Bethany Moore
Skills USA
I participated in the state competition for North Carolina’s SkillsUSA between 2022 and 2023
Skills USA 2022
In the spring of 2022, my first participation in Skills USA was a pin design contest.My initial concept included the idea of featuring the word ‘Skills-USA’ onto a license plate design. Our state license plate is easily recognizable to North Carolinians, and I thought it would be a creative design to represent North Carolina.
When designing the pin, I researched the North Carolina License plate design to refresh my memory on how it looked and simplified it in Illustrator. I also proceeded to narrow down the color palette for the contest because the rules only allowed four colors in the design to be qualified. For my presentation, I made a trifold board that included my design process, a pin mock-up, and my resume for the judges.
Skills USA 2023
A year later, I participated again in Skills USA except I was competing in photography instead. Prior to entering this contest, I learned that I was the first student at Rowan-Cabarrus Community College to participate in this category at SkillsUSA.
During the competition, I photographed the Greensboro Coliseum Complex, edited my photographs, drafted contact sheets in Photoshop, and I photographed portrait images with studio lighting. In preparation for the judges' critique, I selected two photographs that I thought fulfilled the prerequisites that include color correction and identifying potential errors within my photographs. This was also in addition to performing an interview and a fifty-question written test. I was later announced as the second-place winner during the award ceremony.
