DHS student has “talent off the charts”

Published 5:48 pm Wednesday, July 1, 2009

The atmosphere Yea Jee Bae worked in during the advertising design skills competition at the National Leadership and Skills Conference last week was worlds away from the hustle and bustle of a real life ad agency.

“They’re working in total silence,” said Nancy Hallsworth, Bae’s graphic arts teacher at Dalton High School, who accompanied her to the competition in Kansas City, Mo. “A typical ad agency has some noise, some music to foster the creative side. It (the competition) was a very large room with two other competitions going on.”

After almost eight hours of hands-on work and written tests, Bae won third place in the advertising design skills category. A 16-year-old who will be a junior at Dalton High this fall, she vied against 42 other students, all of whom placed first in their state competitions.

“I wasn’t really nervous,” Bae said. “This is something that I really love to do, so it doesn’t seem like work to me at all.”

The conference was sponsored by SkillsUSA, a national nonprofit organization serving teachers and high school and college students who are preparing for careers in trade, technical and skilled service fields. For her strong showing Bae received a bronze medal, art supplies from TroxellMedia and three scholarships, including a $20,000 award to O’More College of Design in Franklin, Tenn.

Bae and Hallsworth were in Kansas City from June 21-26 for the 45th annual conference. There were 108 categories, including cabinetry, car repair, dental hygiene, geospatial technology, job interview, nail care and quiz bowl. Hallsworth said she wasn’t looking forward to missing a week of her summer vacation, but after seeing the quality of students at the competition she quickly changed her mind.

While the national anthem was playing during the opening ceremony, Hallsworth said, “You could’ve heard a pin drop.” Students were required to dress in black pants, a white polo shirt and maroon wool jacket for the competitions. More than 5,400 students from all 50 states, Guam, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and Washington, D.C., participated.

Bae has long had an interest in drawing. Her interest in graphic design, however, started when she was 12 after her older brother introduced her to the computer program Photoshop. Thinking the program was too complicated, Bae didn’t rediscover it until a few years later.

“In middle school, I started working with Photoshop some more with photo manipulations,” she said. “I’d cut one photo out and put it on another. Then when I got to high school, I found out there was a graphic arts class so I decided to sign up for that. It just kind of went from there.”

She put those skills to use at the competition. Her first project was to create a logo and package design for a fictional children’s energy drink called “roc • et” in just under five hours. The instructions? “It should make kids scream in the grocery store until their mom gives in and buys the stuff.”

For the logo, Bae drew a rocket taking off with smoke billowing from the engines. The package design had a skateboarder in the center (which she drew using a wireless drawing pad) with lines emanating from behind him to convey motion. Her tag line was: “Fuel Your Fun.”

The second project was reassembling a Tootsie Pop advertisement by using several computer programs.

Despite placing second in the state in 2008 and first this year in advertising design, Bae didn’t expect to place so high at the national competition. She thought it would make for a good trial run to prepare for next year. Plus, there was an unexpected written test. When Bae’s name was called as the third place winner during the awards ceremony, both Bae and Hallsworth were shocked. But Hallsworth always had a feeling Bae would do well — just not so quickly.

“Something in my gut always told me she was special,” Hallsworth said. “She has talent off the charts. Many of my students do, but this one is pretty special. She’s a gift from above. Her skills, her ability, her attitude. She’s the kind of student that makes your job a joy.”

Bae plans on pursuing a minor in graphic arts in college.

“I enjoy it, but I think it might be something more of freelance on the side,” she said. “It’s a really competitive field, so it would be hard to support myself on it, but I enjoy it and would definitely like to pursue it in some form.”