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Graphic Communications Scholarship Foundation Salutes 2023 Awardees

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Board members of the Graphic Communications Scholarship Foundation (GCSF) and the Advertising Production Club of New York (APC-NYC) saluted five students and three organizations at an awards ceremony in New York City on June 29. (photo credit: Jenna Woo)

Five deserving students and three equally worthy organizations shared nearly $35,000 in education grants at the 2023 scholarship awards ceremony hosted by the Graphic Communications Scholarship Foundation (GCSF) on June 29.

With the 2023 scholarships and the institutional funding, GCSF – an all-volunteer, nonprofit 501(c)(3) entity – has contributed $1.4 million to the cause of print industry education since awarding its first scholarships in 2002.

This year’s awards were made despite the difficulty of fundraising during the long siege of COVID, said Diane Romano, President of the Foundation, as she concluded her three-year term as its leader. She also cited GCSF’s partnership with the Advertising Production Club of New York (APC-NYC), which funded three of the 2023 scholarships.

Both groups work in support of young people from the New York City metropolitan area who are enrolled in graphic communications study programs. Besides raising money for scholarships, GCSF and APC-NYC cooperate in providing technical training, mentorships, and work/study opportunities for students pursuing careers in the industry.

The ceremony took place in the Manhattan offices of TBWA/Chiat/Day/New York, a leading advertising agency and a co-sponsor of the event along with LB Graph-X & Printing. About 50 people attended, including the recipients, their family members, teachers, and friends, as well as board members of GCSF and APC-NYC.

John Aaron, who succeeds Romano as President of GCSF, presented the first of the Foundation’s scholarship awards to Sable Spellman (Kingsborough Community College), whose well-wishers at the event included four of her professors.

Ellen Hurwitch, incoming as Treasurer of GCSF, saluted Sharif Kariem Hill-Dunning (Farmingdale State College) as “an incredible guy” as she handed him the certificate for his scholarship grant.

Eloise Martinez, President and Treasurer of APC-NYC, and Luis Serrano, APC-NYC board member, presented the first of their group’s three scholarships to Daniel Jacob, a recent graduate of Long Island’s East Meadow High School who is now on his way to study UX (user experience) design at Northeastern University. Accepting on his behalf was one of his teachers, Heather Anastasio, district art department chair of the East Meadow school system.

David Garcia, Jr. will study video production at SUNY Purchase with the help of a 2023 scholarship award from APC-NY.

The award to Megan Sorg (Molloy University) was given in memory of Judy Salmon, a past president of APC-NY.

Student recipients, from left: Sharif Kariem Hill-Dunning (Farmingdale State College), 2023 GCSF Scholarship Award; David Garcia Jr. (SUNY Purchase), 2023 APC-NYC Video Production Scholarship Award; Megan Sorg (Molloy University), 2023 APC-NYC Judy Salmon Scholarship Award; Sable Spellman (Kingsborough Community College), 2023 GCSF Scholarship Award. Not in photo: recipient Daniel Jacob (Northeastern University), 2023 GCSF Scholarship Award. (photo credit: Kaye Torres)

Introducing the three institutional donations, Romano noted that contributing to group activities as well as to individuals expands the ways in which GCSF can help students and supporters of graphic communications.

Lisa Daniell, operations manager at Women’s Press Collective, thanked GCSF for repeating the grant it had made to her organization last year. Based in the Bronx, WPC has been teaching people how to write, design, and print in support of grassroots advocacy campaigns in their communities since 1982. Daniell said developing community media is more important than ever now that the mainstream news business has become “incredibly consolidated” and local newspapers are shutting down at the rate of one every three to four days.

Romano praised the Mariano Rivera Foundation for its efforts to open educational and career paths for young people who come from underserved backgrounds.

Its namesake founder, a New York Yankees pitching legend and a Major League Baseball Hall of Fame inductee, has worked with printers in New Jersey to create training programs that enable local students to gain certified credentials in a variety of prepress, press, and project management skills. As part of its Save 653 initiative, Rivera’s organization is preparing to break ground on a 40,000-sq. ft. learning center in New Rochelle, NY that will offer, besides vocational training in print and other job skills, STEM learning opportunities, college preparatory services, and one-on-one mentorships.

“He’s building schools,” said Romano of Rivera’s pursuit of objectives that are also GCSF’s. “He’s raising money. We will work with the Mariano Rivera Foundation to help bring more young adults into this industry.”

GCSF has a similar relationship with the Department of Communication Design (COMD) at New York City College of Technology, which received its first grant from the Foundation last year. Presenting the 2023 donation, Hurwitch noted that because COMD students attend a school in the publicly funded CUNY system, the rules prevent them from accepting individual scholarships. Grants to the department let COMD enhance their learning experiences in other ways, Hurwitch said.

Eli Neugeboren, Professor of Communication Design, said the funding also helps to take some of the pain out of the austerity measures that CUNY schools have had to endure in recent years. Last year, for example, the GCSF money let COMD replace antiquated student cameras and acquire useful items such as hardware for displaying artwork and digital tablets for drawing.

COMD enrolls about 500 students preparing for careers in graphic design, advertising, motion design, illustration, and web design. It offers the CUNY system’s only BFA in communication design. Neugeboren spoke of the “buzz” of excitement felt in the department and across City Tech’s Downtown Brooklyn campus in general now that academic life is returning to pre-pandemic normal.

Summing up, Romano reiterated GCSF’s commitment to workforce development through education, training, and mentoring.

“All we focus on are the students,” she declared. “We award scholarships to students who work hard, care, and want to make a difference.”

Romano noted that employers in all industries are having a hard time recruiting the next generation of talent. Through its programs, GCSF “will train, mentor, and find the workforce that the graphic communications industry depends on,” she said.

