By Tim Leeds
Char Sticka's Creative Lettering and Design Class from Havre High School spent Wednesday morning at Altec Graphics in the Holiday Village Shopping Center learning some hands-on experience.
"This is one way they can see the technical aspects of graphic design in an actual business," Sticka said. "It's kind of like seeing the reality of the graphic art in the real world."
Altec Graphics staff, including Butch Albertson, Mike Williams and Lena Leeds, who owns the business with her husband Scott, walked the students through the actual production of silk screened and embroidered merchandise. Williams said the morning included showing how to work with artwork and different ways to edit text, showing how to do work making signs, then going through the entire production of an actual silk screen.
The Altec Graphics staff had prepared a design for the class for the silk screening. Kristi Doll, a student in the class, created the design. Each student did the actual silk screening on a piece of fabric during the demonstration, as did Sticka.
After they demonstrated the silk screening, Leeds showed the class how the computerized embroidery equipment functioned, transferring what was created on the computers to the embroidery machines and actually embroidering it on the material used.
Sticka said the class had completed most of their work for the semester, including calligraphy and all basic aspects of graphic design including designing text creations in the high school computer lab. She said she wanted to show the students how it applied in an actual work environment before the semester tests began, today and tomorrow.
