PCA&D Illustration seniors design half-marathon medals, merch

Senior Tyler Le, whose work on the project reflects traditional local motifs combined with images that represent the race and traditional culture found along the race route, won a competition to design the event’s 2020 theme. Garden Spot Village chose designs by Sage Dougherty ’20 and Em Sohn ’20 to round out its top three choices. T-shirts and race swag, in addition to the medals, also will bear Le’s work.

In a Nov. 21 ceremony, Garden Spot Village’s Chief Marketing Officer, Scott Miller, complimented the students for “stretching our thinking. We’ve been (designing) medals for 11 years, and these (design possibilities) never crossed my mind.

“All the color and design and intricacies … you’ve taken us to someplace that’s completely different, and that’s what we absolutely love” about this year’s collaborative project.

Nineteen PCA&D seniors, all part of the Senior Illustration Studio class, undertook the project under the guidance of faculty member Christina Hess.

Undertaking projects like this, Hess said, “is a perfect storm of client and community,” and a chance to bring back skills students have learned in class for practical use.

Medal mock-ups for each design were created by Quentin Robinson, a second-year mechanical engineering student at Thaddeus Stevens College of Technology in Lancaster. Robinson, who also attended the ceremony, explained the painstaking process of using Cura open-source 3D printer slicing software to translate PCA&D students’ 2D designs into 3D objects. Each 3D print, he said, took between 6 and 12 hours to create.