designs, Dalley said seven of her students submitted their work. Junior Gabby Gillespie submitted a winning design as well, but she said she heard about the contest through National Art Honors Society.

“I kind of wanted to just try out my stuff because I am taking graphic design right now, and I thought ‘This is an opportunity to use my skills that I’ve learned,’” Gillespie said.

Fisher said she entered her design because she wanted to practice creating designs for future job opportunities.

“I want to design stuff in college, so I thought it would be a good way to experience how a business would want you to design stuff,” Fisher said. “It was kind of a situation where you take something that they want and you try to give them the best design that you can to fit their needs.”

Dalley said her students looked at previously submitted buttons to find inspiration. She said this sparked the discussion of branding.

“For graphics 2 we looked at previous buttons and that gave us the opportunity to discuss branding because you can see various colors that are already part of their organization,” Dalley said. “You can see [the Give7Days] logo has concentric circles at the top right by the ‘S’, that is also part of their branding, and then the white typography as well. So we looked at that and then they decided whether or not they wanted to sorta continue the idea of that branding.”

Participants made a new button for each day according the day’s theme. The themes were Love, Discover, Others, Connect, Go, You and Onward. Gillespie said her inspiration came from the various themes belonging to each day.

“A lot of [my inspiration] came from the themes, because… for each day we had to make a button and mine that I won was love, so I did a little heart and I used hotter colors like light purples and pinks,” Gillespie said.

Fisher said her winning design came from the theme Onward.

“Mine’s a circle and it has a ring, ripple shape in the background and then it has three birds in the front of it,” Fisher said. “There were three victims of the Jewish Community Center [shooting] and the theme was onward, so I thought I would do three birds to signify them.”

With eight button designs submitted, there were eight winners. Dalley said they are pretty pleased that three winners are from BVNW.

“They are all amazing designers, fantastic artists,” Dalley said.