Reading helps to pass the time

It may be the most private place you’ll visit in the course of a busy day.

Scenically, it’s dull. Grey enamel partition walls. You don’t expect much of a decorator statement in a campus toilet cubicle.

But wait. What’s that paper taped to the inside of the door, with its cheery splashes of yellow, green and purple ink, with all sorts of perky tips clamoring to catch your eye?

It’s Installations, a communications tool that has led many a student to leave the bathroom flush with new plans to join a club, try a sport or get in on a party.

As first published by the campus recreation department, Installations was a great idea, but was produced as a straightforward information sheet. It was just sort of gray. Like the stall walls.

Then Nicole Knight was turned loose on it.

“It wasn’t in color. It wasn’t graphic. It had no focus,” the Virginia Wesleyan senior said. “Now people tell me they really like it.

“Two girls were watching while I did the page layout for the latest issue in the Clarke Hall computer lab. They said, ‘Wow! You do that? We read it all the time!’ I thanked them. I enjoy knowing it gets noticed.”

Installations crackles with mini-ads for dramas and dance parties, basketball games and weightlifting tournaments. It spills a rainbow of balloons, party streamers, fireworks, dancers and holiday themes across the page with a graphically bold “Ta-da!”

Knight brings a special style to all her work as campus recreation coordinator of marketing and promotions, creating flyers, posters and bulletin boards in addition to Installations. With a double major in art and communications, she is comfortable both with writing ads and designing layouts.

“Nicole is exuberant about communications,” said Cindy Smith, director of campus recreation. “In the college work study program, we try to find out where students’ passions are and put them there. Nicole was a natural. She brings a lot of enthusiasm to everything she does.”

It’s a quality that carries through to her academic performance.

“She may be in the stall, but she’s not off the wall,” said Dr. Bill Ruehlmann, professor of journalism and Knight’s adviser.

“Nicole is a Dean’s List student with a cumulative average at 3.7 and counting,” Ruehlmann said. “She’s a very capable young woman.”

Knight also brings real world experience in graphics to her post. As a freshman, she did an externship at Port Folio magazine, shadowing the professionals who create ads for the regional weekly publication.

“I learned a lot from Giorgio Valentini, who was Port Folio’s graphic designer,” she said. Valentini graduated from Virginia Wesleyan in 1998, and is now president of his own company, Genesis Graphic Design.

“I could tell Nicole was legitimately interested in everything I could tell her about graphics,” Valentini said. “She’ll go out there with a good understanding of how the real world works.”

To better manage the production of Installations, Knight sought and got installations@vwc.edu – an e-mail address for submission of information about upcoming events.

From the piles of plain vanilla email notices she receives, Knight sets to work in Microsoft Publisher software. She edits overly long copy, jazzes it up with slogans and headlines, checks spelling and gets volunteer help with proofreading. Then she waltzes out a sprightly cast of graphic characters, illustrations and icons, dressing them in splashes of color. Long, painstaking hours go into the design, but they are hours Knight does not begrudge. She loves what she’s able to do with art.

“You can create something that’s completely yours,” she said. “You thought of it, you developed it, you manipulated it.

“When it’s done, you’re able to look at what is actually a piece of yourself for everyone to see.”

Lately, Knight has been hard at work on the recreation scrapbook that goes on display each VWC Day, when high school seniors visit for a first-hand experience of the campus. They’ll find the scrapbook as full of photos, drawings, quotes, team sports and other recreational adventures as its artful editor can make it.

“Incoming freshman want to know ‘What’s going on here?’ The answer is that there’s a lot to choose from,” she said. “There are so many ways to meet new people, make friends, take on challenges and get to know more about yourself.”

With her complimentary skills in both words and pictures, Knight is considering a career in advertising when she graduates this May.

Who knows? One day, a story may appear in VWC’s alumni news about a multimillion-dollar Super Bowl TV commercial designed and produced by an ad agency’s up-and-coming creative director named Nicole Knight.

And just think. Friends can say, “We were privy to her talents from the start.”