Alumni
Graphic Design Alumnus Credits Penn State Education for His Success
By Amy Milgrub Marshall
As a kid growing up in Pittsburgh, Devin Pedzwater (’96 B.S. Graphic Design) had two passions—art and music. A faithful reader of Rolling Stone, he plastered his walls with the magazine’s covers and critiqued the design on the pages inside. He dreamed of a career where he could combine his eye for art and his ear for rock ‘n roll.
Fast-forward 15 years later. Rolling Stone is one of several respected and popular magazines on the graphic designer’s résumé, and he recently oversaw the first major redesign of Spin in the music magazine’s 20-year history.
“I was always interested in a career in designing magazines or designing album covers. After I got my first job at a magazine [Condé Nast Traveler], I began to see 
magazine design as a rewarding career,” Pedzwater explains. “I used to critique how magazines looked, but I couldn’t do anything about it. Now I can make a difference in how magazines are designed, and that’s exciting.”
Devin worked as a freelance graphic designer before fellow Penn State graphic design alum Carla Frank (’82 B.S. Graphic Design), who was working at Condé Nast Traveler at the time, helped him get a position there. “The magazine industry is small, and who you know is important. I’m grateful to Carla for helping me get my first full-time job in the industry.”
After two years at the monthly Traveler, he was ready for the challenge of a weekly magazine, and moved to Sports Illustrated. In addition to working on the weekly edition, he designed the annual Swimsuit Issue for three years. “We worked a four-day week, from Thursday to Monday. The hours were long; on Sundays we always worked the entire day, from 10 a.m. to sometimes as late as two or three in the morning,” Pedzwater says. “It was fast-paced, but very well-managed.”
At Sports Illustrated, Devin met Kory Kennedy, who became both a friend and mentor. They quickly discovered they had similar ideas about design and worked well together. Kory hired Devin at Rolling Stone, and when Kory became the design director at Spin, he brought Devin on board as art director. “In this business, you often work long hours, so you bond with people and learn how to interact with them,” Devin explains. “When you’re interviewing for jobs, you have to remember you’ll be spending a lot of time with your co-workers. You need to ask yourself, do I want to be next to this person at 2 a.m.?”
With only four people in Spin’s art department, the redesign required many late nights, exacerbated by the lack of air conditioning in their offices after 6 p.m. The redesign was launched with the October 2005 issue, which meant much of the work was done during a particularly hot New York City summer. “Sometimes all we could do was laugh. We had to go to some extreme measures to cool off,” Devin recalls.
He admits he never thought he would work at Rolling Stone’s competition. “Working on the redesign for Spin’s 20th anniversary issue has been exciting. Spin does not get as much coverage as its competitors, so this is an opportunity for a lot of press, and potentially more recognition of the redesign.”
The final design is even better than the staff envisioned, Devin says. “Spin is a great title, but the magazine was lacking the energy and emotion of the music it features. We thought a lot about what our readers wanted and looked forward to, and we built the magazine around that. I feel lucky to have been a part of this project. It was definitely a challenge, but well worth it.”
Pedzwater says his Penn State graphic design education prepared him well for his career and the challenges he has faced. He’s grateful to Kristin and Lanny Sommese for the intense but professional environment they maintained in the graphic design program. “Kristin and Lanny have been essential in everything I’ve done. I was clueless when I first started in the program, but by the time I graduated, I had a striking portfolio, knew how to interview and was ready to enter the professional world,” he explains.
Now that Devin is in a position where he interviews young designers fresh out of school, he has gained an even greater appreciation for the training he received at Penn State. “Penn State graphic design graduates are so much better prepared than people from other schools. I felt like I was more professional when I graduated—like I had already worked for a year—because of the environment in the graphic design program at Penn State,” he says. “Lanny instilled in us a combined sense of camaraderie and competition, much like what you find in the workplace.”
