Event Details and Sign Up Forms
Date of Event
April 2023
TIB 202 - LSC-Kingwood
8am - 8pm
Contact for Event
Zoila Donney
Lone Star College-Kingwood
Visual Communication Dept.
281-312-1759
Zoila.Donneys@lonestar.edu
What We Do
The Design-A-Thon was created for the sole purpose of reaching out to the local community, specifically, local area non-profit organizations. These are normally organizations that do not have the time, resources, or the ability to create effective promotional material to help make the community aware of who they are, why they exist, and what they have to offer, whether through everyday service or through planned events. So in a 12-hour period (8am-8pm) we have students donate their time and their talent to help out these local area non-profits with their graphic design needs. Non-profit organizations receive FREE graphic design while our students receive community service learning credit, design pieces for the portfolio, and a great and rewarding experience.
Where We Got the Idea
The project was inspired by an article in the June 2003 edition of HOW magazine titled "The Good Night Club," by Jenny Wohlfarth. In this article, Ms. Wohlfarth talked about how, in 1998, RIGGS design firm in Columbia, South Carolina, launched an event called the CreateAThon, "an annual event where 15 firms from across the U.S. tackle pro-bono projects in a caffeine-fueled 24-hour creative blitz. The idea behind the event was to consolidate all of the agency's annual pro-bono work into a project-packed 24-hour period."
It was really inspiring to read the effect it had on both the employees and the community. The local non-profits were so thankful and astounded by what RIGGS had done for them, that some were in tears.
A local printing service bureau was so inspired by what they did, he offered to print all the work RIGGS did absolutely FREE for the non-profit organizations who were also invited to be there when their projects rolled off the press.
It was just a great article and we thought, "Hey wouldn't that be cool if we did that here?" Well, neither the staff or the students were up for the 24 hours, so we dropped it down to 12 since that was the number of total hours needed for a full load of community service learning credits. And ever since our first one on April 23, 2004, we have held an annual design-a-thon every spring semester. We also received an honorable mention by the National Council of Instructional Administrators for this event.