Joseph Stanziani
Staff Writer
The Layout and Media Experts club, also known as the LAME club, is a graphic design club at Florida Southern College. Sophia Dial, a graphic design major with a minor in photography and marketing, started the club with the mission of filling in the gaps that she, and other graphic design students, saw in the community on campus.
“I saw a lack of community in our graphic design department,” Dial said,
“and not only that, but it was clear to professors that the more a group of students worked together, the more successful they ended up being. But, that wasn’t being fostered and there was no group to initiate that. So that’s why I ended up starting LAME Club.”
The club itself offers a multitude of activities and assistance to help students with different elements of graphic design, whether it be personal, professional or school-work related.
The club meets every other week for their club meetings, at which they help members with project and portfolio work.
“From the graphic design department specifically, we offer portfolio building of critiques on work that you’re working on for your class, which means that we can basically give you input on assignments that you’re about to turn-in, which ends up being helpful for things like rates and stuff,” Dial said.
It is not required that members of the club be a graphic design major or minor, as the club is open for all to join. To become a member, all that is necessary is attendance to meetings and participation within the club.
“A lot of our people are graphic design majors, but we also have marketing people, business people, it’s mainly just people who want to know more about how to create visual elements, basically,” Dial said.
The club also helps students from outside the graphic design departments. From business to marketing students, the club helps them with visual aid for whatever project or endeavor they are working on.
It does not matter whether a student has prior experience with graphic design or not, as the members within the club will assist in helping students achieve their goals.
The club itself is full of talented and driven individuals who work hard to not only make and help student art, but also give back to the community and the school.
“Everybody that’s in it is really passionate,” Dial said.
The club goes out of its way to produce work at different art markets. Profits earned go back into the club and into the Graphic Design Department. Those who purchase art from the LAME club, are directly giving back to the department that helped inspire these students and future graphic design students to be creative.
Dial also shared some exciting details about future projects and the evolution of the LAME club, in which she hopes to turn into a small business on campus.
“I’m in cahoots with the Business Department to get LAME club established as an actual small business,” Dial said.
Similar to Morning Grind, a student-led coffee cart located within Becker Business Building, Dial’s vision is for the LAME club to become a print shop for clubs on campus to use.
“So for ACE and other school clubs that are looking for merchandise and stuff like that, we would be able to not only design that [merchandise] for them, but fully print the shirts and posters and everything like that as well.”
For people looking to visit the LAME club, they can be found at every First Friday event in downtown Lakeland.
