Germanfest logo competition 'cool opportunity' for QHS senior

QUINCY — If senior year is all about making memories, then Faith Van Hecke designed a pretty good one tied to this year’s Germanfest. The Quincy High School senior’s design will be used for this year’s festival T-shirt. “It’s a really cool opportunity to be able to have my design on stuff for Germanfest,” Van Hecke said.

Germanfest takes place June 6 and 7, featuring traditional German music, cuisine and beverages in Quincy’s scenic South Park. Festival highlights include: • Entertainment provided by the Waterloo German Band, the Wurst Bavarian Band and the Wir Tanzen Dancers, a traditional German dance group from the St. Louis area.



• Beverages including 27 domestic and specialty beers, including Herford Helles, a German-styled brew crafted by Quincy Brewing Company. • Activities, crafts, yard games and prizes for youngsters in the Kinderplatz area. • A display of German-manufactured vehicles in partnership with the Quincy Volkswagen Club and the Quincy BMW Club.

Students in the graphic arts class at Quincy Area Vocational Technical Center submitted logo designs for consideration by Germanfest organizers. “I wanted to incorporate the colors of the German flag — red, yellow and black — and I also wanted to choose something important to German culture,” Van Hecke said. Settling on a German-styled building, beer and pretzels after some online research, Van Hecke created three separate designs using the same color scheme.

She liked the pretzel design the best — and so did Germanfest organizers. “I’m glad that one got picked out,” Van Hecke said. The graphic arts students have worked on projects for Germanfest over the years, including signage, and last year launched a logo competition, which was won by Owen Uppinghouse.

“The kids loved it,” teacher Kate Brown said, and when festival organizers asked if they would do it again, “I was like we would love to do this every year.” Brown said the competition teaches students to work for someone else rather than doing art for themselves. “We’ve slowly this semester been working on how to be the designer for another person, for a client,” Brown said.

“This gave them a real-life feel of what that would look like.” When organizers selected Van Hecke’s design, they also wanted her to make a few changes. “She had to go in and make the adjustments that they wanted, send it back to them and they agreed,” Brown said.

“She got to do the full start to finish.” Van Hecke said the competition, and her winning design, helps build a resume toward a potential career in graphic arts. In addition to QHS and QAVTC classes, she’s already taking classes through John Wood Community College.

‘I’m going to go to John Wood for two years to get a better idea of what I want to do in the future,” she said. “I’m pretty excited for it.” She’s also excited about heading to Germanfest for the first time this year.

“It’s something I have been curious about,” she said, and she’ll have a special memento. “They said I’ll be getting a T-shirt of my own. That’s pretty cool.

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