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YSU Students Make Bags from Campus Banners
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio -- Decorative banners that once hung from light posts and elsewhere on and around the Youngstown State University campus are being turned into designer tote, messenger and other bags. Through the YSU Banner Bag Design Competition, groups of students in YSU’s Fashion Merchandising and Graphic Design programs are collaborating to take the vinyl banners and repurpose them into fashion pieces.
Nanette Lepore, YSU graduate and now a professional fashion designer, will judge the entries at an invitation-only event in the Bliss Hall Theater Lobby on May 19. Earlier in the day, Lepore will receive an honorary degree at YSU’s spring commencement. The winning entry could then be mass-produced and given away as a donor incentive by the YSU Office of University Development.
“This is a great way for fashion and graphic design students to channel their creative skills, contribute to campus sustainability efforts and enhance their resumes,” said Jacquelyn Daniel-Johnson, YSU annual giving coordinator. She got the idea from a similar project at Northeastern University in Boston.
The banners, currently sitting in a campus warehouse, cannot be recycled. “They are just taking up space right now,” Daniel-Johnson said. “We want to keep them from being deposited in a landfill and instead funnel them back out into the community.”
Student teams will submit their designs, which include everything from cell phone covers and iPad cases to totes and duffle bags. Once Lepore chooses the winning design, Super Stitches, a local commercial sewing business, will produce the product.
Daniel-Johnson said she hopes the contest can be held annually. “The students have been really excited about it,” she said, adding that banners measuring 30 feet by 80 feet on the towers of Stambaugh Stadium are set to be replaced soon. Those banners could be used in future banners-to-bags projects.
“The current banners were up four years and have done their duty,” said Jean Engle, assistant director of marketing and communications and coordinator of various campus banner projects. “If this project works out, maybe we can reclaim the large, vinyl billboards around town in the future and repurpose those as well.”
Funding for the competition award came from a donor whose daughter graduated from the graphic design program in 2010.
Published by The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.