It is not often that high school students get an opportunity to design something that has an impact on their community. However, Sycamore High School students received this opportunity when the Blue Ash Police Department proposed a contest for designing cop car logos.

   Blue Ash Police collaborated with Sycamore School’s design students to create new designs for their police cruiser. And out of about 20 students, Abi Patel’s design was selected.

   His design prints the words “Blue Ash” in white with the police badge near the top windows and “Police” in large, dark grey letters underneath on a black SUV. Finally, the design features one blue stripe underneath, creating a very minimalistic, simple, and clean look. Abi Patel, 12, said, “I decided to go with something bold and more modern.”

   Patel also won a $500 scholarship to be used for college. Abi Patel is considering Xavier and the University of Cincinnati as possible schools but isn’t planning on looking into any design programs unless he needs to.

   The most important lesson that students learned from this was the process of how design programs will work in the future outside of Sycamore Schools. Patel described his experience working with the Police Department as “easy and simple…they would tell me the changes they wanted me to make and I would just go back and forth, quickly make the changes, and send it over to them.” The process started all the way back in the fall of 2019 and was a long time coming. The students of Graphic Design 1 first tried the designs as a homework assignment. Then the results were narrowed down, eventually to Abi’s.  

   The process was long and arduous. Ms. Elise Williams, the design teacher, said “Abi spent the winter of 2019 and spring of 2020 submitting numerous different renditions”. Patel collaborated with Chief Scott Noel and other officers, sending back and forth designs and edits. Chief Noel told Fox19 news that the process was a lot of “paring down” and in the end, they “put [the designs] out on the table in the briefing room” for officers to decide on.

   All of the students ended up learning the trial and error way of getting designs approved in the “real world”. They had to communicate with people outside of school, collaborate with teachers and students, and spend time doing research to come up with a good idea. This goes to show that so much work goes into something as seemingly simple as a cop car design.

   “It has been a wonderful life experience for Abi and my other students who have watched it unfold,” Ms.Williams said.