For each and every one of us, success comes in different shapes and sizes.

For one person, it may be to raise a family. For another, it may be to pursue a career as a teacher, plumber or lawyer. For someone else, it may not even be to have a career but to travel the world. No matter how you define success, once you have accomplished your goal, it can be a feeling like no other.

For former Palo Alto students Ben Mata, Anthony Alanis and Logan Cantu, a career in the arts was their definition of success, and it rang true when their dream was realized.

As a little kid, Mata found himself consumed by drawing, working into the late night hours.

“It was just something that came natural to me,” said Mata.

These days, Mata is an artist logging in the late night hours at his studio, working on his next creation. Mata, who is a firm believer that artists need to evolve, uses sheets of aluminum to paint on instead of a traditional white canvas. He then molds and welds the aluminum to a piece of lightweight wood, creating a 3-D sculpture.

So what message is Mata trying to communicate to those who view his work? Actually, he has no message; he’d rather people form their own opinions.

“I like to leave it open to the viewer. The colors and material I use activate emotions,” he said.

Mata credits Palo Alto’s small community and non-intimidating classes for his success at Texas State University.

“The instructors prepared me for the next level,” said Mata. “I was a lot better off than a student who started as a freshman at the four-year university.”

1997 was the year scientists first announced the cloned sheep, Dolly, Timothy McVeigh was given the death penalty for the Oklahoma City Bombing, and the Mars Pathfinder landed on Mars, but another significant event occurred that year that most people didn’t hear about. That was the year that sparked Anthony Alanis’ interest into the world of graphic design. Entering the world of art started at a young age for Alanis.

“I think I’ve always been an artist,” he said. “I’m an art lover, an artist.”

During his high school years, his art classes didn’t consist of drawing, sculpting or painting but creating music. Alanis said whether it’s music or dance, it’s all an art form.

It wasn’t until after he graduated from high school that drawing, sculpting and painting classes came into play for him at Palo Alto College. It was the late 1990s by this point when the Internet was just beginning to become a huge part of our lives but an even bigger part of Alanis’ life.

This is when Alanis started designing web pages for fun, experimenting with something that was new and exciting for him. He quickly saw the importance of a good Web page and was fascinated by it all. Alanis started using graphics already online, but he eventually knew that he needed to start creating his own graphics.

Fast forward almost 10 years later and Alanis has continued to do graphic design for fun, but he has also turned his passion into a career. Alanis now works as a professional graphic designer for a local technical and engineering corporation.

Alanis finds inspiration in everyday surroundings.

“People inspire me. Music inspires me. Books inspire me. Everything,” said Alanis.

As far as Alanis is concerned, the message behind his work is there isn’t one.

“I do everything backwards,” he said. “To me, my stuff is purely for the visual aspect. I’m not trying to say anything.”

So what did Alanis like the most about PAC?

“I definitely liked the instructors. They are some of the most fun people,” said Alanis.

Not only did the faculty make learning fun for Alanis, but they also assisted him with his development and confidence in the early stages of his career.

When you think of design, what immediately comes to mind? Fashion design or maybe interior design? To Logan Cantu, design is everything that surrounds us, from the buildings outside to the food labels at the supermarket. To him, design is an art form.

“Art is something that is beautiful. It catches your eye and for some reason, you may not know why, but you’re drawn to certain things. It’s because the design draws you,” he said. “And I am really into the fact that it can catch people and turn people on.”

Cantu’s influences are aspects of everyday life. When Cantu first started attending Palo Alto, he took both art and photography classes and liked both forms, but he was still unsure which direction to follow. After taking the Intro to Graphic Design class at PAC and hearing about Incarnate Word’s 2+2 graphic design program, he knew which direction his love for art would go. He liked the Illustrator and Photoshop programs taught in the graphic design class and wanted to learn more about them. “To me, graphic design is the way to combine both disciplines (photography and art). I’m not tied down to one thing,” said Cantu. “I can do a little bit of everything. I can have my cake and eat it, too.

”After graduating from the University of the Incarnate Word with a bachelor of arts in Graphic Design, Cantu is now working for himself as a free-lance graphic designer, creating custom graphic designs for various companies. When a client contacts Cantu to create a custom graphic design, they go through what is he calls a “design process.” This is where Cantu gets an idea of what his client is looking for, begins the initial sketching of the designs, then takes them into more detailed drawings, and finally puts them into digital form. Every step of the way, Cantu receives the client’s approval to make certain that he is going in the right direction for the client’s particular project.

Other than working for himself as a free-lance graphic designer, Cantu has also worked at “Rumbo,” a local Spanish language newspaper, and he also also taught an Intro to Computer Graphics class as an adjunct faculty for a semester at the University of the Incarnate Word.

It wasn’t just the small classes, the good professors, the nice environment and the friendly people that Cantu liked about Palo Alto, but he also enjoyed the direction he was given.

“I knew I wanted to go into art, and I was pretty much undecided. PAC pointed me in the right direction,” said Cantu.