Although Pedzwater has several notable magazines on his résumé, he says titles aren’t everything. “As a designer, it’s important to me to work at magazines where I have some artistic freedom,” he explains. “I also take a personal interest in what my magazines cover. I couldn’t work for a women’s interest magazine like Glamour or Cosmo, because I need to understand the audience. Understanding the audience is essential to good design.”
Devin advises aspiring graphic designers to talk about their work with pride. “In an interview, you need to be confident and take an interest in your own work,” he explains. “And let your personality show through. It’s understandable to be nervous, but you have to get over it.”No Limits for Percussionist Nick Petrella
By Katherine A.H. Pezanowski
Mallets, cymbals, gongs, marimba, glockenspiel, tambourines. Oh yeah, and drums, too. As a percussionist, Nick Petrella (’90 B.S. Music Ed.) is familiar with all of those and even more exotic percussion instruments. He is currently the director of education for the world’s leading cymbal manufacturer, Sabian, a faculty member at Oakland University in Rochester, Mich., and a performer and clinician.
Petrella attributes his success in the music profession to the support and education he received at Penn State. “While I had potential, I did have to work very hard to compensate for my weak background. It was the mentorship of the Penn State music faculty and the close-knit environment of the music department that helped me to overcome obstacles and realize that there are no limits, just self-imposed limitations.”
Petrella had no formal training in classical percussion until he went to college. He began his Penn State studies at the Beaver campus. When he auditioned for the 
School of Music at the University Park campus in 1985, he was required to demonstrate proficiency on drums AND mallet instruments, which he had never studied. Undeterred, he dug through his sister’s flute music, selected “Rainy Days and Mondays,” and played a rendition on the marimba. Petrella admits that performance gave no indication of his future success—and certainly did not impress percussion instructor Dan Armstrong. “But because I was a transfer student coming from another Penn State campus, he was stuck with me,” he notes.
Petrella has not looked back since. He had decided he wanted to be a percussionist when he began taking drum lessons in the fifth grade. After graduating from Penn State, he received an M.M. (University of Michigan) and a D.M.A. (University of Iowa) in percussion performance and went on to become the director of percussion studies at Texas Christian University (TCU). He directed the TCU percussion ensemble’s performance at the prestigious Verbier Festival in Switzerland, a notable achievement because it was the first time a percussion ensemble had been invited to perform there. Other career highlights include developing the percussion pedagogy course at the Royal Northern College of Music in England (the first of its kind in the United Kingdom) and serving two consecutive years as the percussion coach with the World Youth Orchestra. In addition, in June 2005, he was the featured percussion clinician at the American Band College, and he has been invited to appear as a guest artist in Mexico and Brazil later this year.
While his current job as Sabian’s director of education can be overwhelming at times, he gets to combine his three loves: playing, teaching and business. He is responsible for the sales and marketing of the band and orchestral areas of the company worldwide. Although he enjoys his job, he says he still doesn’t know what he wants to do when he grows up. Petrella’s long-term goal is to have a bigger impact on music education. Some might argue Petrella has already had a huge impact on the music industry and education. He currently holds eight designs for sticks, mallets and percussion accessories and has authored two Carl Fischer publications: The Ultimate Guide to Cymbals and The Multiple-Percussion Book, which has been translated into French, German, Italian and Spanish.
According to Petrella, success is measured by more than what you know. “It’s not enough to have the knowledge—it’s what you do with it,” he explains. Petrella is always looking for ways to apply his own advice. In 2002, he and his wife, Diane Helfers Petrella, formed the Petrella Ensemble, which is dedicated to commissioning and performing new works for percussion and piano. The ensemble will premiere another new work later this year.
Recently Dan Armstrong asked Petrella what he would include in a music business book or course designed to aid music career development. Petrella said it would be a pretty boring book because it would fill less than one page and basically augment the Golden Rule: be good at what you do; keep learning (and you’ll be better at what you do); be trustworthy; be passionate without being pushy; and above all, be nice and maintain humility.
It’s apparent that Petrella himself practices each of those lessons as part of his daily life. Of all his accolades, he says nothing is more important than his wife and their two young children, Nicholas and Christopher.
