TOWAMENCIN- As students and staff walk into North Penn High School, they may have noticed something new. After deciding to cover up the iconic map of the school in the main lobby, North Penn administration came up with a new design to replace it. With the new TV, speakers, and stage, it has brought a new light to the school.

Mr. Pete Nicholson, Dr. Todd Bauer, Mr. Robert Gillmer, and a few other staff members had come up with the idea collaboratively. The purpose of this new addition was to update the look and feel in the lobby and to focus on student life at North Penn.

The actual design was created by Gwen Galeone of Galeone Design in Hatfield, who has done quite a bit of other design work for the North Penn School District. She has worked on projects such as designing the district calendar, and special event pieces such as promotional materials for the district’s 50th anniversary.

“She was chosen because we knew she would do a great job designing the new wall and getting that design turned around,” Nicholson explained.

Most North Penn students may have noticed that the design went up in the lobby rather fast. Galeone’s idea luckily did not take too long to execute in the main lobby, as they worked over it this past weekend.

“Much of the time involved was in the back and forth in finalizing the small details such as size and placement of the pictures and the merging of the 4-5 original design concepts she proposed,” Nicholson stated.

The television will enable performers and speakers on the new stage to take control during performances and presentations. It will also be able to display images and videos for specific events going on at the school. The new frames with pictures will pull all of this together and keep it updated. Using the acrylic tiles at the bottom of the wall will make it easy and inexpensive to keep this wall up-to-date. They will be able to swap out pictures without any difficulty when it starts to become outdated.

Nicholson explained that most of the work was completed by the district employees. In order to make this wall, the class of 2018 generously donated the bulk of the materials cost from leftover funds after their graduation.

“I hope it’s perceived as a positive change to the auditorium lobby area. The new wall and speakers, along with the stage that should be completed in the near future, should bring more life and useful space to the lobby,” Nicholson remarked. “I hope it’s viewed as a positive change that both updates the space while still paying homage to the history of the building through the image of the original building, prior to the K-Pod addition, and the image of the tile mosaic that is preserved under the new wall.”