Student designs winning logos for two largest student-run events

Stork and her creations

University Park, Pa. -- For the second time this academic year, Penn Staters will sport a Lindsay Stork original. This winter, hundreds of students participating in THON, the largest student-run philanthropy in the world, will wear T-shirts with a logo designed by Stork, a Penn State senior from Birdsboro, Pa., just outside of Reading.

Stork, a graphic design major, also created this year's Penn State Homecoming logo, depicting the Nittany Lion hiding inside the words of the 2009 theme, "Remember the Lion Within."

"It was really cool to be picked twice," Stork said. "It's a great honor because mine was chosen among the logos of great designers."

Those designers were her graphic design classmates. In spring 2009, Stork and her classmates were asked to come up with a design based on the Homecoming theme. The class, with critiques from their professor, worked on a design each student would submit to the Homecoming committee.

"Most of my designs come from research," Stork explained. "The theme was 'Remember the Lion Within,' so I went on the Internet and started browsing through pictures of lions and the anatomy of lions. I found a picture of a lion crouching, and that's when I came up with the idea of hiding the Nittany Lion in the letters."

Stork's senior design class this fall was asked to create a logo for THON 2010. Her research for that project meant sifting through Penn State Dance Marathon photos from past years while considering the theme "Love Belongs Here." Stork's artistic talent -- coupled with her idea to incorporate a silhouette of a young boy, his hands forming the Four Diamonds symbol, and a heart in the space between the boy's arms -- earned her a second consecutive honor as artist of a highly visible graphic design for a major Penn State event. The THON logo in particular will be highly publicized in the Penn State community.

"It's really great for my portfolio," Stork said, "especially because I can put photographs of the logos all over, at both events. People will be able to see that my designs were out there. It's a lot more gratifying than just creating a logo for my portfolio that not many people will see."

This past summer, Stork completed an internship in New York City's SoHo neighborhood with a branding group called Plaid Creative. She said it was a great experience; she was able to work on a new logo and site design for an online company. It was a good experience in another way because she discovered she's not sure she wants to work in branding. It can take up to a year to create one logo for a professional company, she said, because clients want perfection. Such a lengthy undertaking doesn't appeal to her.

"Just because the process is so different from what I expected, I'm not sure I want to work for a branding company," Stork said. "I'm thinking of doing another internship to get my feet in the water in a new direction. I have a lot of different options -- package design, branding and fashion design. I don't have to settle on one yet; my options are still open."