2002
The Voice: Spring 2002
Billboards designed by Dordt senior dot tri-state countryside
Senior graphic design major Angela Dekkers from Orange City, Iowa, says there’s nothing
quite like seeing your work spread across a billboard as you drive down
the road. Dekkers recently completed a project for a number of Christian schools
in the area in an attempt to broaden people’s awareness of what Christian
schools offer.
The project began in the fall of 2000 after art professor Jacob Van
Wyk sent out a campus e-mail asking for projects for his advanced graphics
students. Marion Van Soelen, who is coordinator of Christian Schools International (CSI) District
Six and has an office on campus, saw the request and asked for
a student to design posters to promote Christian schools. Dekkers was one of
three students who agreed to work on the posters. They were put in
contact with Sherri Ten Napel, who chairs a marketing committee for District IV,
and from there the ideas got bigger, Dekkers says. Eventually the other two
students bowed out, and Dekkers was hired not only to design posters, but
also brochures for individual schools in the area and billboards promoting Christian education.
Dekkers offered Ten Napel two designs, one more geared to elementary schools, one
more professional-looking, she says. The marketing committee then offered these designs to Christian
schools who could customize them with photos of their students and teachers and
send them out to their communities. Response was strong. New billboards are being
hung in the area and are designed to be moved periodically to other
locations.
“We’ve learned from marketers that after a sign is up for a certain
amount of time people don’t even see it anymore,” says Van Soelen. So
they plan to hang the signs in different places in the Iowa/ Minnesota/
South Dakota tri-state area.
“It was a great experience to work with an organization as a client
rather than just complete a project for class,” says Dekkers. She needed to
stay in close communication with Van Soelen and Ten Napel and see the
project through from its beginning ideas to getting photographs to final proofing. “It
wasn’t just a grade I was working for but something that would promote
Christian education in the community and that many people would see,” says Dekkers.
“And it felt good to do something for a cause I feel committed
to.”
