Student Spotlight: Mia Sears

Writer / Matt Keating
Photography Provided

Mia Sears, a 2023 Westfield High School graduate, has teamed up with the Indianapolis Colts to develop an official Colts training camp T-shirt inspired by the City of Westfield.

Sears says she is thrilled she got the assignment.

“The opportunity arose at the end of my senior year, where I overheard my art teachers, Lindsay Frey and John Sterling, talking about some work relating to the Colts,” Sears says. “Apparently the Colts reached out to a Westfield recruiter to find local artists in the area, and they were interested in working with a student to create a design for the Colts training camp at Grand Park. I was honored when they recommended me to apply.”

Sears was ready to take on the challenge.

“I have never done anything quite this large-scale before, but I had done multiple designs for Westfield High School productions,” she says. “In the theater department I designed the ‘Little Shop of Horrors’ poster earlier in senior year, as well as ‘The Diary of Anne Frank’ poster and cast/crew T-shirts. Our school hosts a rock concert called ‘American Pie,’ and this year they invited me to design a poster and T-shirt inspired by the theme, which was ‘I’m Going Back to Indiana.’ I am so eternally grateful for these opportunities because I believe if I hadn’t said yes to designing for these events, I wouldn’t have been exposed to so many new opportunities outside of Westfield High School, including working with the Colts.”

“At Westfield I was very involved in our theater program,” Sears continues. “Personally I am not one for acting, so I worked backstage with the technical crew. I stage managed both ‘Little Shop of Horrors’ and ‘The Diary of Anne Frank.’ I want to give a shout out to my directors, Eric Zabonick, Jonathon Majors and Lance Grubb. I am so eternally grateful to have been a part of Westfield theater.”

Sears says she got in touch with other individuals for assistance with the T-shirt project.

“I reached out to Kayla Arnold, who was the director of Westfield Welcome, and she had also reached out to my school,” Sears says. “She had passed my email along to the Colts to get me connected.”

Sears enjoyed meeting new people from the Colts organization.

“I was connected to Hayden Barnack from the Colts organization on May 22,” Sears says. “Hayden is one of the sweetest and most encouraging people ever. She is a senior marketing manager for the Colts, and did all the communicating with me when it came to designs and what the team at the Colts organization wanted.”

Barnack had Sears send in her previous artwork.

“I sent in a lot of different mediums and styles to allow them to see the range I was capable of,” Sears says. “I sent the graphic design work I had done for events previously, along with other art I had created. I didn’t believe the extra art would speak that much to them, but they really enjoyed a previous surrealist octopus painting I had done during my junior year at Westfield High School. So in the end I was happy I sent all of it, instead of only my graphic-design-related works.”

Sears was worried about getting everything for the project done on time. “I was super nervous because I was so incredibly busy, because graduation was that weekend, but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to work with the NFL and the Colts. I was very glad I took on the extra work.”

As for the T-shirt design itself, Sears is a huge music festival and concert lover, and when she thinks of summer, she thinks of these types of events.

“Festivals always have very interesting T-shirts and often feature unique cityscapes,” Sears says. “I went to Summerfest in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, last year and I always think of the cool merchandise they sell at the event. The cityscapes are almost ‘stacked’ in layers, and I think the effect is very pleasing to look at. This design was inspired by fun and upbeat music festival merchandise, but that isn’t the only reason for the design.”

Sears notes that the design is supposed to embody summer traditions and showcase Westfield. She was inspired by what she saw.

“For example, Westfield has a ton of bikers in the summer,” she says. “How I know it’s getting warmer is when bikers re-emerge and start also taking to the roads in the spring. So I added little bikes to the sides of buildings, which were inspired by Westfield’s teeny downtown. I added trees and shrubs to reference the amount of preserved greenery in Westfield.”

Sears also wanted to add her favorite aspect of Westfield.

“My favorite part of Westfield in the summer is the Monon Trail,” Sears says. “It’s around 25 miles, and about a five-minute drive from my house. The bridges are only utilized when it’s warm out, so I thought it was important to highlight that as a representation of Westfield in the summer.”

Sears says she will remember how much fun she had working with the Colts organization.

“The team at the Colts was so excited and welcoming,” she says, adding that the T-shirts launched in July. “I met Hayden Barnack and others in person at a Colts sneak-peek preview of their training camp schedule. My family was invited to the event and I got an official shout out. They said how it was the first Colts training camp shirt designed, which, truthfully, I had no idea about until Hayden told me that day, a few weeks after the design was completed. It was, overall, such a welcoming and fun experience for me and my family.”

Sears has already made her college plans.

“I am going to IU Bloomington in the fall,” she says. “I am majoring in public management with a minor in informatics, and hoping to become an urban planner in the future. I will still always have art and graphic design in my life, and continue to create throughout college and beyond. I am very excited to see where my work with the Colts leads me to in the future.”