About 10 years ago, the current Graphic Design teacher established an enterprise class of students who did Graphic Design work and got paid for their services. All the funds went toward purchase of materials and equipment for the classroom.  Since I inherited the Graphic Design Department, I have long wondered if we could bring back the enterprise function and instead of purchasing classroom equipment, give the money back to the students who did the actual work when the school year ended.  Could we create a college scholarship fund that would help students in their next steps toward college and career after they left New Tech High School?

Because the class had already set up the bank accounts and the name of the company, Zixo Designs, we decided as a Skills USA chapter, to simply revive the bank account and the brand.  We needed to rethink our logo, our overall brand and the services that we would offer the community.  The most logical place to start for us was with the logo, so we decided as a chapter that each student would design a logo for the business and then we'd choose together which one we wanted to represent Zixo. It became a great way to model what students would need to do in the future when they managed to land real paying clients!

Following the industry process for logo creation, the first step was to write up a creative brief together.  For this, we had a discussion about who we were, who we wanted to serve, what our unique offer would be, who are competition might be, and how we would differentiate ourselves. We realized that no-one else in the local business world would be offering what we could offer, a chance to get inexpensive design work done while working with a group of young and vibrant designers.

After we filled out our client questionnaire with all the key facts, we plugged all of the information into ChatGPT together and asked it to formulate our Creative Brief. We talked about when and where AI is useful and how to use it ethically in the design world.  We even spent a week watching videos from the Adobe Education Exchange about the ethical considerations of using AI in the field.

The Creative Brief became our touchstone document for working on the first round of sketches.  Each chapter member presented their conceptual sketches to the rest of the members for feedback and considerations for next steps. Students then began the first drafts of their logos in Adobe Illustrator and Fresco.  We then went through another round of feedback and peer review so that students could further refine their logos.  In the end, we voted on the final logo and chose the one we wanted to use moving forward. The student whose work we chose then completed several iterations of the logo for use on the website, stickers and T-shirts, social media and brochures.  We needed a version that would work on both light and dark backgrounds as is true for most clients in the real world.

In this process, we "hired" team members through the process of resume writing and interviewing in front of the whole group. We hired team leaders, creative directors, project managers and Junior or Senior Designers. Throughout this process, the team leaders were responsible for running regular stand-up scrum meetings, checking with the CEO (me) if there were any obstacles or issues that needed to be discussed, and generally keeping the process moving forward.  The entire enterprise was effectively student-led through a clear delineation of roles, responsibilities and systems. Any systems needed for file sharing or for creating collaborative folders were established by the Operations folks.  The Ops department also took any and all notes during feedback sessions and shared them to the group so they could act upon those notes. Any announcements or decisions that needed to be made were done by the students and most decisions were made as one big team. 

Going through the design process internally first, modeled for students how to move through the various stages of design and implementation.  This became critical for students to understand, because we got our first paying logo design client soon after!  From there, the students took over the entire process, from doing the intake interview with the client, to writing up the creative brief, to conducting internal feedback sessions, prior to meeting with the client for feedback and providing the final logo. Going through the process first as a chapter set them up for success as they continue to land client after client on their own! It's been amazing to watch them grow and take the reigns of the Zixo business. It all started with their own company logo design. 

The Napa Lighted Art Festival is a yearly event where Napa Parks and Rec sponsors a weeks long event downtown in the month of January or February.  Anywhere from 2-3,000 people come to the downtown area to see light projections on the buildings, enjoy lighted art sculptures and participate in a community latern parade around the streets of Napa.  

It is a joyous and entertaining event for all ages and brings light into one of the darkest times of the year.  An underlying purpose of the festival is to drive tourist business in the downtown area during the slow wine season in Napa. The Festival is in its fifth year and is going strong. 

This year the Skills USA chapter at New Tech, in conjunction with the Digital Design Lab class, participated by collaborating with a lighted art sculpture group out of Israel, The OG Group. The House of Cards sculpture consists of larger than life cards stacked to make a card house.  On each face there is room to include artwork from different artists from around the world. Our Skill USA chapter submitted designs to the OG group and Napa Parks and Rec. They chose four pieces to include in this year's House of Cards installation.  

Our first steps involved meeting the folks from The OG Group via zoom to understand the parameters of the project.  Students were asked to think about the concept of royalty and how that might influence what art they create.  Card templates were provided for use in Adobe Illustrator and students were encouraged to use big, bold, bright colors that allowed the work to look engaging when lit up.  

During that first meeting, the Hamas/Israel war had just started and we were concerned about the safety of our collaborators in Israel. They said they welcomed doing this project as a way to "bring light" into a very dark time. It became a welcome distraction for our counterparts in Israel.  We are so glad they decided to move forward with the project.

