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Canfield girl’s design is on the button
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Nathalie McClune, a junior at Canfield High School, is in an art class now and has considered pursuing an art degree in college. Nathalie designed this year’s button for First Night Canfield.
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First Night 2011 Button design
By Kristine Gill
CANFIELD
A high school student is responsible for the button design at the annual First Night Canfield event celebrating New Year’s Eve.
Nathalie McClune, a junior at Canfield High School, was chosen as the winner in the button- design contest. Her design will appear on the buttons each attendee wears to the event.
Nathalie is in an art class at school where she found out about the contest, and said she was surprised to hear she had won.
“They said they chose mine because they really liked the bright colors,” she said.
Nathalie said she did a quick doodle of her idea on a piece of scrap paper and scanned her image before redrawing it using Photoshop CS5, photo- editing software by Adobe.
Nathalie was told she had won the contest but was asked to incorporate a more wintry theme into her design.
“The background is the same; I just had to add the gazebo,” she said.
Her design features a purple sky with twinkling bits of falling snow. The gazebo sits in the foreground to the right, and a ribbonlike bar of music issues up into the sky from within.
“I wanted it to be for a pin design, but that can’t have a lot of small details,” she said. “I wanted something that was really bright and would stand out even when it was shrunk down to a pin design.”
Nathalie has attended First Night Canfield in the past.
“It’s fun,” she said. “I haven’t gone recently, but I’m definitely going to go this year.”
Nathalie said she is considering pursuing an art-related degree in college and takes an art class at the high school now.
First Night executive director Suzanne Heino said Nathalie’s design was chosen from about half a dozen.
“This is our 23rd year, and every year we change the button art,” Heino said. “We usually try to get a local artist to design a button.”
The designs of all past buttons can be viewed on the event’s website, www.firstnightcanfield.com.
Canfield First Night will take place at various locations throughout Canfield on Dec. 31. Full listings of times and locations are on the website.