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Creative Juices Flowing for UC Students Producing Orange Bowl Designs
Photos By: Lisa Ventre and submitted by Molly Mazzolini
The FedEx Orange Bowl on Jan. 1 will throw a spotlight on a season of hard work and accomplishment by the University of Cincinnati Bearcat football team.
The event in Dolphin Stadium in Miami, Fla., will similarly throw a spotlight on the design work of three UC graphic design students who – thanks to the university’s Top Ten cooperative education program – have had the unexpected opportunity to help design the banner graphics that will fill the stadium inside and out (decks and walls, locker rooms, players’ benches and more). These approximately 350 large-scale banners will also be on view throughout Miami, at Miami International and the Fort Lauderdale airports, on downtown streets and at hotels.
| UC students helped complete this graphic at an Orange Bowl team hotel as well as hundreds of other large-scale banners that will be part of the Orange Bowl. |
(Cooperative education, or co-op, is where students alternate academic quarters with quarters of paid, professional work related directly to their majors. UC is the global founder of co-op, having founded the practice in 1906. UC co-op is ranked in the nation’s Top Ten by U.S. News & World Report, and design students at UC graduate with about 18 months of paid, professional experience on their resumes.)
These UC design co-op students helping to create the graphics for use during the bowl game are
- Laura Fahey of Bridgetown in Cincinnati, Ohio
- Ryan Taeuber of Western Hills in Cincinnati, Ohio
- Jen Vitello of Maplewood, N.J.
Laura Fahey
Helping to complete the banners by prominently placing the UC logo front and center on the pieces has been exciting, according to graphic design junior Laura Fahey, 21, of Bridgetown, who is currently on co-op working for Infinite Scale Design Group in Salt Lake City, a firm that specializes in sports-related environmental graphic design.
| Laura Fahey at work on an Orange Bowl banner. |
“The banners will be all over the place, and it’s been my role to make sure the varying sizes are correct, the logos are all correct, the colors are all correct. You have pressure to get it right because people will be seeing this work when it’s at an extremely large scale once the banners are produced. They’ll see them at varying angles. It’s exacting design work because when we work on it on a computer screen, it’s very small. You can’t let anything slip,” Fahey explained.
In other words, no fumbles.
Fahey added that it’s just a great perk that she’s now doing this with her own university team’s logo and colors to work with. “I’ll definitely be watching the game at home come Jan. 1 with my family. I’ll be seeing work I helped with on national TV. It’s all going to be on view at its final large scale.”
And, yes, she admitted that she’ll be pointing out to everyone the graphic work that she’s helped with.
Jen Vitello
Fellow student Jen Vitello, 21, of Maplewood, N.J., said she’ll be doing the same. “Oh yeah, I’m planning on pointing out to my family and friends what I worked on as we watch the game.”
| UC student Jen Vitello in front of some of the early banner concepts she helped develop. |
Vitello is in the second of two co-op quarters at Infinite Scale. She began working at the firm during spring quarter and had a hand in developing the initial concepts for the Orange Bowl banners.
Back then, she had no idea that the eventual logos she would swap out in the final design would be that of UC. “It’s been exciting to work here from the start, but we’re just ecstatic now that UC is playing in the Orange Bowl,” she said.
Ryan Taeuber
Ryan Taeuber agreed, “I’m glad it’s our team we’ve been designing for.”
Taeuber, 25, of Western Hills in Cincinnati, co-opped at Infinite Scale back in the summer, helping to create the early conceptual designs and the design system for the Orange Bowl.
| UC's Ryan Taeuber helped with the early conceptual designs and the design system to be implemented at the Orange Bowl. When doing that work, he did hope that UC's logo would one day be part of the designs. |
He admitted that during his summer co-op, he did fantasize that UC would be in the bowl game. Said Taeuber, “I’m into sports. The Bengals and UC are my teams. I did think, early on, how cool it would be to have UC logos on the designs we were helping to create. And now, it’s happening. I just get to be glad for our team.”
He stated that he’s likely to watch the Jan. 1 game with friends, but he might have some difficulty concentrating fully on the football: “I’m a sports fan as well as loving graphic design. Being able to view our designs on such a grand scale will be awesome. It will be a real struggle to look at our work, watch the football game and root for UC [all at the same time].”
Right after the Orange Bowl game, Taeuber will head back to Infinite Scale Design for a winter-quarter co-op where he’ll contribute to designs for the Super Bowl.
UC alumni lead the making of Orange Bowl designs
It’s not only current UC co-op students at the firm who are excited to be part of the team creating Orange Bowl designs for a game that will be the biggest day yet in the 118-year history of UC football. Infinite Scale Design Group, which specializes in creating branded environments for the most prominent of sporting events and organizations (like the National Football League, New York Yankees and U.S. Tennis Association), frequently recruits its own design team members from UC’s internationally ranked design programs.
| UC students and alumni who worked on Orange Bowl designs. From left are current UC student Laura Fahey, UC alumnus Zach Norman, current student Jen Vitello, alumnus Dan Phillips, alumnus Travis Lee and UC alumna and partner in the firm, Amy Lukas. |
That means UC alumni are leading the Orange Bowl design effort. They are
- Amy Lukas, a firm partner, originally from Middlefield, Ohio
- Travis Lee, lead designer, originally from Eldorado, Ohio
- Zach Norman, lead designer, originally from Pickerington, Ohio
- Dan Phillips, designer, originally from Western Hills (Green Township) in Cincinnati, Ohio
Lukas has directed all the designs for the Orange Bowl project, while the rest of the team has headed up different aspects related to stadium and street-level banners and graphics. Lee and an installation team from Roe Fabricators will install the graphics.
- Learn more about UC’s vaunted cooperative education program.
- Apply to UC’s graphic design program.
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