Smiles lined people’s faces as they thought of all the creative ideas they would be able to explore with this new technology. The Fifth Channel Design Workshop was an event to test out the Fifth Channel printer, a new piece of equipment for Winona State University’s design department. Wednesday, April 4, 2025, the design program hosted this event as a part of their “Creative Design Workshop” series.
This series is, “put on by lab assistants. And it is a part of fulfilling credits to be a lab assistant, an internship program. So, in order to show that we’ve learned all these things is to teach other people how to do it, so it’s kind of just completing that learning cycle for us,” Meghan Cooper, a design student and lab assistant, said. This series allows the design department to reach out to the greater campus community.
The event was preluded with an instructional presentation about the printer itself. Students were ecstatic to try out this technology. The printer is another way to make even more creative design choices, such adding surface touches. The fifth design printer offers more than the typical magenta, cyan, yellow and black, it offers gold, silver and clear as well. This allows works and prints to be even more visually interesting.
These kinds of events are important for the design program because they bring the spotlight to their activities. Students are able to see “how simple it can be to do things yourself in this way,” Cooper said. Students can learn how the machine works and what the design department and students can do. Even if someone thinks they can’t do design, these simple demonstrations might show people a creative side within themselves that they never even knew existed.
Professor Danilo Bojić is also the Creative Labs General Manager at Winona State and the Design Internship Coordinator, and he is an integral part as to why this event was able to happen. This printing workshop is meant as a creative outreach program to the larger Winona State campus community. This event is meant to “[allow students] to experience different creative endeavors right here on campus. It also raises awareness of the WSU Design Program and WSU Creative Labs and celebrates the success of our design students,” said Bojić.
One of the major highlights of this kind of art workshop event is that it brings awareness to the art and design program at Winona State. An event like this one allows for students who may not know much about design programs, or art at all, to see different creative practices that are available on campus. At Winona State design students put in a lot of effort on various projects, but it is often not known that it is design students who are doing it.
Events like this, “raise awareness regarding the WSU Design Program and the creative impression our design major has on campus that go unnoticed, and sometimes not appreciated, such as developing visual identity to the University Theme, Presidential Holiday card, rebranding for many departments on campus, CICEL project support (especially during the legislature visits), Dancescape branding, and many, many more. Works by design students are visible everywhere, but the awareness is low,” said Bojić.
These events that are put together to help support design students are done by students for students in a way that allows people to explore their creativity. On Tuesday April 29 there will be an opening event for The Human Condition: Senior Design Exhibition 2025 where the graduating cohort will be celebrating their works. More information regarding this event’s time and location can be found on the Winona State University Events Calender.
