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Home > Archive > Mar 6, 2008

Just the Man for the Job
By Cami Cox
Staff Writer
Chris Jevsevar, 17, has two loves at Snow Canyon High School – football and graphics.
“(Graphic arts) is my favorite thing to do in school. That's what I spend the majority of my time here at the school actually doing,” Chris said.
When he's not studying or out on the football field, Chris – a senior and a high honor student – can most often be found in the graphics room at Snow Canyon. And though he's still a teenager, Chris is already designing like a professional.
“He appreciates a lot of things that others might not see as far as graphic elements,” Bryan Vandenberghe, SCHS graphics teacher, said. “He's very responsible and possesses a lot of wisdom for his age, I'd say; and (he's) talented, very talented.”
With a keen eye for design and a skilled mind for turning ideas into realities, Chris has become a pro around the graphics room. He has been taking graphics classes since his sophomore year at Snow Canyon and is now part of the advanced class. Over the past three years, he has honed his skills in just about every area of graphic art – from print layout to vinyl sticker making and screen printing.
Because he's worked so diligently and has become so good at what he does, Chris was entrusted with a very big assignment by the faculty and staff at his school this year.
“They came to me and asked me if I knew someone that could handle it, and he was the first one that came to mind,” Vandenberghe said.
Snow Canyon High School was facing the task of compiling materials to be submitted to the state for accreditation, and a designer was needed to create a booklet and posters for the project. Who better to tackle the task than a football player/graphic designer?
“Honestly, I felt pretty high up. I felt like it was a big honor,” Chris said.
Chris put ideas together for the accreditation booklet and accompanying posters, which would hang around the school, bearing Snow Canyon's mission statement.
He created a master layout for the booklet, designing and preparing it for printing, and he also got creative with the Snow Canyon Warrior theme when it came to design, using such things as arrows for bulleted passages within the text.
“He singlehandedly produced a lot of the graphic elements,” Vandenberghe said.
Just as he would for a professional design job, Chris created and submitted various initial design ideas for his project, making needed changes to accommodate his “clients” before a final scheme was decided upon.
“They gave me kind of a vague outline of what they wanted, and basically we went through all the steps and 20 or 30 drafts; and then, finally, we found something that we all liked,” Chris said.
When the project was completed to the satisfaction of the powers that be at Snow Canyon, the booklet and posters were submitted to the state for approval and printing. The posters Chris designed now hang in the classrooms of the high school and his booklet is in spiral-bound book form.
Though he's had a lot of experience with graphics in the form of classroom assignments, Chris said it was nice to take on a real-world project.
“It felt pretty good that the school put that much faith in me to do it,” he said.
Though he has passion and talent for graphic design, Chris doesn't intend to pursue it vocationally. At the moment, he has his eye on pursuing a medical degree. He has taken many advanced placement classes at Snow Canyon and also several concurrent enrollment courses at Dixie State College, so he'll have most of his general education requirements out of the way when he finishes high school. Chris has been accepted with a scholarship to Westminster College in Salt Lake, and he is also checking out several schools in California.
While graphic design may not be what he intends to do for a living, Chris is enjoying the work and has no intention of letting his skills go to waste. His tentative plan is to work in the graphic design field while he goes to college, utilizing the knowledge he has gained at Snow Canyon.
“It could be the means to an end, basically,” he said.
No matter what Chris ultimately does, he will do well, Vandenberghe said,
“He has the motivation and the personality traits, the character traits to be able to do anything he wants. There's no doubt about it,” he said.
Chris has a 3.99 GPA at Snow Canyon and is a member of the National Honor Society. His parents are are Martha and David Jevsevar, of St. George.

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