Masco Junior Sarah Fine knew early on she wanted to live a creative life. While taking various art classes at a local art studio– starting as a first grader–she fell in love with art.  As she grew, she would often ponder how she could make art her job. It wasn’t until this past summer, participating in an intensive arts program at Champlain College in Vermont, that it clicked. Her “aha moment”-- Graphic Art and Design! Sarah decided then and there where she wanted to focus her studies.

 

In addition to being part of the yearbook staff and serving as editor-in-chief, Sarah had opportunities through Masco’s well-regarded Art program to take a variety of classes using various media to hone her skills. This year she was able to work with teacher and head of the Art Department Stacy Mannheim in a semester-long independent study. Her focus? Graphic art and design.

 

With the latest batch of data from the most recent Youth Risk Behavior Survey, Tri-Town Council (TTC) was seeking student artists to design the graphics for a Positive Community Norms campaign - a 3-part poster series promoting the data-backed, positive, prevalent, healthy norms at Masconomet High School. TTC’s executive director Meredith Shaw reached out to Stacy to see if her graphic design class might be able to take the campaign on as a project, as they had in 2019. It turns out the class wasn’t running in the fall semester, but knowing Sarah’s interest in graphic design and the flexibility of the independent study format, Stacy thought Sarah might be interested in taking on TTC as a “client”.  As soon as Sarah heard, she was in.

 

To parallel the client experience, Sarah met with Meredith and TTC’s Coalition Coordinator Nicole Gregoire-Allis in October to talk about the purpose of the campaign, and she and Stacy got to work brainstorming different ideas. Knowing that the graphics needed to be inclusive, reflective and positive, Sarah thought of different ways she could show the healthy norms around vaping, marijuana and alcohol non-use. She settled on wanting to show the norms by featuring human-like forms, so Sarah and Stacy, “thought all about how we can incorporate people and the human aspects without a very complicated way of showing it.” She started sketching some simple forms using different shapes and liked what she saw. Upon Stacy’s suggestion, Sarah took some black paper, cut out different shapes and started experimenting with creating geometric people. Both she and Stacy really liked them. What appealed to her was that “the shapes were neutral, inclusive, and simple, but people would know what they are.” The simplicity appealed to her. “They’re simple like some of the very famous logos, like the apple logo. You know what it is, and it’s so simple.”  While the forms Sarah used in her design were created organically, it was hard work!  Sarah reflects, “ It’s really hard to take this very complex idea and break it down into its simplest, simplest form where people can still understand what it is.”  

 

Now that she had settled on the forms she would use, Sarah had her work cut out for her. She was tasked with creating 3 different posters with a cohesive, connected design. Inclusivity was important to her, and she wanted to reflect the different interests/activities high school students have, and bring “everyone together.”  The green poster shows the forms running to represent athletics, while the blue poster is meant to capture youth performing to represent dramatic and musical arts, and in the pink poster, figures are dancing to represent youth gathering and being social. Sarah likes that the posters have movement, represent different aspects of young people, and “no one is singled out, because anyone can be at risk.”

 

Thinking about how high school students are often represented in movies -  smoking, drinking or engaging in other negative behaviors - Sarah shared that she was surprised by how high the non-use rates were at Masco. “I didn’t realize Masco was not at all like that. You hear about everyone going out after school to have parties, so when I saw the numbers I was really happy. This project shifted how I thought about my peers and substance use in general.” Like she experienced, Sarah hopes that her designs will change the way other Masco highschoolers think about their peers, and help them realize that the data shows that “it’s not everything they thought.” 

 

As she reflects on the past few months spent on this project, Sarah is grateful for the experience to learn about the power of norms along with the opportunity to create something meaningful. “This was a fun project to do, to see the data first-hand and see the whole picture.”  As her guide, mentor and teacher throughout the process, Stacy reflected, “Sarah's graphic design independent study was a positive experience for us both. Sarah produced excellent work, had a chance to hone her design skills further, and gain valuable experience working on a real-world project. I'm so pleased we were able to arrange this with our schedules, which allowed Sarah to focus on something that she really enjoys and is interested in pursuing in the future.”

 

For more information on the power of promoting positive norms and why correcting misperceptions matters.