Many of the students had already been certified in Adobe Illustrator from a previous Graphic Design class and so worked, quite independently on their designs. Technically, they had to make sure their files were the correct formats and sizes so that the final print on plexiglass would look best. 

Skills that students drew upon in this project include giving and getting feedback on their work at various stages of the design process, understanding and reading a request for proposal, asking clarifying questions of the OG Group, researching images appropriate for the audience, and executing their vision through the use of the tools in Illustrator, such as pen tool, shape builder, mirror function, pattern making, and color design. 

The piece premiered on Jan. 20th and the chapter took a walking field trip to the sculpture on Jan. 23rd to document the work. Seeing the scale of the peice and their work in action really impressed them.  Many community members have been so impressed with this piece and we are so honored to have been included in the process.  Via social media, folks from around the world are getting to view the work and see what our students are capable of!

We have a wonderfully collaborative relationship with Napa Parks and Rec and have participated in this festival since its inception. We hope to have many years of collaboration in some form or another, with the artists and business people who create the lighted art festival. Perhaps next year we can do a building projection like we have in the past, or perhaps work with a local or international sculptor to create something new and wonderful!  We have already met with one of the artists that lives right here in Napa and are scheming about future projects together. 

We created a real design company called Zixo Designs that operates within the four walls of our high school and the students were off and running with our very first client of the school year.

As the teacher, I wanted the students to be able to receive the money they earned at Zixo at the end of the year in the form of college scholarships.  2023-24 was the year to make that leap!

One of our very first clients of the year was our very own on-campus Center for Excellence (CFE),  a training facility that offers workshops about PBL and other cutting edge educational concepts to teachers and administrators from all over the country and the world. The trainings reach about 400 leaders and educators from 7 different countries every year including the U.S.,  Vietnam, Ireland, China, Israel and many others. In these trainings, educators often visit classrooms, speak to students and teachers on panels, and observe PBL in action.  It's a win-win, in that students get the opportunity to speak with adults about what they are learning and practice their own leadership skills while our visitors get an in depth understanding of what PBL looks like on a practical level.

The director of the program, Aaron Eisberg felt that the website used to promote the CFE's offerings could use a bit of design attention.  He also had a strong desire to showcase student work throughout the website, because student-led learning and real-world projects are at the heart of what make PBL so effective.  ​

Because every team was working on a different part of the website doing different tasks, we used an Agile Project management tool called Sprint boards/meetings to keep track of tasks and who was working on them. Each team had their own sprint boards, decided their own tasks and deadlines and tracked their progress during stand-up meetings at the beginning of every class.

As the teacher, I could look at a sprint board and see, very quickly, which teams or individuals needed extra support from me in form of 1:1 coaching, or a conversation with the team leader on how to work with an individual learner.  This way of learning and coaching is a powerful way to teach, support, and troubleshoot collaboration skills in a way that allows for mistakes to be made and learned from. 

We planned a mid-project check in with Mr. Eisberg to show him the first iteration of the work for the website. There happened to be a study tour of teachers from Ireland here on campus that day, so they sat in on the meeting as well, as observers. Each team leader presented the work to the client while the Operations team took notes on the feedback Mrs. Eisberg gave.  That document was then shared with the entire group and final changes were made to the website. 

Students created new icons for workshop offerings that provided clearer visuals for website visitors.  They created more compelling video for the banner of each main page that showed students in action learning at New Tech.  They used slow motion shots of entering the building with the students to create a more inviting sense of exploring the website.  They updated the blog photos to better reflect the content and show more student faces instead of stock images.  In addition, they provided a stockpile of photos for future blog posts so Mr. Eisberg could have enough images to keep a consistent visual look and feel.  And lastly, they redesigned all the buttons on the site to be more uniform and round and friendly. ​

We did have one students who acted as the webmaster and implemented those changes on the wordpress website for Mrs. Eisberg.  The webmaster was responsible for following up with any team members who needed to make changes to their design assets based on the criteria the webmaster had chose.  So, things like size of documents, file types, correct fonts and colors were all decided by the team leaders as a group, which they then communicated to their team members. The webmaster made sure that everything remained consistent for the overall look of the website 

In all of this, as the teacher, I remained the coach on the side. I had individual meetings with certain team leaders as needed to make sure that we presented a professional front.  I did a lot of work with the Sales and Marketing team to make sure that the contract was correct, the emails to the client were professional and timely and that communications were clear and useful.  The sales team learned about how to follow-up, when, where and how to request the funds to pay for the project, how to create invoices and more.  In all of this, I insisted that the students do all of the communications with the client.  

Suggested next steps for the client were made by the students.  Some future projects might include creating social media content for future promotion of the CFE. 

Zixo is excited to continue helping businesses to succeed online through powerful and clear visual communication.