How Florida Atlantic University Used a Trading Card Photo Booth at Their Graphic Design Pop Up
Florida Atlantic University used a trading card photo booth to put student designed overlays on printed cards at the GRA2151 Graphic Design Pop Up on September 15 in Fort Lauderdale. About 20 students and guests stepped in front of the camera and walked away holding a card framed by artwork the class made themselves.
Venue | Metro Lab |
City | Fort Lauderdale, FL |
Guest Count | About 20 |
Service | Trading Card Photo Booth with student designed overlays |
What did FAU want out of the GRA2151 Graphic Design Pop Up?
GRA2151 is Intro to Illustration Software at Florida Atlantic University. Students in the course learn the basic principles of design and how to build work in Adobe software, and the pop up gave that work a real audience.
FAU booked the booth to support those academic goals. The students designed the overlays themselves, so our job was to turn their files into finished cards people could hold, trade, and keep.
How did we match a trading card photo booth to a student designed graphic design pop up?
We brought our trading card photo booth and let the class supply every design. More than a dozen different looks came off the printer that day. One student built a vintage postcard that reads Wish You Were Here. Another made a magazine cover with a stats box on the back. Others went with a Somewhere in Las Olas card, a bold geometric Fort Lauderdale pattern, and the course card itself with GRA2151 set in huge white type.
Each card printed with the guest's photo on one side and the student's artwork on the other, then went into a clear magnetic case with a GRA2151 tab on top. That case turns a print into something that looks like a real collectible.
We provided all the card templates up front, with the photo window, the trim line, and both sides marked, and the students built their designs on top of them. That's the decision any instructor or planner can copy. A trading card has a fixed spot for the photo, so art that ignores it gets cropped or covers someone's face. With the template in hand, students spend their time on the design instead of resizing it the night before.
How did a photo booth turn a design lesson into a graded assignment?
This pop up was a class assignment, and students were graded on the cards they built. In a regular class, design principles and Adobe tools stay on a screen. Here the students took the lesson, applied it to a real use case, and walked away with a finished product made for themselves.
That output is what makes the lesson stick. Each card ties what they learned to a fun memory of building their own custom trading card, and the best part was watching students see their designs come to life in print for the first time.
By the end, the class was standing in a circle holding their cards out side by side to compare.
What's our takeaway from FAU's event?
Photo booths fit classroom events and office team building just as well as conferences. Trading cards have a lot of range, and our team can set them up as an interactive activity for almost any group. This could have easily been a sales workshop where teams build their trading cards together, or an Olympics themed event where our AI integration asks guests a few questions about themselves and creates a card template personalized to each person. For brands and event organizers, that's a way to use trading cards to get people at live events engaged and taking part.
Planning a campus event in South Florida?
Esteem Photo Booth Rentals brings custom booths to class showcases, department events, and student activations through our corporate and campus event photo booths. Tell us about your next event and the date you're looking at, and if someone else on your team handles events, feel free to send this their way.
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