Blessed Sacrament gets a new look for Fall Festival

Friday, May. 09, 2014

SANDY — Blessed Sacrament Parish will celebrate its 27th Fall Festival with a new look. Michelle Tessier, a Blessed Sacrament parishioner who recently moved to Utah from California and is a freelance illustrator/animator, created the winning logo following a parish contest.

The parish will begin its three-day Fall Festival on Aug. 22 with a 5K walk/run, entertainment, carnival rides and refreshments. The festival will run through the weekend with continuing live entertainment, a three-on-three basketball tournament, inside games for the kids, and cooking contests, including a margarita contest and a kids’ cooking contest. There also will be a pinewood derby contest, in which participants will make their own pinewood derby cars. The Living Planet Aquarium will present an educational segment. 

“This is a fun family weekend for parish families and their neighbors,” said Dave Ruffini, festival chairman. 

To create the new festival look, the parish conducted a contest so they could get the word out early about the upcoming festival, Ruffini said. “We wanted to get Blessed Sacrament School kids and the religious education kids involved so the festival would be in their minds.” 

“We also want to print the new logo on T-shirts as part of our festival advertising and fundraising,” said Jennifer Rodriguez, contest chairwoman. “The contest was open to Blessed Sacrament School students, religious education students and Blessed Sacrament parishioners.” 

Marcy Mullholand, Blessed Sacrament art teacher, used the logo contest as an opportunity to teach the students about advertising and what goes into creating a logo for a company, church or organization. She taught this to her first, third, fourth and fifth grade classes and promoted the idea to her other art students and they worked on it at home.

“Jennifer Rodriguez asked if I would promote the idea to my students and it worked out well for us,” said Mullholand. “Each student created their own design; it wasn’t mandatory, but it was something they could work on in class. We talked about the theme and what the fall festival was about in terms of symbols; what the festival means to them.” 

Following a brainstorming session about what images came to the students’ minds, they learned why advertisers design logos, and what does or does not go into creating a logo, said Mullholand.

“We talked about what logos do for companies or brands, are the designs simple or complex, do they have word and text or should they have word and text and basically what makes a good, strong logo?” said Mullholand. “We discussed not doing a whole scene, but compressing their logos into one or two strong images, being graphic in design and color choices, and if they did use text to be sure that it was clear so people would be able to read it.” 

More went into the project than just asking the students to draw a logo, said Mullholand. “The kids did produce a couple of really good, strong pieces, and they really liked doing the project. The incentive for getting their logo on the festival T-shirt worked well.”