Because it works without professional staff or dedicated office space, GCSF has virtually no overhead expenses. All of the money it raises passes through to students as scholarships and to qualifying organizations as cash grants. To donate, and for further information, visit https://gcsfny.org/donate/.

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Legendary Game-Saver Becomes a Game-Changer for Print Industry Recruitment

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At an open house for the Mariano Rivera Foundation’s print certification training program at Premium Color Group, from left: Mariano Rivera, the foundation’s founder and president; Lisa Vega, executive director; and Luis A. Villa, vice president, Atlantic Tomorrow’s Office.

As the printing industry’s need for new talent intensifies, its most thoroughly conceived partnership for workforce development is making steady progress on multiple fronts.

Mariano Rivera, a legend in Major League Baseball and a philanthropist in private life, is working with printing companies and suppliers in Florida, Texas, and the Northeast to expand a vocational training program aimed at equipping underserved young people with sets of certified and highly employable job skills.

Through his namesake charitable foundation, the New York Yankees Hall-of-Famer is also building a second dedicated training center where students will receive, in addition to career education, the 1:1 mentoring experiences that Rivera and his present-day team see as equally vital to the students’ long-term success.

The first of these centers, located in Gainesville, FL, has produced its first crop of job-ready graduates. It is to be joined by a 40,000-sq.-ft. facility that the Mariano Rivera Foundation plans to break ground for in New Rochelle, NY, this spring.

A third such facility will open in Houston, TX, in June, according to Luis A. Villa (Atlantic Tomorrow’s Office), who is acting as the industry’s principal liaison to the foundation.

Tour for the Teachers

Individual printing companies also are stepping up to the plate on behalf of the effort. Leading off is Premium Color Group, a commercial printer that has provided a hands-on training classroom for new students in its Carlstadt, NJ, plant. Rivera visited the plant on January 17 to review the setup and to meet with about 20 local educators who had been invited to the open house to learn about the program for themselves.

Villa said that on February 13, six to eight students from the guests’ school systems will begin training at Premium Color Group, where they will supplement their classwork with practical exercises on the company’s graphic equipment. Another New Jersey printer, Sandy Alexander, has committed to offering students the same kind of learning experience in its Clifton plant in the first quarter of the year.

The curriculum at all of these sites aims to give students skill sets that will be instantly attractive to employers. The study, provided completely free of charge, consists of up to 360 lecture and lab hours spread over sessions that cover design for wide-format; workflow and print; finishing; products; and business management.

Students can select the areas in which they’d like to concentrate. Those training at Premium Color Group will come to the plant twice weekly after their regular high school hours for classroom lectures, hands-on work in the production areas across the hall, and 1:1 mentoring meetings with their volunteer counselors.

What makes the program unique as a career-building opportunity is the fact that upon completing it, each student will have earned a professional certification that is widely recognized by the industry as a competitive job qualification.

Taught by professional instructors from the vendors that created them, the certifications that students can choose from include EFI’s Fiery Professional and Expert Certifications; Color Management Professional certification from IDEAlliance; product-related and other certified training from Konica Minolta; Ricoh’s Digital Literacy curriculum, designed by CalPoly; and advanced skills in the industry’s most widely used Adobe applications.

Students who complete their full courses of study also will be trained in Lean Six Sigma Project Management by Six Sigma Black Belt instructors.

‘Basically Job Guaranteed’

According to Villa, acquiring this specialized knowledge base is the key to the trainees’ swift entry into a graphic arts workforce that needs them badly. Because most printing companies don’t employ people with certifiable skills, he said, graduates of the program are “basically job guaranteed” when they enter the market with this distinction.

“Jobs are waiting for them upon completion of certification,” agreed Lisa Vega, executive director of the Mariano Rivera Foundation, who also came to Premium Color Group to meet with the educators. The program, she pointed out, can be an important step forward to success for young people who don’t necessarily see a college degree as their way to break into the job market.

Not choosing the college route shouldn’t be seen as a career impediment when an opportunity like the foundation’s program is available, observed Ismael (Izzy) Sanchez, systems support manager, service, Konica Minolta Business Solutions. “In our industry,” he declared, “you can get to the next level by dropping in.”

Some of the school district representatives who met with Vega and Rivera at Premium Color Group glimpsed this kind of value for their students in the program.

Richard Gronda, director of curriculum, instruction, and supervision for Dumont, NJ, public schools, said his district is always on the lookout for “potential, authentic learning experiences for our kids” that can be shared with the school community. The Dumont school system has a work-study program, but it doesn’t include the kind of job training that the foundation’s curriculum provides.

Building skill sets for production management requires good coordination of effort on the part of those doing the training, said Gronda, noting that the program at Premium Color Group “looks like it has that workflow.” He added that the model it follows could be applied to workforce training and development in any industry.

‘College, College, College’

Marc Caprio, supervisor of school counseling services at Henry P. Becton Regional High School in East Rutherford, NJ, said that because the emphasis in career advisement is almost always on “college, college, college,” students usually have no way of knowing that non-academic options like the foundation’s program exist.

“We just want to show our kids what else is out there,” said Caprio, who called his introduction to the program and to Premium Color Group “amazing and eye-opening.”

Nicole De Bonis said she had a list of students whom she could refer to the program from the Saddle Brook, NJ, school district, where she is the director of curriculum and instruction. Students of graphic design in particular should be made aware of the “hidden jobs” they could have with the right kind of practical training, De Bonis commented.

Like all of the Mariano Rivera Foundation’s other initiatives, the certified print training program was developed primarily to benefit young people who hail from backgrounds where career pathways and other positive life experiences can be hard to come by. This is why individual mentor-mentee relationships are provided side by side with the technical training that students in the program will receive, said Esther Omeben, director of the foundation’s mentorship program.

