Cards designed by seniors Rebekah Clinger and David Milleret, junior Ryan Hatfield and sophomore Jasmine McCaffrey will go on sale this weekend.

Larry Percy, instructor of the high school’s advanced art class, said holiday cards will be sold at several local businesses this Saturday.

Percy said this is the first year his students have participated in an enterprise this year. He said he decided upon the project, wanting to give his students the design experience, but also to help them learn more about business.

“This has forced my students to also see the marketing end of design,” Percy said. “It’s been a very real-world experience for us to work through the problems. I hope it’s been a valuable experience for them.”

David Milleret said the biggest challenge was to come up with an original design.

“It took lots of brainstorming,” he said. “In my design, simplicity seemed to be the answer.”

Rebekah Clinger said the Christmas card project turned out to be more work than she had expected.

“I hope this project will raise support for the art program and school, and continue to be a learning experience for others,” Clinger said.

In designing the cards, students were allowed to draw their designs, or to completely draw them on the computer.

“This is fairly real-life,” Percy said. “Some graphic designers draw on paper,some draw on the computer. With drawing programs becoming more user-friendly, artists are becoming more comfortable with using them as a drawing tool.”

Still, Percy said, some of the students are more of traditionalists when it comes to designing.

“They see the computer as cumbersome,” Percy said. “I empathize with them to some extent, but to me the computer is a tool to help with design.”

Percy said he learned more about graphic design this summer when he spent two weeks in an internship with Legal Printing and Powerhouse Graphics, the company’s graphic design department in Shawnee.

This started with the state department of education recommendation that teachers do internships so that they’ll have more knowledge of the fields of business their students may go into, Percy said. This in part inspired him to guide the students toward a Christmas card venture.

After the cards were designed, they were reproduced by Legal Printing.

The cards sell for $16 for a package of 24 and may be purchased from members of the art club, or by calling Percy at the high school, 845-2654.