Fred Quillin and the Grand Rapids Shirt Company

You might know Fred Quillin from his job as a Youth Program Instructor at WMCAT, where he teaches things like digital arts, T-shirt and screen printing and skateboard design. In May, Quillin presented an idea at 5×5 Night. The idea was a relatively simple one, on paper. Quillin, a born and raised Grand Rapidian studied in graphic design, printmaking and media design production and technology, was going to design a series of shirts based on the city’s history and iconic images. He was going to do it all himself, all the way up to hand delivering them via bicycle. 

While Quillin’s energetic presentation may have won hearts, it didn’t win the money. The prize went to Kelly LeCoy, whose idea for the Uptown Kitchen comes to fruition this fall in Eastown. But as the organizers of 5×5 have repeatedly stated, 5×5 isn’t necessarily about who wins the money — something proven by Nicole Infante’s idea, sandwich-competition The Grandwich, an event that saw completion based on community support garnered at the event alone. 

Inspired by positive feedback from 5×5, Quillin went to work. He launched a Kickstarter for his idea, which met its minimum funding this month. With a full website, six preliminary designs and a series of videos on historical topics and the endeavor itself, Grand Rapids Shirt Company is now taking orders.

While Quillin is native to Grand Rapids and holds a unique love for the city’s history as well as its future, Quillin is a well-traveled man. He led a maintenance crew through the Rocky Mountains, teaching environmental education through AmeriCorps. He also taught graphic communications and started a journalism program in Uganda. These travels were where the idea for Grand Rapids Shirt Company was first fostered.

“Before I left for Uganda, in college, I made my first screen printed T-shirt,” Quillin explains. The T-shirt was a simple design — an inverted image of Michigan showing the Great Lakes. “It was a functional piece of art, so I could say, ‘I’m from here and these are the lakes.’ Surprisingly, almost every single person I talked to all knew of the Great Lakes better than the people around here. You know how we have [the mnemonic device] HOMES? They had ‘small monkeys have eaten oranges.’ I made this shirt that started a dialog with everyone that I met when I was wearing it — in another continent, a place where there were hardly any other white people there. I liked the medium of the T-shirt as a communicative device.”

It was in the Rockies, in a tent, in a rainstorm, that he was thinking fondly of home. “It’s not that I didn’t like where I was, by any means, because it’s beautiful out there,” Quillin says. “It’s when you leave somewhere, sometimes, that you have the most pride in that place.” He adds, “I’ve had a lot of ideas for Grand Rapids T-shirts and I don’t think anyone’s doing that — using T-shirts as this mode to create dialog to create a greater sense of pride and ownership over this area, specifically through historical and iconic imagery.”

Straying away from the frequently used image of Calder’s Grand Vitesse, Quillin has delved deeper into Grand Rapids history. His first six designs feature an image of the old city hall, Grand Rapids’ city logo as of 1888, the recognizable logo of local chain Mr. Burger and a sweeping fist with the words, ‘bring back hydro-electricity!’ “Grand Rapids had the first [hydro-electric] facility in the U.S.,” Quillin will tell you. “It stretched from Bridge St. to where the public museum now stands, and was used to bring the first city lighting by electricity. Now the Grand River is 2.5 ft. deep and it’s an ornament. Why aren’t we using that today, and why aren’t cities utilizing the power of their rivers?”

That’s just one conversation he hopes a T-shirt may spark. Another shirt design is the image of John Ball, with the caption ‘John Ball is my homeboy.’ Quillin says he has 30 more designs beyond the initial six that he feels are just as strong. Any money he makes from these first six, he will use for the production of future shirts. 

The scope of his ambitious first pitch has changed. For now, the shirts will be mailed and he’s looking into other T-shirt printers than himself. But it is his hope that in the future, he will be able to return to the idea of hand-delivering his products. “Right now,” Quillin says, “I just want to focus on releasing these products that I’ve worked so dearly on and exposing them to the public. I’ve literally been working on this whole thing since the day after [5×5 Night].”

Take a look at GrandRapidsShirtCompany.com. Quillin displays his former artworks, including drawings he made as a child. “If we want to understand the creative and conceptual thinking of an artist, any art at any point in time,” he says, is relative. You can browse and pre-order the six T-shirt designs, and link to the Kickstarter, which is still taking donations until Oct. 24. 

And if you do nothing else, watch this. Quillin’s hilarious and historically accurate Kickstarter video isn’t something that only a Grand Rapidian can enjoy, but it is something a Grand Rapidian will especially enjoy. And who knows? His incentives, including historical finger puppets, may just inspire you to reach for your wallet.

J. Bennett Rylah is the Managing Editor of Rapid Growth Media.