This is the second year Lincoln High School’s Graphic Arts class has had the opportunity to collaborate with the Free Write program at Outside In, a local homeless youth services provider in downtown Portland.

Outside In’s Free Write group gives youth the opportunity to express themselves creatively through writing. Several participants courageously and graciously shared their moving stories and beautiful poems with our graphics class. They gave us writings that were powerful, passionate, and vulnerable, full of metaphor, symbolism, and visual imagery.

The task of the Graphic Arts class was to take these amazing writings and translate them into visual illustrations. The process began with students reading through all the pieces of writing, then choosing one to illustrate. Students brainstormed ideas and sketched thumbnails that lead to the creation of rough mockups. These mockups were shared back with the writers for their feedback.

This feedback process allowed a dialogue between writers and designers which gave our students deeper insight and direction for taking their designs to the next level. Once the final illustrations were complete the work was shared back with the Free Write authors who chose which works would be paired with their writing. (At the end of this book you can see all the illustrations created by the graphics students.)

The pairing of writing and image is possibly as old as writing itself. This powerful collaboration has stood the test of time because it enhances both modes, often creating relationships that are greater than the sum of their parts. The same is true of people, when we open dialogues with those who have different life-experiences than our own. The results can bridge the divides between artforms, as well as communities.


- Jerod Schmidt
Graphic Arts Teacher, Lincoln High School