New Hope To Display New Street Banners Designed By Hennepin Tech Student
Hennepin Tech Graphic Design Student Chelsea Affeldt loves a good challenge. Last semester, she answered the call from her instructor, Paul Howlett, to design new streetlight banners for the City of New Hope.
“I know that cities like to have all the people represented, so looking into the cultures and things like that and trying to find some artistic way to represent them all,” was part of what Affeldt focused on. She also knew that street banners, by their very nature, have to be attention-grabbing without being too attention-grabbing.
New street banners for the City of New Hope, designed by Hennepin Tech Graphic Design Student Chelsea Affeldt.
“The fonts and the colors of the text you have to be able to read fast because you’re not sitting in that area not long enough to make it out,” she said.
Affeldt’s winning designs: five different two-paneled banners that celebrate New Hope as a great place to live, work, shop, grow, and play, were selected out of 25 entrants from Howlett’s classes by New Hope City Council.
“Chelsea’s designs really build off of the brand and identity of the city and really highlight some of the things that make New Hope great,” said City of New Hope Community Development Specialist Jeff Alger.
“Her rise to the occasion was really her ability to see what the visual problem was and solved it in the best way possible, connecting with the community, designing and creating art that resonates with anybody that entering in and visiting the city of New Hope,” said Howlett, who has partnered with New Hope in the past during his decades of teaching at the college. “I just think it’s a great, fresh look.”
Affeldt is working full-time as a veterinarian technician while she finishes her graphic design degree. She hopes to be able to work from home while her three sons are homeschooling.
Hennepin Tech Graphic Design Student Chelsea examines her work alongside instructor Paul Howlett.
“This was a shocker,” she said of having her design chosen. “I knew I’d have some smaller things for my portfolio, but this was not expected.”
Alger said the new banners, more than 50 in all, will go up later this spring along Xylon Avenue and up on new street light posts the city installed on 42nd Avenue last year.
