Scheel wins 2020 Iowa State Fair T-Shirt Contest

ANKENY — If you’ve attended a Nodaway Valley athletic event in the past few years you may have noticed that the school’s primary logo has changed slightly, and 2017 graduate Rachel Scheel was behind that.

Scheel has taken her love for graphic design to new levels since then. Most recently, she entered an 2020 Iowa State Fair T-Shirt Contest put on by the Iowa State Fair Blue Ribbon Foundation.

Scheel has an associate’s degree from DMACC. Since then, she’s completed an internship and logged eight months working for a company from home. Then, she took a position at Wee’s Tees and Athletic Apparel in Ankeny where she has seen firsthand how screen printing happens.

Scheel runs her own department at the shop. She designs the art that goes on the apparel the shop turns out but also prints the film that is used to make the shirt. Clients they work with range from schools to restaurants and other businesses.

Scheel said the process involves receiving an invoice that has a client’s wishes on it that helps them to design that piece of apparel. Sometimes Scheel will give the client a couple of options to choose from and the client can then approve that draft or send back a few changes.

Once the final draft is ready, Scheel makes the films that are used to burn screens. Shirts are made in house.

“They have a six-headed press downstairs so they get going pretty fast when an order comes in,” Scheel said.

Scheel’s Iowa State Fair design has four panels on it, featuring from left to right the ferris wheel, the sky glider, a corn dog and farm animals.

“I really wanted to design something that captured all of the fair and not just one specific part, so that’s why I did the panels. For the color, I just looked up some different swatches online and found a color palette I really liked,” Scheel explained. “I love adding distressed features to a lot of my designs at work so I found a distressing image that looked like wood, which I thought was a nice rustic feel that shows how the fair has gone back so many years and it shows how everybody kind of feels about the fair.”

Scheel’s design received over 4,400 positive reactions on Facebook. The second place winner had 1,600 reactions.

The Iowa State Fair has not announced whether there will be a 2020 fair so far. The Iowa State Fair Blue Ribbon Foundation, which sponsored the t-shirt contest, said that because there was such positive reaction to all six entries, they are making all the shirts available for purchase online on the foundation’s website.

“I don’t blame them if they do end up cancelling the fair or if they have to get rid of certain parts of the fair to make it safe for everyone, but I love the fair and it would be really sad to go a year without it,” Scheel said.

Scheel is the daughter of Jeff and Beth Scheel of rural Casey.