With classes and extracurriculars filling up our schedules as college students, it’s sometimes hard to go out of our way to visit a gallery or go to a museum, especially when we have projects and assignments bearing down on us. In these last few hectic weeks before finals it’s especially difficult to find time to leave campus to do these kinds of activities.

In my Advanced Typography class, we were offered the opportunity to utilize The Workshop, a letterpress shop in downtown Scranton, to create our zines. I had never been before and I was interested to see what it would be like. I’d never done letterpress work but I had seen the work of others and I loved the stencil-like look of the letters and the way you could fit the letters together to form words in any position you wanted to.

Upon entering the letterpress studio, I was amazed. There were shelves and shelves of little blocks of letters and images, tables designated to the presses themselves and tons of ink and paper to choose from. I was overwhelmed by the choices I could make and immediately set to work in completing my zine. I created titles for each page as well as a Beatles’ lyric (“you may say I’m a dreamer”). I loved the slow yet satisfying process and the way the ink looked smooth and clean on the paper. I really enjoyed the fact that we were able to do such hands-on work in one of my classes and experience a different form of design.

If you can’t go far to experience art, see if there is something close by you can be a part of, get your hands messy, go out and paint, or look on the bulletin boards in the art building to see how you can get more involved in hands-on work or activities offered by the school. Whatever you do, never stop creating!