Life imitates art in design class

<p>For the past 15 years, students taking the Design Rhetoric (GRA 345) course in the College of Design have been designing new entrance monuments for the town of Paradise Valley at the end of each semester. Until this year, it&#39;s been a hypothetical exercise in proposal development, combining strategic writing skills and graphic design, complete with timetables, budgets and a mock-up of a design for the markers.</p><separator></separator><p>Course instructor Jim Veihdeffer happened to notice a news brief in February from the town soliciting proposals for a series of new entrance markers that would become the new town standard. The old markers are about 20 years old and need to be replaced.</p><separator></separator><p>“As it happened, the Design Rhetoric class has been using this very project as a class assignment for more than 15 years,” Veihdeffer says. “When I learned that the town was putting out a request for proposals, I called the town engineering manager in charge of the project and explained what we were doing.”</p><separator></separator><p>Veihdeffer says that he found out April 13 that the ASU team had been selected.</p>