When walking through the halls of a Hempfield Area school, you’ll see walls decorated with festive signs and banners. You’ll talk to people wearing T-shirts from the school blood drive, a club, an honor society, or a Spartan sports team. You’ll enter rooms with posters displayed and a teacher’s desk with a plaque of their name. When you depart, you see a sign spelling out the school’s name and upcoming events.
Individually, one may not notice each of these small projects, but collectively, they are what adorn our building making our spirits bright in this and every season.
Hempfield Area Senior High School is filled with thousands of detailed creations made by a small group of individuals working tirelessly to design, edit, refine, and print signage. It’s easy to imagine a large paper and crafts company to fulfill the myriad of projects that the elementary, middle, and high schools need. It would be crazy to think that a single class would handle the thousands of tasks needed by the district, but it turns out that a group of 4 seniors and a faculty member are almost solely responsible for requests of our nine schools.
Graphics 4, a course run by Mr. John Testa includes seniors who have been enrolled in his graphics program over the past four years. Seniors Sean Smith, Lucas Kermes, Matthew Cecconello, and Dominic LoPinto are featured on almost every wall of our district schools.
Sean Smith added, “Teachers and the district hand us a ton of projects, and the five of us divide up the workload to quickly complete the tasks while still making high quality work”.
Their blood, sweat, and tears has almost entirely created the Hempfield Area brand. They have designed the school color, the Spartan Head, and all of the spirit wear across the districts.
Whether it’s a hall pass, the plaque with the name of your favorite teacher’s name, or our school logo, the sign shop’s work is seen everywhere; yet they are not always recognized for their large contribution. Mr. Testa’s design 4 class is an amazing opportunity to explore one’s artistic designs while decking the halls of the district.
