Students at Antioch Community High School have the opportunity to express creativity through various school-sponsored courses. On or off the ACHS campus, students may experience different creative environments based on the classroom they are learning in. There are many courses for multimedia design at Tech Campus or in the building.

“[The Tech Campus] instructor gives us some work to do and for a few days he lets us work on the assignments,” senior Tech Campus student John Baronello said.

Tech campus provides an open environment to complete projects with flexible expectations and a solid deadline. Each student can approach their work and execute it in a personalized way. Students at Tech Campus dedicate half of their school day to the multimedia design course which gives them time to go through their own creative process.

“Our first projects were doing small things like applying filters and drawing lines to get us used to the programs,” Baronello said. “I personally just think of an idea and try to work with it. I do have a history of frequently getting ambitious with projects

Tech Campus starts their students on projects and allows them to take their own creative route. Although the Tech Campus course is a viable and resourceful option when looking to improve design skills, many students do not have the time in their schedule to fit in the course. Tech Campus is not the only way to express creativity at school, though. ACHS also offers a multimedia design course on campus. The course dedicates a lot of time to designing for events around ACHS and allows students to create logos for specific areas such as the Makerspace in the ILC. 

“[The makerspace project] was something that I spent a lot of time on,” junior Skye Jackson said. “I had continuously gone in asking them what they wanted from the logo and I was constantly getting feedback from them and improving it every single day.” 

The multimedia design course offered at ACHS gives basic knowledge about digital design platforms such as Adobe InDesign, Adobe Photoshop, and Adobe Illustrator. Throughout the semester, students learn to utilize all three platforms simultaneously. The art they create can be changed and manipulated in many unique ways.

“They can tailor [their projects] to whatever their passion is,” CTE teacher Marcia Zboril said. “We are able to do cross platforms and create an image in Illustrator which are usually vectors because vectors can either be large or make them small and they don’t pixelate.”

Technology allows students in the course to create complex designs due to the varying functions of digital platform. Learning to express a message on multiple planes is important when looking into a career in design. Being able to commit to a project and go through a creative cycle is an essential skill to being a student enrolled in these courses, along with an open mind and a passion for design.