AILY ROJAN DWEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 2021 | STUDENT NEWSPAPER OFT THE UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA SINCE 1912 | VOL. 202, NO. 8 Freshman’s design fights food insecurity The T-shirt brings awareness knew [how essential] a need it was, especially with COVID. We to the anti-Asian racism wanted to do something geared during the pandemic. towards incoming college stu- dents,” Gutierrez said. Gutierrez, a recent design grad- By JENNA PETERSON uate from Syracuse University, Staff Writer founded Fundamentals with her Haley Ho was in middle school friend, Brian De La Cruz, over the when she took her first graph- summer due to the political cli- ic design multimedia course. mate at the time. While attend- Falling in love with the field, she ing Black Lives Matter protests, did not always think it could be she found herself wanting to do an employment path for her. more to help the movement and This changed, however, when decided to start making shirts to Ho, now a freshman majoring in sell at protests in her community. arts, technology and the busi- “[De La Cruz and I] used [the ness of innovation, learned about proceeds] to buy snacks, wa- user experience, or UX, design. ter and PPE for the protesters,” UX design focuses on functional- Guiterrez said. “We realized we ity and user interaction, such as were getting a lot more support how it feels in someone’s hand or than we anticipated, and we had any emotional reaction its design a lot of money, so we were like, could evoke. ‘Okay, what do we do next?’” “I found out … that UX design, Following the success of their in particular, was a field, and it shirts Gutierrez and De La Cruz was a growing one that people decided to create grants for small were actually getting jobs in,” she Black- and brown-owned busi- said. “I felt like it really aligned nesses in their community, before with my interests in human be- deciding to give back to incom- havior, visual art and design.” ing college students through their Over the summer, Ho put her competition. interest in UX design to prac- When Ho saw this opportuni- tice by designing a T-shirt, in- ty, her mind went to an oil paint- spired by a desire to bridge glob- ing sketch she had worked on for al experiences of the pandemic, a high school assignment earlier for a design contest. Ho found in the year. out about the contest from the “I didn’t get to finish the oil Instagram stories of other stu- painting because my school shut dents she met during the Iovine down just as [we got the assign- and Young Academy’s interview ment] and I felt kind of unsatis- weekend. The contest, hosted fied.,” Ho said. “I felt like I could by Fundamentals, a communi- use [the design] somewhere just ty brand based in New York, was because it’s so relevant to what’s a T-shirt design contest open to going on right now.” incoming college students. The The front of the shirt says winner would get a $5,000 schol- “twenty twenty,” the identical arship to put towards their edu- words mirroring each other, ref- cation. erencing the start of the pandem- Loren Gutierrez, co-founder of ic. The design on the back of the Fundamentals, said she was moti- T-shirt features a ramen bowl, a vated to host the competition by her deliberate choice by Ho. own experiences as a low-income “I initially gravitated towards college freshman. the concept of using a ramen “My co-founder and I both had bowl to represent the coronavirus Photo courtesy of Loren Gutierrez received financial aid when we Ho’s T-shirt was sold on Fundamentals’ website, a community brand based in New York, and earned $600, went to our universities so we | see HO, page 3 | which Ho donated to the nonprofit SF New Deal that aims to support small businesses during the pandemic. Two juniors partner up to develop ‘thermo-sanitizer’ The combination device was founded in July 2020, we first started brainstorming Alfieri said. “We have a good emails a day.” NextPace Ventures has sold over how we’d even be able to go back friend relationship [where] To organize the large amounts was created to improve 2,000 units across Southern to class and, would we have to we can talk about anything of emails they were writing each workplace and school safety. California to school districts, have everybody have their tem- and go through any obstacles. day, Bonde and Alfieri creat- businesses and nonprofits. perature taken before going into Sometimes people just don’t get ed a spreadsheet listing every By FRANCESCA DE NES Bonde, a junior majoring in the classroom,” Bonde said. “We along, [but] Troy and I get along single email they were sending business