Lions Club President Rene Mullins presents Bianca Martinez with an Onion Festival T-shirt and a cash prize for being the winner of the logo design contest. (Jean Ann Collins/PISD Communications)

Bianca Martinez, a 10th-grade graphic design student at PHS, recently created the artwork for the annual Onion Festival promotional materials.

“We always use student artwork for our promotional logo because it’s a way to recognize and celebrate our students,” Superintendent Philip Anthony said.

Bianca received a free T-shirt, featuring her art, as well as a $50 prize.

“I plan to save my prize money because I have already started a college fund,” Bianca said.

According to assistant superintendent Donald McIntyre, this project gives students the opportunity to create a real-world product using a real-world process.

McIntyre met with the graphic design students at PHS to explain what the Lions Club wanted to feature with this year’s Onion Festival T-shirt.

“I wanted to incorporate paws to represent the panthers,” Bianca said. “And I made my zero in 2019 an onion for the Onion Festival. I also used a star on the state of Texas to show we are in Princeton.”

“Once I received some of the preliminary artwork, I met with the students again to explain that the ultimate end-goal needed to incorporate the images they created into a T-shirt design,” he said.

Students were using the Adobe Photoshop program to draw images, such as onions, trophies, tennis racquets, a classic truck, panther paws and the state of Texas, on a computer.

“They started with a blank screen,” McIntyre said. “And a several-step process created a cool design that was used on our T-shirts to commemorate the 15th annual Onion Festival.”

Bianca said it was a tedious process to design the artwork.

“We had to draw with either the pencil tool or the paintbrush in Photoshop so that’s pretty difficult,” she said. “But I like the way it turned out.”

By Jean Ann Collins • Contributing Writer • [email protected]

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