Meet Our Student of the Month: Audrey Walch
April 8, 2026 | Posted in: PGSF Blogs
Each month, WhatTheyTh!nk, in partnership with PGSF (becoming The Foundation for Graphic Communication Education), profiles a promising student in a graphic communications or related program. The goal is to raise awareness of graphic communications programs, as well as help students like Audrey Walch get a “leg up” on entering the industry after graduation.
This month’s Student of the Month is PGSF Scholarship Recipient Audrey Walch, a third-year student at CalPoly majoring in Graphic Communication and minoring in Packaging. Associate Professor Dina Vees, on her nomination form, said of Audrey, “Audrey exemplifies tenacity in every challenge, demonstrating a persistent drive to achieve excellence. She is highly organized in her work, consistently managing time and responsibilities with precision.”
Like a lot of our Students of the Month, Audrey’s interest in graphic communication came out of her creative nature. “I’ve always been kind of creative, but I’m not particularly a studio arts person,” she said. “Trying to design things specifically for an application or something that has a purpose was always something that drew me.”
One of her first design projects was competing in—and winning—a wrapping paper design contest held by Premier Press. The experience was an education in and of itself. “That was my first foray into designing something with specifications,” she said. “Since it was my freshman year, when I saw that one of the specifications was ‘four-color’—which I now know means CMYK—I thought it literally meant I could only use four colors. It actually worked out because it looked very cohesive in the end.”
That led to an interest in packaging. “I looked into what Premier Press did, and they do a lot of packaging,” she said. “I was, like, whoa that stuff is so cool, designing for the way that they engineer their packaging, and that led me down a rabbit hole of packaging and packaging design. I’ve taken some packaging classes and I’m in some right now. It’s really interesting and I’m having a lot of fun with it.”
Read the Full Artcle about Audrey Walch Here
Watch Audrey’s interview with WhatTheyTh!nk Here
Learn more about The FGCE Here