administration, first figured, what if everyone’s sani- really well so … our business out and documenting respons- Assistant News Editor became interested in business tizing their hands and everyone’s ideas are almost … intangible, so es. The spreadsheet was catego- When the pandemic started during high school. His cousin, having their temperature taken, they go hand in hand.” rized by industry, mainly tar- last spring, Troy Bonde had the a USC graduate medical why not have something that cuts Bonde and Alfieri knew that geting schools, urgent cares, idea to create a “thermo-sani- student, recommended that that process in half, and is the the odds of getting responses hospitals and hotels, including tizer,” a device that allows users Bonde sell medical gloves and two in one device?” from potential clients were low, Best Western International. to take their temperature while masks because of its consistent After reaching out to his con- but discovered the key to making “We do supply sanitizer and sanitizing their hands, to im- high demand, even before the tacts in manufacturing and cre- sales was being persistent and our thermo-sanitizer in Best prove workplace safety amid the pandemic. Although Bonde ating the device, Bonde made reaching out to many different Westerns from the USA to coronavirus pandemic. As his was not able to sell any of the his first sale with the Glendale clients. The pair said that most of Canada. That was one of our big- idea grew, he knew that Winston medical supplies, he gained school district by looking for the the clients they have today were gest things,” Alfieri said. “The Alfieri, his good friend since kin- contacts in Asia in the medical school directory online and send- initiated from a cold email. more emails we put in, the more dergarten, was the ideal person manufacturing base because of ing emails to as many faculty “We joke that our company es- work we put in, the more traction to team up with. his high school business idea. members as possible until he got sentially has $0 spent in ads,” we saw on our end.” The pair created NextPace Following the University’s clo- a response. He then reached out Bonde said. “There were a lot of Many NextPace Ventures cli- Ventures, a sanitation solutions sure last March due to the coro- to Alfieri, a junior majoring in long nights, just sending emails, ents have enjoyed the non-inva- company that offers thermo- navirus pandemic, Bonde began real estate development, to form drafting emails and then sending siveness of the device and the effi- sanitizers to make workplaces brainstorming ideas for the even- a partnership. them out in the morning. There ciency of combining temperature and institutions safer for tual reopening of campus. “If we have good ideas, we’ll was a point where we were prob- individuals. Since the company “[During spring break] is when just come up with them together,” ably averaging a couple hundred | see SANITIZER, page 3 | INDEX 2 · News 5 · Opinion 6 · A & E 8 · Classifieds 7 · Sudoku 10 · Sports DAILYTROJAN.COM DAILYTROJAN PAGE 2 FEBRUARY 17, 2021 | WWW.DAILYTROJAN.COM NOW LEASING FOR FALL 2021 APPLY TODAY ! NEWS FEBRUARY 17, 2021 | WWW.DAILYTROJAN.COM PAGE 3 HO | Shirt raises critical funds | continued from page 1 | other designs we received.” situation because I remember, at Fundamentals selected Ho as school, the overarching narrative one out of five finalists. Then, about the coronavirus was that each design was posted on is was in China, it was in Asia, it Instagram, and the winner was was just contained in Asia — it chosen based on the number of wasn’t going to come to the U.S. likes each post received. necessarily,” Ho said. While Ho did not win the There are many smaller de- scholarship, Fundamentals still signs within the ramen bowl, sold her design on their t-shirts. each representing something Through word of mouth and so- about the coronavirus, including cial media promotion, Ho re- a small cruise ship sailing in the ceived $600 in sales. noodles and Princess Cruises’s Inspired by the continuing logo on the outside of the bowl. coronavirus pandemic, the Black “[The cruise ship]was sup- Lives Matter movement and her posed to represent the initial cas- hometown of the Bay Area, Ho es that came to the Bay Area and donated these funds to SF New the U.S.,” Ho said. “That was the Deal, a non-profit organization time I started to panic about the that provides supportive services coronavirus, but I didn’t know if my concerns were valid because and financial opportunities no one else was super concerned to small businesses in San at the time.” Francisco affected by the Stephen Child, an associ- pandemic.