Sage Aries Dougherty ’20 designs this year’s Print Crawl poster

During Lancaster’s recent First Friday, hundreds of participants in Lancaster’s annual Print Crawl event were tasked with bringing the vision of a PCA&D alumna to life.

That’s because this year’s Print Crawl poster was designed by Sage Aries Dougherty ’20, an Illustration BFA graduate. The concept — centered around a ruffed grouse, Pennsylvania’s state bird, grasping a red rose, the symbol of Lancaster — reflects a distinctive style that had to be adaptable to the Print Crawl’s guidelines. 

“The goal of Print Crawl,” she said, “is to show off all the different (printing) businesses in Lancaster.” So through screenprinting, rubber stamps, letterpress, stickers, and laser cut, Print Crawl participants built Sage’s design element by element until the finished image came into view. 

Sage first heard about a contest to design the 2024 poster right before the summer deadline, through a chat in the Lancaster Vending Network. She immediately got to work, drawing out her concept and submitting a portfolio of her work. “I drew out everything and messed with the color palettes through Procreate,” she explained. 

Once her design was selected she worked to refine it with Megan Zettlemoyer, a letterpress printer, graphic artist, and organizer of the Print Crawl. And then, on the night of Print Crawl, which brings hundreds of people to downtown Lancaster, Sage took a blank poster and participated in the event herself, composing her own design piece by piece. “I wanted the experience myself,” she said, “and it was really fun.”

And it turns out poster design isn’t the only way she’s stretching her creative muscles these days. She’s been apprenticing for almost a year with Alluring Auras, an all-women artist Lancaster city tattoo business. 

“I’m an artist, and tattooing is just one of my mediums,” she explained. “My goal is to transition my illustration style into tattoos. There’s something very humbling about someone having your work on them forever,” she said of her clients. 

In addition, Sage is working on a project for the City of Lancaster: a Rosie the Fish character and color sheets for web and print that aims to educate the public — especially school-age children — about the impact they have on the Conestoga River and work that’s being done through the River Connections project. That effort, she said, should come to fruition sometime this fall.