The Graphics Technology Club, which is an organization of students who work with industry in conjunction with faculty members, is a registered student organization that allows members to learn the processes and theories related to graphics production.

The group meets at 4 p.m. every Thursday in Klehm Hall room 1125, where a one-hour workshop is held for its members.

Gabriel Grant, the club’s adviser and technology instructor, said last week the organization worked on specialty screen-printing and members made T-shirts using different inks.

The T-shirts had words with UV activated ink in them that would cause the lettering on the shirts to become a darker, more solid color if hit by sunlight. Some of the other letters on the shirt were made with foil from a gold metallic film.

Grant said some other projects technology club has worked on are learning how to capture high quality video with drones for promotional purposes, 3-D printing, interactive 3-D photography and high dynamic range photography.

The weekly workshops are planned in the beginning of each semester. Grant picks 20 possible topics for workshops and the members of the technology club vote on what they want to do.

“We try to make it as democratic and as relevant to the students as possible,” Grant said.

Grant is a member of an organization called the Graphic Communication Education Association that has conferences throughout the year where teachers share can share ideas with each other. It was through these conferences that he was able to come up with some of this year’s workshops.

Other workshops have been based off of students’ suggestions and research.

Grant said members of the club have had many different majors and minors including advertising, print and textile design, business and management.

The Graphics Technology Club was created in 2001 and first operated under the name Technical Association of Graphic Arts. Jean Dilworth, who retired in 2009 and Phil Age, who died of a heart attack in 2007, founded the RSO.

Grant joined the organization in 2004 during his sophomore year of college at Eastern and has been a part of the Graphics Technology Club for 12 years.

He said the group was initially more of a business operation where students designed T-shirts and sold them, however the club has evolved over the years to be purely educational and they no longer sell their products.

“Now we mainly just hold workshops and teach students about graphic technology,” Grant said. “This is good because students get a chance to come in every week with a new topic, and there’s always variety.”

While Grant does present some of the same concepts in the organization that he has taught in his classes, the club offers the opportunity to learn about graphics technology to any student.

Students who have already taken Grant’s class or those who are already familiar with the content of the workshop can use their knowledge to assist members who have not been involved with that aspect of graphics technology before.

“The club is open to anyone who would like to come,” Grant said.

Abbey Whittington can be reached at 581-2812 or [email protected]