2021 Poster and T-Shirt Design Contest Winners

Competition submissions triple in 2021; Winners share stories of student life during pandemic

The Print and Graphics Scholarship Foundation (PGSF) is proud to announce the winners of its 2021 poster and T-shirt design competitions. This year, PGSF received more than 200 entries for the poster competition and more than 130 for the T-shirt contest, representing a threefold increase over last year’s entries. 

The winner of the poster contest for full-time students is John Latham of SOWELA Technical Community College in Louisiana. The part-time student poster winner is Randy Jackson of Pennsauken Campus (Penn Tech) of Camden County Technical Schools in New Jersey. Regan VanderWall of OAISD Careerline Tech Center in Michigan was the unanimous winner of the T-shirt design contest.

Each contest winner will receive $500 from PGSF. The T-shirt winner will also receive a free trip to the Printing United Expo in Orlando, October 2021. The poster designs will be printed live at the Expo. The files will also be made available for schools across the country to print and prominently display.

“We are thrilled with the response to this year’s poster and T-shirt design contests. We look forward to sharing the students’ enthusiasm with their peers at the upcoming Printing United Expo,” comments Jules Van Sant, Chair, PGSF.

Darrell Buck, ​​Assistant Master Instructor at SOWELA, comments on the challenges of 2020-2021, “This has been a challenging academic year for students across the country because of the pandemic. However, our students have had additional hardships caused by the natural disasters that have decimated Southwest Louisiana. In August of 2020, Hurricane Laura damaged Southwest Louisiana, and then 43 days later we were hit by Hurricane Delta. But through all of this, our students have stayed positive and resilient. They have dealt with a pandemic and destroyed homes while at the same time attending hybrid and online classes. Having a student win a national contest during all of this gives us a huge emotional boost and proves that our students can conquer anything.“

Jackson comments on his poster contest win, “It is an honor to be selected as a winner of the PGSF poster contest for 2021. The challenges that we all faced this year with school only makes it sweeter to be among the winners. While the odds were against me, I didn’t let that bring me down because you will never win a contest or in life if you don’t try. I look forward to applying for a PGSF scholarship in the future to help me attain my goals.”

VanderWall describes his opportunity to participate in the contest: “My interest in graphic design started at a young age with exposure to Photoshop through the digital scrapbooking my Mom did. After completing two graphic design classes in 8th grade and in junior year, I decided to continue exploring this field by attending our local trade school (Careerline Tech Center) during my senior year. The 2021 PGSF T-shirt contest was one of the available options for a project we did within that class. I chose to base my design around the idea of Pantone chips since they are universal in the graphics and the print worlds. Combining that concept with the careers and associated symbols creates not only a design that is fun and colorful but also one that’s wearable.” VanderWall adds, “I was delighted to receive the news that I had won and am super thankful to my teachers who supported me through this difficult school year.”

The design competition was entered by many classes and individual students that used the competition entry as a real working assignment. The 2021 T-shirt and poster designs will be used to promote the availability of scholarships for students pursuing a career in the graphic communication industry. 

For more information on how to apply for a scholarship, grant, or enter a contest, visit www.pgsf.org.