Mentors are qualified, vetted volunteers who offer general moral support as well as career-focused advice. Their guidance helps students to see that there can be “a lot of life, and a lot of opportunity” beyond their present circumstances, Omeben said.

Cooperation vs. Competition

The foundation’s young novices won’t be the only ones studying in the classroom at Premium Color Group, according to Villa. He said that starting in February, other printing companies in the area will be invited to send their personnel to the plant for instruction in digital front end management and other subjects they want to get a better grasp of.

This is a good example of printers “helping each other out” with professional development instead of competing against themselves for talent, Villa said.

Meanwhile, work will go forward on the foundation’s 40,000-sq. ft. learning center in New Rochelle, where vocational training in print and other job descriptions, STEM learning opportunities, and college preparatory services will be provided. Villa said plans for the center include creating a student-run print shop that will produce jobs for schools, colleges, and other institutions in the area.

Everything that the Mariano Rivera Foundation is doing in partnership with the industry will be formally recognized when the Print & Graphic Communications Association (PGCA) presents Rivera with the 2023 Franklin Award for Distinguished Service at its 2023 Franklin Event on March 30 in New York City. For further information, visit https://printcommunications.org/2023-franklin-event/.

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Printing with a Higher Purpose: Women’s Press Collective

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In the Bronx, an all-volunteer organization demonstrates why print remains foremost among the media as a force for social good.

Volunteers celebrate the completion of the first project printed on Women’s Press Collective’s donated Ryobi 3202 offset press. From left: press operator and board member Tim Dalton; Columbia University student Adam Cheguer; Columbia University PhD candidate Himanshu Singh; Operations Manager Lisa Danielle; and veteran press operator João Silva, who provided on-the-job training to all the participants.

Printers tend to think about printing in a mercantile way, and there is nothing wrong with that. Print is what they manufacture and sell to sustain their businesses. If they are commercial printers, the bulk of their output will be used to promote and advertise profit-making businesses of all kinds.

But print is also humanity’s first mass medium for speaking truth to power, exposing injustice, and driving social change. A New York City-based organization called Women’s Press Collective (WPC) is upholding print in that historic role by putting it into the hands of people who don’t do it for a living, but who have embraced it as a means of making their lives and those of other people better.

WPC recently received a cash grant from the Graphic Communications Scholarship Foundation (GCSF) in recognition of the training it offers to those who want to learn how to print in support of the causes they advocate. This is no small distinction for the group, which is staffed entirely by unpaid volunteers working with donated equipment and supplies. 

In fact, WPC’s pressroom in the Kingsbridge section of the Bronx may be the only remaining place in the New York City metro area where people who don’t work for printing companies can go to learn what an offset lithographic press is and how to operate one.

WPC’s other principal activity is making printing available to those who have worthy causes to advance, but who lack access to mainstream media – a mission that goes to the heart of WPC’s quest for social and economic justice.

Beyond Raising Consciousness

“That’s what we mean by printed materials,” explains Lisa Daniell, WPC’s Operations Manager. “Not just to raise consciousness about issues, but as organizing tools to help pull people together and begin to build solutions that come from the community working together.”

 Print helps people succeed at this in ways that corporately owned electronic and digital media don’t, according to Daniell. “We advocate for print because it’s independent. Another reason is that print encourages face-to-face organizing, where people meet each other in real life (and) have the chance to talk, to debate, to determine together how we can work together to address issues.”

These are issues of fairness, representation, community well-being, and other grassroots concerns that gather strength when printed material draws people together on their behalf. 

Examples include a petition to shield public housing in New York City from intrusion by private developers. A brochure to encourage neighborhood organizing by members of the Garífuna, a Central American ethnic group living in the Bronx. A “shopper’s guide” of local businesses trying to survive in a rust-belt region of Western Massachusetts. Each was produced by the group or the individual behind it under the tutelage of WPC volunteers.

“Those projects come to us through our doing extensive community outreach in neighborhoods all over New York City” and elsewhere, Daniell says. The training, which includes presswork, graphic design, and writing for publication, is free of charge, courtesy of experts in the fields who donate their services as instructors.

Last Bastion of Learning

With the disappearance of academic programs, union training facilities, and commercial trade schools for print production, WPC is, as far as it knows, the metro area’s only provider of hands-on learning in the subject for nonprofessionals. It follows a train-the-trainer model that expects learners not just to acquire these skills personally, but to share them with others as well.

“We are training people in rudimentary, basic press operation, and in some cases it’s their first time learning,” Daniell says. “We break down the specific skills of operating the press into a list of about 40 specific tasks that a press operator must know how to do. As soon as a trainee learns how to do a specific skill, then their job is to teach another trainee. This solidifies their knowledge, because they then have to explain it and demonstrate it and help someone else learn how.”

The method prepares people to handle presswork on their own in two to three months, according to Daniell. It is a two-stage learning curve. Trainees who have mastered the list of skills for themselves are deemed “certifiable” as press operators. Those who have helped others reach the same level of proficiency are considered fully certified.

Structuring the training in this way “makes us a stronger organization because it creates a process where there’s the ability to have continuous, independent community press operation,” Daniell observes.

Training and production take place in a shop that always strives to make the best use of the modest resources it has. Currently, its sole printing machine is a small-format, two-color Ryobi 3202 offset press supplemented by a POLAR 55 paper cutter and an assortment of tabletop bindery equipment. A flip-top plate exposure unit supports the shop’s film-based prepress workflow.

Generosity in Action

The film negatives for platemaking are donated, as is almost everything else that the WPC pressroom uses.

