Part of Mott Community College sophomore graphic design major Anna Theede’s experience is something that most students wouldn’t necessarily expect to gain in school: her coursework is on display out in the community.
Theede was part of a team of students who helped design holiday boxes for Patriot Ambulance’s second annual “Fill the Ambulance” donation drive to collect items for Hurley Medical Center’s Holiday Shop and Child & Family Life programs. The drive provides items for local families supported through the Hurley Foundation with donations that include gifts, comfort items, and essentials for kids and families experiencing hardships during the holiday season.
“I saw on Facebook, the Patriot Ambulance page posted some pictures of the boxes and where they’d be going,” Theede said. “That was really fun to share on my page and say, ‘Oh, I had a part in making that and it actually came to life and other people are going to see it.’”
That experience of seeing coursework out in the community might be rare for some college students, but it is a core feature for graphic design students at Mott enrolled in the college’s Design Center course.
The graphic design program at Mott is considered an ‘occupational program,’ with a goal of preparing students to be workforce-ready. That means students would need to do an internship with a business or design agency or work under a designer for a significant number of hours to get credit for their internship. Internships like that, especially in design, can be hard to find, though, so Design Center was developed to give students another path to gaining significant professional experiences while also attending classes.
Students can register for the course for two semesters, and it operates similarly to its own design agency. Clients are various nonprofit organizations or businesses in the Flint area, or even internal clients at the college, who are seeking design work or support. Students interface with those clients, capture their needs, work in teams, and ultimately create finished products that get approved by their clients and implemented in various ways in the community.
“We’ve found when students took the course, they were far more successful,” said Jim Shurter, department chair of art, design, and photography at Mott and the faculty lead of the Design Center. “They were more likely to graduate. They had a higher rate of persistence, completion, all of those kinds of things. So we incorporated it into the curriculum as part of that internship option and the curriculum is all real world learning. The students run the agency. They do the interview of the client, they ask the questions, they put the presentations together.”
The Patriot Partnership
Angelia Caballero, the creative marketing director for Patriot, had some awareness of what Mott students are capable of because she’s an MCC graphic design graduate herself. The Design Center course option wasn’t available when she was a student, but she sees immense value in how the course operates and the skills it helps students build.
Caballero has known Shurter for about 16 years and been involved with Mott’s program in various ways since she graduated, including attending some of the program’s meetings and participating in portfolio reviews with students.
“Everything is spread out amongst multiple weeks (in a typical college course) and a lot of times in the real world, it gets condensed down into a day or you might have three days to do a project,” Caballero said. “So I think them seeing the different stages of a project and the different review process that goes with that, the edits, the revisions. Not every client is very easy to work with, and not every client is difficult either. But there are different things they have to follow. And so what they’re designing has to fit in with what we’re doing here (at Patriot). (Projects like) this give them the opportunity to do something that is going to go beyond their class and out there in public where people are seeing it and engaging with their design.”
Teams of students in the course met with Caballero to capture Patriot’s vision for the holiday boxes, had to use their brand guidelines, and meet other needs. Designs from each team were presented, and one was selected that captured what Patriot was looking for.
“It was a really interesting project because it was one of the first projects we got assigned to,” Theede said. “Before that we hadn’t worked in teams at all. It had just been us presenting our own work. And then if our design wasn’t chosen, we kind of moved on to something else. And so it was kind of a challenge to have to work with other people and combine our styles together and then learn to delegate tasks and work on deadlines together rather than just everyone doing it individually.”
Theede was excited her team’s design was selected, but she also learned that being selected was just the first part of a longer process.
“It was really nice to see that me and a couple of my classmates had the same vision to accomplish her (Caballero’s) vision for the assignment that we were doing,” Theede said. “So that was really fun to just find people that were like-minded and thinking of the same approach to what we were working on. It was really nice to get to work together and have the accomplishment of our project getting chosen, but then also still having the challenge of trying to make it even better because just being chosen wasn’t the end goal.”
The overall theme of the design is meant to celebrate community and generosity, which are also Patriot’s goals in continuing to build the ‘Fill the Ambulance’ donation drive into a tradition.
“It was nice to work with them and collaborate with them and give them some real world experience, especially being a community project and a fundraiser,” Caballero said, adding that she’d love to work with Design Center students on future projects. “I thought it was very nice seeing all their different ideas and how they interpreted the creative brief and just the different designs that they came up with.”
