High School Print Shops Copy the Big Guys

Memo to Kinko’s: The Viking Zone wants to snare some of your business.

Like those bigger, better-known companies, the Viking Zone at James Monroe High School in North Hills has all the trappings of a full-service copy business.

The project at Monroe and four other high schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District is funded by a $7.4-million, three-year grant from the U.S. Department of Education to establish after-school centers that serve students and the community.

The other high schools that opened graphic arts labs and copy centers in the last two years are Reseda, Dorsey in the Crenshaw district, San Pedro, and Woodrow Wilson in El Sereno.

Although the economy may be in the doldrums, the Viking Zone at Monroe was bustling on a recent school day. Located on campus in a former print shop, the Zone can copy, laminate, bind and fax as professionally as pricier places down the street, said Freddy Favela, 18, one of several Monroe graduates and students who staff and manage the center.

“Basically our main concern is customer satisfaction,” said Favela, who is majoring in biochemistry and deaf studies at Cal State Northridge.

He said he picked up many of his technical skills last year as a senior at Monroe in graphic arts classes. Teacher James Severtson supervises those courses in a computer lab next to the Zone, which trains some of the center’s student workers.

A former Kinko’s assistant manager, Severtson said he sometimes has to gently admonish students that black, gloomy Gothic designs will not cut it in the business world. Electric pinks and yellows are verboten. And they should not even think about using graffiti street art in their designs for clients.

He does encourage aspiring PE’s, or professional experts who staff the center for $10 an hour, to be flexible and make sure customers always leave happy with their order. High school students who work at the centers are not paid but receive credit for taking the graphic arts course.

The emphasis on service is why Michael Kim, 19, a Zone PE, has a stack of invoices to enter into a computer spreadsheet. Because the nonprofit copy centers do not advertise, their customers learn about the Zone through word of mouth.

Job orders come from teachers, other schools, a local fire official, even the San Fernando Valley Bar Assn. One recent order was for 1,400 copies of a 200-page book for Langdon Avenue Elementary School.

Students in line at the cash register typically have smaller jobs, such as color copies of favorite photographs.

The Viking Zone tries to keep prices competitive, officials said. Local faxes can be sent for 50 cents a page, $1 for long distance. Color copies are 60 cents and transparencies and labels 65 cents.

Sales from the centers are reinvested to buy supplies and keep the businesses running, district officials said. Although pricing may be competitive with the big guys, the Viking Zone’s hours are shorter. It is open weekdays only from 7:15 a.m., closing at 5 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 3:15 p.m. on Friday.

Before a $75,000 renovation, the building that houses the Viking Zone was a typical 1950s-era print shop, said Monroe Assistant Principal Thane Opfell. The aroma of fresh ink and the clacking of offset printers filled the air.

Like the technology that made that noisy shop obsolete, the only sound in the sparkling new facility is the quiet tapping of students at computer terminals and the periodic whir of industrial-size copiers.

Cassondra Henry, 18, a Monroe High senior, said she initially thought computers were geeky. Or that they might explode if she pushed a wrong button. But her graphic arts class zapped those fears as quickly as a delete button.

She recently installed her own computer at home, and she has learned to fix pesky paper jams in the big copiers at the Zone.

“I think I have that mechanic gene,” she said with a smile.