A recent issue of Collective Endeavor, the group’s quarterly magazine, thanks a list of benefactors who include Garry and Eli Koppel of Positive Print Litho Offset, principals of the Varick Street trade shop that contributed the Ryobi 3202 (along with a plate punch and 80 cans of ink). Jay Passarella donated the POLAR cutter and other postpress equipment from In-House Graphics, his shop in Queens.

Industry generosity also helps WPC maintain an inventory of printing stocks even as the paper market continues to be plagued by supply-chain shortages. 

“Most of the paper that we use is donated,” Daniell says. “In some cases, it’s donated by shops that have paper left over from a job. Larger shops buy a lot of paper to cover their jobs from regular clients, and then there may be something left over. So, they make that available to us.” The donor of three skids of paper graciously cut the sheets down to the 11″ x 17″ size needed for the Ryobi 3202.

The cash grant that WPC received from GCSF in June of this year is “already used,” according to Daniell, who notes that it helped to fund the purchase of pressroom furnishings such as industrial-quality paper shelving, a rollable work table, a safety cabinet for chemicals, and anti-fatigue mats for the floor. “We deeply appreciate it, and the pressroom looks great,” she says.

The Indispensable Medium

WPC’s belief in print as a lever for social justice and human rights goes back to its founding in 1982 by a group of women with backgrounds as labor organizers. Daniell says that some of the founders learnedprinting in order to produce the flyers and other materials they needed to generate support for the organizing efforts of some of the area’s lowest-paid workers: farm hands, domestics, and home care providers.

Originally from Palo Alto, Calif., Daniell joined WPC as a full-time volunteer in 1994 after stints in New York City’s finance and publishing industries. She says that at the time, “I had essentially no exposure to actual press production.” What she did have was a keen sense of society’s pervasive injustices and inequities – and an equally clear understanding of print’s hallowed role in combating them.

“Printing has a long history in movements in the United States that needed an independent voice,” she says, citing the American Revolution, the fight to end slavery, and the rise of labor unions as examples of watershed events that rallied people to their sides with the help of printing. 

“Print has always been a means to get these stories out,” Daniell says. It is a tradition that WPC works to perpetuate. “Look at our place here. We have the machines, we have people with the skills, we have the paper, we have the ink. That means we can print.”

But, Daniell emphasizes that it isn’t merely for the sake of putting ink on paper. “We need a way where we can meet face to face with each other, to have the difficult conversations, and determine how we can work together. At WPC, we teach a method of organizing that utilizes the production and distribution of printed materials for that purpose as well.”

She counsels that teaching people to print for themselves serves these objectives better than seeking attention from the mainstream media, which have a track record of either ignoring grassroots issues or misreporting them. She also expresses reservations about social media as tools for positive change, despite their ubiquity. 

“We’re not trying to say it’s not something people should use, but it is important to realize that its technological infrastructure is owned and controlled by some of the very wealthiest and most powerful corporations in the world,” Daniell observes. “We can put things up there, but we don’t control the algorithms as to what gets amplified or not.”

The Only Way to Do It

These sentiments ring true to community organizers who have turned to WPC for help in spreading the word. One of them is Cesar Yoc, a co-founder of Save Section 9, a movement aimed at blocking a plan to turn over the management and repairs of New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) properties to commercial developers. Save Section 9 asserts that the plan, know as Blueprint for Change (BFC), could lead to the privatization and sale of the city’s already dwindling stock of public housing units.

Yoc, who lives in NYCHA housing, wanted to alert fellow tenants to the threat posed by BFC and enlist their support in opposing the plan. For this, he says, digital media wouldn’t suffice. Many NYCHA residents didn’t have “smart” devices, and for those who did, “Zoom was a little impersonal” as a means of bringing them together.

“The only way that could be done was through printing,” Yoc says. He obtained it in the form of 1,000 petitions that he printed for Save Section 9 after joining WPC. Now he could “go out and knock on doors” and use the printed piece as a starting point for urgent discussions about the implications of Blueprint for Change. Distributing the petitions at “family day” events in NYCHA housing developments gained further recognition for Save Section 9.

Daniell sees Yoc’s story and others like it as emblematic of what the Women’s Press Collective exists to do.

“We’ve provided publication support for scores of community based organizations in New York City that are really on the front lines of economic, social, and justice issues like comprehensive healthcare, climate justice, and access to legal recourse,” she says. “WPC is a place where community organizations can produce their own media, get their own stories out, and produce printed materials to reach people in the community affected by these issues.”

A Worthy Wish List

The group’s growing number of projects along these lines keeps it fully committed to its mission. What WPC needs now, according to Daniell, is a redoubling of the support that has enabled it to become the force for good it aspires to be.

“We need volunteers to help with community outreach,” she says. “We need volunteers to help with our training sessions for presswork, design, and writing. Our ability to grow and do more projects and more training is very much directly linked to the number of people who are volunteering and supporting the effort.”

WPC also would like to augment its pressroom with a computer-to-plate unit and a small-format digital press. Those with expertise, equipment, or other resources to offer may contact the Women’s Press Collective at 718-543-5100 or by e-mail at womenspresscollective@yahoo.com.

Daniell credits her own development in printing to the guidance and encouragement she has received from people in the industry over the years.

“You walk into a shop, and people are proud of the work they do,” she says. “They’re proud of their craft. They want to show it to you. They want to teach it to you. They want you to know it and appreciate it also. And I found that really beautiful.”

“I really feel privileged to have met so many graphic arts professionals who have taught me about printing and taught me about the industry. The graphics arts industry has people in it who are just so generous with their knowledge.”

