Staff report
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(Rock Hill, S.C.) — Winthrop University students in the Department of Design are preparing to present their senior portfolios, which will showcase their work over the past four years.

The senior portfolio show has traditionally been the capstone activity for graduating illustration and graphic design students, but this year it will also include interaction design and interior design students.

“This will be the first year that all of the Department of Design is going to be represented in the portfolio show,” said Chad Dresbach, chair of the department. “We have done this show for 20 years and it’s the first time that we’ve done it, that represents everybody in the department and it is a pretty big deal for us.”

There are 22 seniors in the 2019 graduating class, who will present their portfolios April 11 at 6 p.m. at the Sugar Creek Brewing Company in Charlotte. The theme of the show is “this is us.”

“It was originally going to be ‘this is design,’ but he had a few problems with the department, so we had to change that,” said Taylor Foxx, a graduating senior with a focus in interactive media design.

Dan Goods, a visual strategist for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, is the guest speaker for the event.

“He’s been at TED Talks, he’s given international presentations, he’s really sought after for this kind of activity, so us being able to secure him was really quite the coup, ” said Dresbach.

Goods “leads a team responsible for developing creative ways of communicating and working to transform complex concepts into meaningful stories that can be universally understood,” according to the senior show website.

Carmen Little, a graphic designer senior, said preparing for the show has been a lot of work.

“We have a lot of people that are involved and there are 22 of us total and there are a lot of things that need to be done,” said Little.

She said every student in the show has a specific role, depending on the skills and interests of each person.

Admission to the show is $5 and it will include hors d’oeuvres. Students who attend can receive Winthrop cultural event credit.

* Anna Hollis Townsend, Reema Patel and Ethan Walker contributed to this report.