The holiday donation boxes and jars are located in 20 locations in Genesee County and Birch Run and can be found through the end of November. Donations can include: new, non-religious, non-violent items such as toys, books, games, craft supplies, diamond painting kits, or $50+ gift cards. All donations will go directly to the Hurley Foundation’s Family Life Programs, including the Hurley Holiday Shop, ensuring children and families have a brighter holiday season. Monetary donations can also be made online. Donation boxes are located at:
Halo Burger locations in Genesee County and Birch Run
- Birch Run: 9130 Birch Run Road, Birch Run
- Burton: 1166 N. Belsay Road, Burton
- Fenton: 1355 N. Leroy Street, Fenton
- Flint: 3388 S. Linden Road, Flint
- Grand Blanc: 2248 E. Hill Road, Grand Blanc
Randy Wise Automotive locations
- CDJR Clio: 4239 Vienna Road, Clio
- CDJR Durand: 902 Saginaw Street, Durand
- Buick GMC: 2530 Owen Road, Fenton
- Hyundai: 4350 Lennon Road, Flint
- Auto Depot: 4305 Pierson Road, Flushing
- BMW: 9099 Holly Road, Grand Blanc
- Mercedes Benz: 9099 Holly Road, Grand Blanc
- Toyota: 8420 Holly Road, Grand Blanc
- Ford: 968 Ortonville Road, Ortonville
- Chevrolet: 5100 Clio Road, Flint
Other locations
- Grand Blanc Township Police Department – 5405 Saginaw Road, Flint
- Goodrich High School (collection jars) – 8029 Gale Road, Goodrich
- American House – 12640 Holly Road, Grand Blanc
- The Oaks at Woodfield – 5370 E. Baldwin Road, Grand Blanc
- Grand Blanc City Fire Department – 117 High Street, Grand Blanc
- Argentine Township Police Department – 8274 Silver Lake Road, Linden
Unique Student Opportunities
Candy Martin is a 2017 Mott graduate who came back to work as the Design Center’s studio manager in 2019. Part of what has kept her passionate about the program is simply seeing what students come up with each semester as clients and their needs change.
“We meet with real clients, we just fill our schedule until we can’t anymore,” Martin said. “It’s so much fun just meeting different clients with different students every semester. It’s always amazing what they do. The talent that comes through there and the learning process, doing that with them is super neat and we get to help people in the community at the same time. And the students get awesome portfolio pieces and experience with clients, all in a safe environment. So it’s really nice.”
In addition to getting quality, professional portfolio pieces through that work experience, Theede also notes that simply having feedback on work from so many different people is invaluable.
“What sets this class class apart from the other classes that we take is that other people are going to see your work and be using your work,” Theede said. “That just feels very important because my professor is not my only audience.”
Shurter’s role shifts in the Design Center. In a typical class, he’s providing instruction and teaching, but Design Center has him also working more like a creative director at an agency, helping students better understand client needs, make choices in their designs, and make successful pitches.
“I tell them what I think, but they’re getting feedback from the client, not their instructor,” he said. “I’m helping guide them or change things. It’s all amazing how they react to it.”
He said that getting to see their finished products, whether those are billboards, ads, or other designed digital or print materials, out there in the community is gratifying in a way that typical course assignments or portfolio pieces don’t always offer.
“It’s a different level of pride in the work that you did,” Shurter said. “Because I got picked, our design got picked, and now we get to go out and see it.”
The non-design skills students also build, including learning how to communicate with clients or talk about their own design choices, are valuable elements of the program too. For Theede, she says that the environment has helped her “come out of my shell.”
“It’s been incredible for me when it comes to my design work and learning to kind of defend my work and have concrete reasons why I designed things, because this is the first time I’ve had to work with clients before,” Theede said. “My work outside of this class is more just kind of between me and the professor. So having an outside person that you’re trying to gather what they’re looking for through the project and also take their feedback and the things that they’re looking for, it’s more looking into how you can best fit whatever mission they have for their project.”
Martin notes that it is common to see that confidence in students grow throughout their time in the Design Center.
“You just see them light up and start getting filled with ideas and it is just a lot of fun and satisfying,” Martin said. “The confidence in the students when they leave, they know a little more about what to expect when they get out there (professionally).”
As an experienced professional working in the design world, Caballero sees immense value in the way the Design Center educates and prepares students to hit the ground running when they graduate.
“Jim is an amazing educator and instructor and mentor and leader, and I just think what they’re doing over there is amazing,” Caballero said. “It’s something I kind of wish that they had when I was in school. You leave school and you have in your head what you think it’ll be like out there in the real world working in an agency or working on a marketing team and then you get there and you learn it’s a little different because it was more of a controlled environment in school. So this is a way for them to get that real world feedback, input and team dynamic before having gone to the real world.”
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