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Graphic Communications Scholarship Foundation Salutes 2022 Awardees

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From left, Graphic Communications Scholarship Foundation (GCSF) board members David Garcia, Amybeth Menendez, John Aaron, and Diane Romano (president); Samantha Farber, recipient, 2022 APC-NYC Judy Salmon Scholarship Award; Kaye Torres, recipient, 2022 Graphic Communications Scholarship Foundation Scholarship Award; Daniel Wong, chair, Communication Design Department, New York City College of Technology; Ellen Hurwitch and Natalie Alcide, GCSF; and Lisa Danielle, operations manager, Women’s Press Collective.

The Graphic Communications Scholarship Foundation (GCSF) returned to center stage with the scholarship awards ceremony it hosted in New York City on June 22 – its first such in-person event in three years.

Diane Romano, president of GCSF, acknowledged that COVID-19 had temporarily slowed down the group’s efforts to support young people from the New York City metropolitan area who are enrolled in graphic communications study programs. “But we never stopped working on behalf of the students, and now we are back in full force,” she declared.

GCSF marked its reappearance by awarding cash scholarships to four students and presenting cash stipends to one school and two organizations that train people for careers in graphic communications. The evening’s grants totaled $20,500, bringing to $1.2 million the amount of money that GCSF – an all-volunteer, nonprofit 501(c)(3) entity – has raised and contributed in the cause of print industry education since awarding its first scholarships in 2002.

Joining GCSF for the ceremony was the Advertising Production Club of New York (APC-NYC), which endowed one of the four student scholarships in honor of the late Judy Salmon, an APC-NYC past president and member of the board. The event took place in space provided by Grey Global, a leading advertising agency, at its New York City headquarters in Manhattan’s Flatiron district.

This year’s student scholarships are the latest of the more than 450 individual grants that GCSF has made to date. The 2022 recipients, their schools, and their awards are:

• Kenneth Murillo, St. John’s University, 2022 Dynamic Dynosaur Award, funded by Dino Manuel, creative director of Dynamic Dynosaur, a media studio

• Kaye Torres, Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT), 2022 Graphic Communications Scholarship Foundation Scholarship Award

• Melody Clarke, Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT), 2022 Graphic Communications Scholarship Foundation Scholarship Award

• Samantha Farber, University of Michigan, 2022 APC-NYC Judy Salmon Scholarship Award

The award honoring Judy Salmon is the most recent cooperation on behalf of graphics studies between GCSF and APC-NYC, which has contributed nearly $280,000 in support of scholarships over the years. Co-presenting it were Eloise Martinez, APC-NYC treasurer and board member, and Paul Nicholson, board member. Both spoke of the scholarship’s namesake with affection and respect.

“You never saw her without a smile,” said Martinez, citing Salmon’s long record of dedicated service as a member and an officer of APC-NYC. Nicholson, her manager at Showtime, called her “the most enthusiastic print producer I’ve ever seen on the planet.”

Introducing the three institutional awards, Romano noted that contributing to group activities gives GCSF an additional way of channeling funds to deserving students of graphic communications.

John Aaron, a member of GCSF’s board of directors, presented a grant to the Women’s Press Collective (WPC), a Bronx-based organization that teaches people how to print in support of grassroots advocacy campaigns in their communities. “Gutenberg probably would have been pretty impressed” by WPC’s efforts to make the craft of printing accessible to the public, Aaron observed.

For the last 21 years, the Annual Citywide Graphic Arts Competition has invited New York City high school students to showcase their best work in graphic design, packaging design, digital illustration, photography, and other creative categories. Presenting its award, GCSF board member Ellen Hurwitch noted that the 2022 competition hosted more than 100 students and distributed prizes worth over $4,500.

This year’s competition took place at New York City College of Technology (City Tech), where the Department of Communication Design has become the recipient of a 2022 grant from GCSF. Located in Downtown Brooklyn, City Tech is a unit of City University of New York (CUNY) and has a long history of offering degree programs in graphic communications.

Accepting the grant award from Hurwitch, department chair Daniel Wong said that the funding would be “an immense help” in creating a new research design center, covering students’ contest entry fees, and otherwise assisting them in pursuing their studies. He noted that CUNY is consistently challenged for financial aid and that little of what it does receive trickles down to a level where it can be used to help students directly.

Wong’s department presently serves 500 students preparing for careers in graphic design, advertising, motion design, illustration, and web design. He pointed out that those in their third year of study are only now starting to find out what in-person college learning and campus life are like because of restrictions imposed by COVID-19. The challenge, Wong said, is to give them the kinds of experiences that college students ordinarily would expect at this stage of their educations.

Providing that kind of help is what GCSF exists to do, according to Romano. Through scholarships, mentoring, and training, “our goal is to assist students in accomplishing their goals, and build the graphic communications workforce.”

“The future is in the students,” Romano declared, calling upon the industry and corporations that rely on graphic communications to support GCSF with their donations. This year, the business benefactors include Candid Worldwide, brilliant:, Mohawk Fine Papers, Neenah Paper, and LB Graph-X & Printing Inc.

Because it works without professional staff or dedicated office space, GCSF has virtually no overhead expenses. All of the money it raises passes through to students as scholarships and to qualifying organizations as cash grants. To donate, and for further information, visit https://gcsfny.org/donate/.

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GCSF Eclipses Previous Fundraising Records with Sum Amassed for 2016 Scholarships

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Bright smiles for bright futures at GCSF’s 14th annual scholarship awards ceremony on June 23.

What does an educational fundraising organization do for an encore? The answer is easy: raise more money for education. Considerably more difficult is achieving a 50% year-over-year increase in scholarship funds distributed. But this year, that is precisely the philanthropic coup that the Graphic Communications Scholarship Foundation (GCSF) has managed to bring off.

The money—all $160,500 of it—is now in the deserving hands of 41 New York City metro area students pursuing undergraduate and graduate degrees at 16 schools offering programs in graphic design, production, and publishing. More than half of the record number are repeat recipients, and the group as a whole nearly overflowed the stage at the Hearst Tower Atrium during the 14th annual GCSF award ceremony on June 23.

