Printer Wonderland, a winter pop-up sale, made its debut at the Truax Gallery just before winter break. Paper snowflakes and Christmas lights hung from the ceiling while paper trees, colorful posters, and merchandise adorned tables and shelves. The gallery felt cozy, and the merchandise was vintage themed, making customers feel nostalgic.

It started with the Logo in a Day competition run by the Creative Arts Collective. The competition, which has intermittently been used to benefit non-profits, as well as for other purposes, presented participants with a mood board and creative brief asking them to design a logo for the prospective sale.

Laura Gang, a third semester graphic design student, won the logo competition with her stop-motion Christmas movie inspired design. She referenced Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer which featured “a scene with Burl Ives as a singing snowman among some beautiful, funky segmented pine trees. I knew I wanted to try to bring that scene to life in a logo for Printer Wonderland,” she said.

Laura Cherry, a graphic design professor at Madison College remarked, “It was kind of a student project from start to finish.”

The designs and products were contributed by students from multiple graphic design classes including the letterpress, screen-printing, and the design project management classes. The design project management classes boasted the majority of the final products which included posters, pillows, cards, and journals. The class collaborated in groups to come up with concepts, create the designs, and set up displays. The class was advised by a panel of faculty that helped the students work out the details.

Printer wonderland was the brainchild of Beth Ketter, a graphic design professor at Madison College.

“She’s in charge of all of our pop-up sales. She’s the instructor who really carries that on her shoulders, and she does an amazing job,” Cherry said.

Ketter has been in charge of the various pop-up sales organized by the graphic design department including Printer Wonderland and the pre-Valentine’s Day pop-up sale that was set up near the second floor bakery.

The profits from the sale will go back into the school to benefit the enterprise initiative, which keeps the gallery open and staffed. The students come away with the valuable experience of having designed products from start to finish. The students will keep some of the products for themselves to put in their portfolios and bring to future interviews.

The students also had the opportunity to see customers interact with their products, and based on what merchandise did come back, students can evaluate how well their products did. For some students, there was no merchandise to come back because many products sold out.

The Printer Wonderland went smoothly this year, thanks to the hard work of students and staff, Cherry said.

“It was kind of impressive that everything turned out so beautiful because there were a lot of moving parts, a lot of instructors and students helping out,” she said.

Printer Wonderland will pop-up again next year around winter break with a new logo and new merchandise, all designed and produced by Madison College students.