GILL — When Montague resident Amy Bowse first read about a contest to craft a design for an F.M. Kuzmeskus bus that would honor Big Brothers Big Sisters of Franklin County, she wasn’t sure she should enter.

Bowse, a self-employed graphic designer, was worried she wouldn’t be able to settle on a design she liked before the Feb. 7 submission deadline. But, like the bus company, she also wanted to support Big Brothers Big Sisters.

So, after a few trial runs, she settled on one she liked — a colorful design complete with phrases pulled from the nonprofit’s website such as “Make a difference” and “The promise of youth.” On Wednesday, Bowse saw the design in its full glory, printed on a F.M. Kuzmeskus bus, as it pulled up in front of her house.

“I started crying. It was just so big and so colorful,” she said. “There’s always some emotion when you see some project of yours, whether it’s a T-shirt or a logo, when you see it out in the world. But for me, this is the biggest project.”

After roughly 125 to 135 hours of work by the staff of Hale Custom Signs in Gill, the originally white bus took its maiden voyage on Wednesday, with staff from Big Brothers Big Sisters and F.M. Kuzmeskus taking it around Greenfield.

“We got a lot of waves today,” Ericka Almeida, development director for Big Brothers Big Sisters of Franklin County, recounted on Wednesday. “You can’t help but go ‘Wow.’ It’s bigger than life.”

“You just can’t help but smile when you see it,” agreed Pam Reipold, F.M. Kuzmeskus’ executive vice president of operations.

The partnership between F.M. Kuzmeskus and Big Brothers Big Sisters began when the bus company, best known locally for providing bus services for many of this area’s school systems, bought a new luxury coach bus for its corporate rental program, Travel Kuz.

Reipold explained that the buses originate from Belgium, and when F.M. Kuzmeskus receives them, they are white. Usually, the buses are shipped out to be painted black, but this time, Reipold said the company needed its new addition right away.

As a potential solution, the mechanics mentioned to company managers that the all-white bus could be a good opportunity for some sort of artistic design. Reipold recognized a chance to partner with Big Brothers Big Sisters, and a design contest was born. The winning design needed to feature the nonprofit’s logo, as a sort of free promotion that will raise awareness about their work to connect children with adult mentors.

“An agency of our size would never have the resources to do something of this magnitude,” Almeida said of the bus.

Almeida hopes that, as the bus rolls up and down the East Coast, it will attract more volunteer mentors, called “Bigs,” or inspire parents to say, “My child could really benefit from that program.”

Plus, each time the bus is booked for a tour, 2 percent of the charter rate is donated to Big Brothers Big Sisters, Reipold said. The bus had been booked for trips to New York City and Washington D.C., but both were canceled as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Bowse’s winning design, rendered digitally using Adobe Illustrator, was selected from four submissions.

“Her submission blew us away,” Almeida said. “The others were amazing as well, but she really got what we were going for in terms of the vibrancy of it and bringing the brands together.”

Bowse, whose work primarily consists of designing fairly standard employee benefit communication, said she was thankful for an opportunity to flex her creative muscles, while also supporting Big Brothers Big Sisters.

“It’s really nice when so many minds come together to do something so great,” Bowse said.

But there were even more minds at work as part of the collaboration: the staff of Hale Custom Signs in Gill.

Dan Hale, owner and president of Hale Custom Signs, explained that he and employees Kat Miller and Rob Taft used Bowse’s Adobe Illustrator file to print directly onto pressure-sensitive adhesive-backed vinyl that was then conformed to the bus’ shape.

“It is sort of like applying wallpaper to a very shaped vehicle instead of a flat wall,” said Hale, who started the business in Greenfield 16 years ago. “To date, this is probably our biggest vehicle wrapping.”

After such an arduous, labor-intensive task, Hale said it felt great to see the bus hit the road Wednesday.

“I don’t think it could have been better,” commented Reipold, who noted that the words Bowse included in the design “just depict everything that Big Brothers (Big Sisters) is all about.”

“It means a lot to have an organization care about us that much that they would wrap their bus in our branding,” Almeida added.

To book the bus for a tour, call 413-863-2595 or visit travelkuz.com.

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