The sum of the 2016 awards easily outstrips last year’s record-setting amount and is a far cry from the $5,000 worth of stipends that GCSF presented for the first time in 2002. Since then, a total of more than $686,000 has been disbursed to 149 recipients.

The grants come from an inventory of separately endowed scholarships that GCSF, a 501(c)(3) organization, coordinates and helps to raise money for. Students, who earn the awards by submitting portfolios, letters of recommendation, and supporting essays, may continue to apply for and receive them until they graduate.

Over the years, the GCSF scholarship program has become a focal point for educational giving by graphics industry trade groups in the metro area. The most munificent of givers in 2016 has been the Advertising Production Club of New York (APCNY), which raised about $100,000 of the total presented on June 23. Other stalwart organizational supporters include IDEAlliance, Printing Industries Alliance, and The Navigators.

Voluntarism in its purest form remains the cornerstone of everything that GCSF does. Its officers, who are uncompensated, work without professional staff or dedicated office space. This means that the program has virtually no overhead expenses—all of the money collected passes through to the students as stipends.

It has been done this way from the first time GCSF’s founding members sat down in a borrowed conference room to discuss how to revive a small number of print industry scholarship funds that were not being actively managed. Many more scholarship endowments have come under GCSF’s custodianship since then, but the group’s insistence on channeling 100% of their proceeds to students has not changed.

GCSF sustains the financial assistance it provides by drawing upon a dependable network of individual donors and corporate sponsors (see table below). The generosity of this network was evident at the group’s “Spring Fling” event on June 15, a fundraising-focused social gathering hosted by Ogilvy & Mather on the rooftop of its building overlooking the U.S.S. Intrepid on the lower Hudson River.
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GCSF vice president Diane Romano emcees the group’s “Spring Fling” fundraiser on Ogilvy & Mather’s rooftop.

Nearly 200 printing, publishing, and media professionals attended, and 35 high-profile corporate supporters pitched in. The result: a net of $30,000 to help swell the bounty distributed at the awards ceremony on June 23.

Fundraising isn’t GCSF’s only outreach on behalf of graphics education. It also operates a mentoring program that pairs metro area students with seasoned members of the industry for 12 months of enhanced, hands-on learning experiences in real-world business settings. In this way, students gain both the practical knowledge and the personal confidence they will need for success in their chosen fields. GCSF also arranges internships and solicits contributions of training aids and educational materials for use in graphic studies programs.

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Mentees and mentors, from left: Jack Kott, Valerie Buonaiuto, David Luke, Lea Orsini, Allyson Gonzalez, Emilia Dabrowska, Roxana Santana, Nick Patrissi, Jessie Ann Murphy, and Jerry Mandelbaum.

Everything culminates in the annual scholarship awards ceremony, held for the last nine years at the Hearst Tower Atrium. Student testimonials and the bestowal of a special educational honor highlight the value of GCSF’s work, the difference it makes in the lives of the students on whose behalf it is done, and the solidarity of the industry that stands behind it.

First-time recipient Sergio Georghiou, a freshman at SUNY Purchase and the creator of the winning portfolio in a citywide graphics competition, spoke with unrestrained emotion about his family’s faith in his talent through difficult times. “This award is for them,” he said.

Valerie Buonaiuto (Adelphi) talked about the personal growth she experienced by taking part in the mentoring program and completing a GCSF-arranged internship. Natalie Alcide, on her sixth GCSF scholarship grant as she nears graduation from New York City College of Technology, said simply, “I wouldn’t be the woman I am today” without the help she received from GCSF members who encouraged her along the way.

Since 2008, GCSF has saluted industry members with exceptional records of providing this kind of help as its “Champions of Education.” The 2016 honoree is James (Jimmy) Levin, an award-winning commercial photographer who went on to become a leading specialist in media recruitment and staffing. Today he operates Job Search Therapy, a consultancy for job and internship seekers. Levin sits on GCSF’s scholarship selection committee and is a board member and the education committee chairman of APCNY.

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James (Jimmy) Levin accepts the 2016 Champion of Education Award from GCSF president Jerry Mandelbaum and past president David Luke.

Accepting the Champion of Education award, he urged students to develop their potential “with passion and purpose”: always challenging themselves, but always focusing their energies on pursuits they enjoy and believe in.

Levin also reminded them that “attitude and effort” are two things in life that professionals can always control, even when other forces seem to be slipping from their grasp.

Many of the people who attended GCSF’s Spring Fling and scholarship award ceremony will also be on hand for another gala event that celebrates professionalism in graphic communications: the 2016 Franklin Luminaire Awards, to be co-hosted by Printing Industries Alliance and IDEAlliance on October 19 at The Lighthouse at Chelsea Piers. PIAlliance and IDEAlliance’s DEER Foundation donate most of the net proceeds from Franklin Luminaire to GCSF.

GCSF’s next gathering will be its fundraising “Holiday Bash” on December 8 at a location to be announced.

GCSF Corporate Sponsors, 2016

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Gamma Epsilon Tau Fraternity Will Honor Dalton, Milkowski, and Romano at 2016 “Gold Key” Ceremony

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Tim Dalton, Meghan Milkowski, Diane Romano

Gamma Chapter of Gamma Epsilon Tau, the national graphic arts honor society, will present Gamma Gold Key Awards to Tim Dalton, Meghan Milkowski, and Diane Romano at its 2016 Gold Key Awards ceremony in New York City on June 1. The awards honor those who serve as role models through their exceptional records of service to the graphic communications industry.

