Career Tech students go hands-on in Graphic Arts

Editor’s note: This is part of an ongoing series featuring the various career tech programs offered at Enterprise High School.

Enterprise High School students get the opportunity to work in Career and Technology Center’s Wildcat Printing as a part of getting hands-on experience in the Graphic Arts program.

Wildcat Printing creates all the banners and posters that can be seen hanging around the various facilities at the high school – including all of the athletic banners and sponsor banners – as well as various other printing projects at the school. Wildcat Printing even provided all of the graphics on the walls inside of the field house next to Wildcat Stadium.

That sort of hands-on experience is the biggest part of the program, says Graphic Arts Instructor Drew Key.

“I think it’s very, very important,” Key said of his students working in the print shop. “Without the print shop you wouldn’t get to see the light in their eyes and the smile on their face when they see something they designed get printed out.

“That’s when their creativity starts to open up and they start thinking about how they can apply their designs.”

The courses offered at the Career and Technology Center include Intro to Graphic Design, Digital File Preparation, Advanced Digital File Preparation and Graphic Arts Labs. These courses can lead to industry-recognized certifications in Adobe InDesign, Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop.

Key, who is a Dothan native, worked for more than 20 years in graphic design before becoming the instructor at EHS. Key said the way he learned about graphic design is exactly the way his students learn, even though it was more than 20 years ago.

“This is the way I learned, too. I worked in the print shop during the summer,” Key said. “Students getting to work on the things they see on a day-to-day basis, whether it be projects they create or whether it be assignments, is the big thing. They get that hands-on experience.”

The Graphic Arts program not only can allow students to already be certified in the three Adobe applications but get them jumpstarted on earning a degree in Graphic Design, which can lead to careers in media, photo editing, illustration, web designing and a host of others.

One popular aspect of graphic design today that Key pointed to is vinyl printing and design.

“They can do things like dye sublimation or heat press stuff you can do on mugs and water bottles to eventually being able to do car wraps and learning vinyl wrapping,” Key said. “There is a very high demand for things like that in that industry, especially someone that can design vinyl wraps.”

Key said that his biggest goal is not only introduce students to graphic design but to give them the tools to succeed in that field in the future.

“My main goal is to introduce the students to graphic design in a way that is traditional in a sense but contemporary in another way with the techniques and applications we actually use in our Wildcat Printing,” Key said.