(This week, WhatTheyThink is “reprinting” some key articles from 2023. This article originally appeared on June 29. Look for our regular publishing schedule to resume on Monday.)

For a teenager who loves to draw and paint, seeing one’s work displayed prominently in public is exciting enough—but when it’s displayed on the side of a bus, that’s something else entirely. Such was the excitement felt by Kaitlin Barninger, a senior at Mentor High School in Mentor, Ohio, who won this year’s Design-a-Bus-Wrap student art contest held last spring by Laketran, Lake County, Ohio’s public transportation agency and sponsored by Avery Dennison. Lake County is located in the northeast part of the state on Lake Erie.  

Laketran launched the contest three years ago, which is open to middle and high school students living and/or going to school in Lake County. One of the aims of the contest was to use county buses as a way to make public spaces more visually appealing.