Tim Dalton is a consultant and an educator who has worked in, visited, or audited more than 700 print shops during the course of his career. He also has a long track record of support for print industry trade associations. Dalton, who began as a press feeder, was an early proponent of bringing the benefits of information technology to graphic communications. This led him to become a specialist in computerizing printing operations in ways that helped printers eliminate bottlenecks and waste.

As an instructor, Dalton taught estimating and quality management at industry schools in Boston and New York for 25 years. He wrote a book on waste reduction that was published by the National Association of Printers and Lithographers (NAPL, now part of Epicomm), and he developed custom software for organizations such as Time4Media, BMG Music Group, and National Publishing Company. Dalton also audits chain-of-custody certification as administered by the principal forestry management organizations.

Dalton’s industry affiliations include Printing Industries of America, the International Association of Printing House Craftsmen, and the Education Foundation of the Graphic Arts, which he serves as treasurer. He also is an advisor to the Women’s Press Collective in Brooklyn and to the Advisory Committee for Technical Education in the Graphic Arts for the New York City public school system.

Meghan Milkowski currently is president of The Hill, an online news source for policy and political coverage. Her 25 years of publishing experience started at Life magazine, where she marked up pasteboards for prepress. Moving to Time magazine, she progressed from advertising production and plant operations to leadership roles in imaging, production, and business management.

Prior to joining The Hill, Milkowski served as vice president of production and circulation at Prometheus Global Media, the owner of Adweek, Billboard, Clio, Film Journal International, and The Hollywood Reporter. Initially hired to managed print contracts, paper purchasing, and distribution of the publications, she also undertook project management for information technology initiatives including the launch of an iPad publishing solution.

In 2015, Milkowski was the recipient of a Luminaire Award from IDEAlliance and Printing Industries Alliance. The award recognizes media production leaders for their positive influence, creative excellence, and personal dedication to the graphic communications industry.

Diane Romano is one of the most prominent figures in graphic communications in the New York City metropolitan area. She currently is president and CEO of HudsonYards Studios LLC, a provider of integrated publishing and media solutions. She previously was group managing director of Schawk, Inc.; president of the media and entertainment group of AGT/Seven; and president of Applied Graphics Technologies (AGT).

Romano got her start in the industry as a draftsman in 1967. Two years later, she joined PPI in the art department and rose through the ranks to become its president. In 1988, PPI merged with The Kordet Group to form AGT (later AGT/Seven). Romano became president of AGT in 1995 and was instrumental in a subsequent series of deals that led to her present leadership position at HudsonYards.

She has been renowned throughout her career as a champion of industry causes, particularly in education. Romano is a longtime officer of and fundraiser for the Graphic Communications Scholarship Award and Career Advancement Foundation (GCSF), a volunteer group that has presented more than $500,000 in scholarship grants to metro area students. Her long list of industry tributes includes the Luminaire Award, the Naomi Berber Award, induction into the Printing Impressions Printing Industry Hall of Fame, the Florence B. and Leo H. Joachim Award, the Advertising Production Club’s Advertising Production Person of the Year Award, and induction into Printing Industries of America’s Ben Franklin Honor Society.

Gamma Epsilon Tau is a national, coeducational, collegiate printing fraternity in which students of printing and publishing can meet and interact in a professional and social atmosphere.  It has eight chapters at colleges and universities that offer degree programs in graphic communications.

Gamma Chapter of Gamma Epsilon Tau is located at the Department of Communication Design (COMD) of New York City College of Technology, part of the City University of New York. Gold Key honorees in recent years have included Mark Darlow, Mike Connors, Frank Romano, Bob Sacks, Annette Wolf Bensen, Michael Cunningham, Florence Jackson, Timothy Freeman, and Kathy Sandler.

The 2016 Gold Key Awards dinner will be held on Wednesday, June 1, at Club 101, 101 Park Avenue, New York City. For more information or to purchase tickets, contact Prof. Frank Adae at (718) 260-5833 or by e-mail: fadae@citytech.cuny.edu

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GCSF’s Festive “Holiday Bash” Nets $10K for Graphic Scholarships

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121015.gcsf_holiday_bash.1What’s the best way to raise $10,000 in a few hours for a worthy cause? Throw a party. But the cause needs to be the Graphic Communications Scholarship Foundation (GCSF), and the party needs to have been the well-attended affair that the foundation hosted at the Manhattan headquarters of the Art Directors Club on December 10.

The money collected from admissions and sponsorships, 100% of which goes to fund scholarships, was on top of the $100,000+ in grants that GCSF presented to 31 students at its annual award ceremony earlier this year. The foundation, an all-volunteer 501(c)3 corporation, has been doing this kind of good work on behalf students of graphic communications in the metro area for 13 years.

Along the way, its mission created a focal point for educational giving by other graphics industry groups and clubs throughout the area. Their donations help to fund the various scholarships that GCSF administers and presents, and their members show their support personally by turning out in force for the GCSF “spring fling” and “holiday bash” events that have become highlights of the industry’s social calendar.

GCSF’s principal partners are IDEAlliance, the Advertising Production Club of New York (APC-NYC), the Art Directors Club, The Navigators, and Printing Industries Alliance (PIA). On December 10, nearly 200 of their members gathered in space donated by the Art Directors Club for a celebration of the year’s accomplishments. Also on hand were those who helped GCSF make the bash possible: individual sponsors and representatives of companies that  furnished sponsorship contributions and raffle prizes (see lists below).

But, the evening’s real celebrities were the 12 students who came as GCSF’s special guests. They are among the 131 students to whom GCSF has made $526,000 in scholarship grants since its founding in 2002. Like their predecessors, they are graduates of graphic studies programs at metro area high schools who are pursuing academic degrees at leading colleges and universities where the discipline is taught. They earned their stipends by submitting academic records and creative portfolios for evaluation by GCSF.

