By Sahana ’26
At Harvard-Westlake, all incoming 7th graders are required to take either a semester or full-year mixed-medium art class. I chose to take a semester – when I thought of art I mainly thought of drawing or painting, neither of which I really liked or thought I was very good at. I didn’t think of the other things art classes at the school would have to offer, including photography, ceramics, glass blowing, and graphic design. When it was time to choose my classes for 8th grade, I ended up deciding to take graphic design with Ms. Trawick. I hadn’t really done it much outside of the little I’d tried in 7th grade art, and it sounded interesting.
Graphic design quickly became one of my favorite classes. Not only was Ms. Trawick, like all of the art teachers, super fun, but the projects were so interesting. Using tools like Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop was hard at first, but it was really rewarding once I was able to create a design that looked good and included all we’d been taught about colors, fonts, and other design elements. I can also say that using Illustrator and Photoshop has been a really helpful skill to have that I’ve used to create many designs for different purposes since learning how. While the projects are constantly changing, some of the projects we worked on in my class included designing record labels for one of our favorite albums, rebranding packaging for one of our favorite clothing stores or other brands, and designing a new flag for a country.
At the upper school, graphic design is also an ISIR, or independent study class part of the Kutler Center, in addition to counting as an art class. The class is called Graphic Design Through the Medium of Merch, and unlike at the middle school where the projects are broader and can focus on almost anything, the merch class’ projects are all based around advertising, marketing, and branding.
Starting with creating zines highlighting different aspects of a well-known brand we began understanding the different aspects of what goes into spreading awareness about a brand with the goal of sales and profit. Even beyond the physical design aspects, we learned the role of a brand’s values in creating advertisements by looking at some controversial labels such as Brandy Melville, and how overproduction and excess clothing is having an impact on our world today. We learned how to screen print, practicing by creating a shirt for an HW club by first hand drawing or creating our own design on Adobe which we then burned on screens to print.
The class culminated in each student creating their own brand and designing their own products. We worked with a budget, creating pitch decks with color schemes and logos while also presenting what our brands would stand for. We then used all of the skills we’d learned in Photoshop, Illustrator, screenprinting, and drawing to create the products ourselves. The products were all unique: we had things like phone cases, clothing, bags, water bottles, stickers, and more. At the end of the year, our class had a sale to sell all the items from each brand to school faculty and students, in order to raise money to support the end of sweatshops and the unethical production, and overproduction, of clothing.
My graphic design classes have definitely been some of my favorite classes at HW, and I would definitely recommend them to anyone who wants to take art without having to use traditional mediums such as drawing and painting!
