Maddy Dishaw Showcases Senior Graphic Design Work at Briar Cliff
By Eli Meschko
Media & Communications Coordinator
The Clausen Art Gallery was filled with friends, classmates, and family as Maddy Dishaw, a 2025 graduate, presented her senior graphic design exhibition on May 1, 2025.
Rich Yates, chair of the Media Communications Department and Dishaw’s professor, opened the event with a few words.
“This show is the result of years of hard work, creative growth, and a lot of hours spent designing and experimenting,” Yates said.
The centerpiece of the show was Dishaw’s senior thesis project, Heirloom, which combined design with a personal topic. For Dishaw, that meant focusing on her family. After moving away from home for college, she found herself missing the connection with her extended family. Food, she said, was a big part of how her family stays close, so she designed a way to share that through recipes and print materials.
“I wanted to create something that brought family together outside of just texting or using social media,” Dishaw said.
Her project included recipe cards for dishes like Polish pickle soup, rhubarb crumble, and sour cream potatoes—each with its own backstory. There were also mock-ups for packaging, cookbooks, and thank-you notes, with the idea of mailing them to family members.
Dishaw credited the Dorothy Collins Senior Art Scholarship and The Scan Group, a Wisconsin-based company where her dad works, for helping her get the materials she needed to print and display everything at a professional level.
The exhibit also included work from her other classes. One was a how-to infographic on building a campfire, inspired by family camping trips. Another was a redesign of a program for a design education summit, where she worked with only the event’s raw text to build a full layout and posted.
Her final project was a frozen custard brand concept, which she based on her love for Wisconsin custard shops. She created mockup ads of different flavor ideas, a mockup design for a custard container, and a logo for “The Scoop,” her custard brand.
Before wrapping up, she thanked her professors, her parents, and The Scan Group for their help throughout the process.
“This whole show is really just a mix of the things I care about,” Dishaw said. “It’s personal, and I hope that comes through.”