121015.gcsf_holiday_bash.2Natalie Alcide, a recipient of multiple GCSF scholarship grants, with David Luke, a past president of the foundation

One of them was Natalie Alcide, who delivered a short keynote thanking GCSF and its supporters. Now a junior at New York City College of Technology (City Tech), she is in her fifth year of receiving scholarship grants from the foundation. If she enters a graduate-level graphic studies program, she can go on receiving them for a total of eight years.

Alcide’s career ambition is to win an art director’s spot at an advertising agency. She said that as helpful toward that goal as the scholarship funding has been the experience of learning from industry professionals through internship and mentoring opportunities provided by GCSF.

Watch this blog for further news of GCSF activities, including its 2016 scholarship awards ceremony when the details of the event are announced. In the meantime, please consider spreading holiday cheer and helping graphics education by purchasing holiday cards and posters created by student recipients of GCSF scholarships.

121015.gcsf_holiday_bash.3GCSF officers, trustees, and scholarship recipients, back row, from left: John Aaron, David Luke, Jerry Mandelbaum, Diane Romano, Natalie Alcide (recipient), David Garcia, Mark Darlow. Front row: Jack Kott, Ellen Hurwitch, Richard Krasner, Jessie Ann Murphy (trustee and recipient), Nick Patrissi, Valerie Buonaiuto (recipient).

The GCSF holiday bash sponsors included Blanchard Systems; Buy-Rite Robbinsville; Candid Litho/ Candid Worldwide; Canon; DALIM Software; Thomas Saggiomo, dg3; Hearst Magazines; HudsonYards; Konica Minolta Business Solutions; LB Graph-X & Printing; Mark Darlow, Graphic Art Supply; Robert S. Rosenbaum; RR Donnelley; Unimac Graphics; Valerie Merone, Victoria’s Secret; and Xerox.

The raffle gift donors were Canon; Pantone; Adobe; DALIM, Bricco Ristorante Italiano, Christine Aaron, Showtime, RedTie, LB Graph-X, and Highroad Press.

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Students Join the Party at 2015 Franklin Luminaire Event

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100515.franklin_luminaireThis happy group consists of trustees, students, and supporters of the Graphic Communications Scholarship Foundation (GCSF) enjoying the festivities at the 2015 Franklin Luminaire Awards event at Chelsea Piers 0n October 1. The generosity of sponsors enables students to attend the gala affair free of charge so that they can network with potential employers. Money raised at the event helps GCSF to provide much-needed financial support for New York City metro area students pursuing careers in graphic communications. For a complete description of the evening and its honorees, please see our report at WhatTheyThink.

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Call for Panelists: UV LED 2015

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Are you planning to attend the UV LED 2015 conference in Troy, NY, October 28-29? WhatTheyThink, the event’s media partner, is looking for attendees who would like to take part in a panel discussion of the state of UV LED technology and its applications.

Printers with UV production experience are welcome, as are specifiers and buyers of UV printing. You don’t need experience with LED (light emitting diode) curing—just a wish to learn more about it and a willingness to talk about where UV LED printing might fit into your future plans.

Interested? Contact Patrick Henry, WhatTheyThink’s editor for labels and packaging, at patrick.henry@whattheythink.com, or call him at (917) 647-0590. For more infomation about UV LED 2015, visit http://uvled2015.com/

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Museum of Printing to Expand to a New Home; New Building Also Will House Romano Graphics Arts Library

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071715.museum_of_printingThe Museum of Printing, formerly based in North Andover, MA, has announced that it has secured a new site and will soon begin moving its contents there. After 13 years at its current location the museum is moving to Haverhill, MA, along Route 495, north of Boston in the Merrimack Valley.

The new building better suits the museum’s evolving mission of education, preservation, and exhibition of graphics arts materials and equipment. The new facility is also on a single floor and is fully handicapped accessible, with dedicated areas for workshops and lectures. The Museum will also expand its role of hosting educational events

“The relocated facility will house a world-class printing and graphic arts library and museum,” said Frank Romano, president. “There will be more dedicated space for exhibits, events, and workshops, plus stores for letterpress and related equipment. It will also offer more interactive exhibits.”

Two Libraries in One

A unique feature of the museum will be that it will house two libraries. One, for general reference, includes typographic books, type specimen books, and specialty publications. The second will be the Romano Graphics Arts Library for scholars and researchers. This collection consists of over 5,000 books, many rare, plus extensive graphic arts ephemera. Part of the Museum’s collections includes the original type drawings used to create US Linotype fonts.

“The Museum of Printing has existed for 37 years with no endowment. A passionate group of members and volunteers has made this possible,” said Kim Packard, founder and executive director. “Expanded exhibit space will make the Museum/Library the largest printing and graphics arts museum in the world and the only one with a collection of phototypesetting machines and documentation.”

The museum will remain open at its current location in North Andover throughout the summer and fall of 2015. The new facility will open in the early summer of 2016. Currently on exhibit is the Lance Hidy retrospective, the Anna Hogan wood cuts, and a collection of Mark Fowler prints. A major fundraising program will be inaugurated to upgrade the new facility and tailor it to the Museum’s needs.

About the Museum

The Museum of Printing preserves the past of printing for future generations to understand the impact of printing on today’s world. Showcasing a large collection of letterpress tools and presses, the museum is also the proud home to the only collection of historic phototypesetting systems in the world. The 25,000-sq.-ft. museum is also home to one of the largest collections of print-related books, ephemera, and typeface art.

The museum contains two 90′ galleries, a large lobby, a library, and access to the library’s four floors of archival stacks, making it an ideal educational field-trip destination for local school systems. For more information, visit www.museumofprinting.org.

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