What’s it like to see a stranger walking around in something you designed?
Chad Schultz is one of a handful of locals who’s gotten used to the experience. The Toledo-y T-shirts he designs and sells tend to be popular in the local music scene, so when he goes to a concert or a fund-raiser, he sees “tons and tons of [his] shirts walking around.”
“That’s always great to see,” he said. “That happens pretty much everywhere I go.”
But he’s humble about it. He doesn’t let it go to his head, he said. He’s mostly just glad to see the crowds embracing Toledo, wearing their own hometown pride almost literally on their sleeve
“I love Toledo. I’ve lived here my whole life and don’t plan on going anywhere,” Mr. Schultz said. “That’s why I do it. I want people to show pride in where they live.”
Hometown pride drives many of the slogans that stretch across chests throughout the region, whether it’s the ubiquitous “You will do better in Toledo”; a stylized grille evoking an automotive heritage; or Mr. Schultz’s latest release through his business CrutchWear: Toledo Famous.
(He gives credit to his wife, Gina Schultz, for keeping local expectations in cheeky check.)
Whether the designers behind the tees are trained as graphic artists, like Steve Lark of Printed on a Lark in South Toledo, or they came to it less directly, like Mr. Schultz, who runs his small business in addition to his full-time job as a house painter, they’re satisfying a local appetite for apparel that lets wearers celebrate their ties to Toledo and the 419.
Count Justin Camuso and Lucas Stall among the latter. They played with a favorite slogan — “You will do better in Toledo” — in the color-complementary shirts they wore for their engagement photos last year.
They see them as a way to express enthusiasm for their adopted hometown.
“We enjoy all of the cool things happening in town and we love being part of the current downtown revival,” Mr. Camuso said in an email. “We also love the phrase ‘You will do better in Toledo’ because this city has offered us so much great experience at the beginning or our careers and at the start of our lives together as a couple. So not only do we plan to do better in Toledo, but we also proudly admit that yes, we are definitely doing better in Toledo.”
They’re not alone in wanting to say all that with a couple of T-shirts.
“People really like to show their pride,” Mr. Lark said. “They want to show where they’re from, and there’s a lot of pride in Toledo. I think over the past seven or eight years, the pride in the city has grown quite a bit. It’s nice to see that and it’s nice to be a part of that.”
While the notion of self-expression via T-shirt is by no means novel, Jupmode was arguably at the fore of a Toledo-centric T-shirt movement when it launched under John Amato in 2006. In 2011, the screen-printing operation spearheaded the revitalization of “You will do better in Toledo,” a contest-winning slogan that first appeared in lights atop the Valentine Theatre in 1913.
“That’s when Toledo’s renaissance had started and people were getting excited about the city again,” Jupmode’s Shannon Mossing said of 2011. “Ever since then, I feel like people have held onto this idea that Toledo is something to celebrate, and it’s just expanded from there.”
For Jupmode, that’s meant an eager audience for a catalog of some 380 designs, although that number includes at least some designs that are repeated on different garments, said Ms. Mossing, who’s the retail art director at Jupmode. A University of Toledo alumna with a bachelor’s degree in fine arts, she steers a creative team that sees her early ideas translated into the polished products that line the shelves on the retail side of the business.
They’re guided by nostalgia, she said, whether its a century-old slogan, a reference to defunct school or business or just a cut and color that evoke the 1980s and ‘90s.
Ms. Mossing grew up in Toledo and remembers some of the references that appear on tees. (Think Southwyck Mall, the Toledo Sports Arena — Major Magic’s is a particularly popular one, she said.) But she still does her research when it comes to digging into the city’s past.
She referenced a series of tees based on shuttered high schools.
“I spent time at the main library and I looked through old yearbooks, trying to find graphics or text or something that stands out,” she said, “It’s really doing a lot of research to accurately depict either the place or the company or old slogan that we’re trying to represent.”
Steve and Julia Lark came onto the scene with Printed on a Lark in 2014. They moved from their basement to a retail shop a little over a year ago. Mr. Schultz started what would become a gradual transition from leather wristbands to apparel under CrutchWear around 2015. And Lateral Gig cropped up most recently as at least a third designer and printer of Toledo-y tees.
Jupmode, Printed on a Lark, and Lateral Gig all screen-print on location today. CrutchWear prints through Printed on a Lark and sells at Handmade Toledo, where patrons can shop original designs as well as designs from Jupmode and Printed on a Lark.
For Mr. Lark and Mr. Schultz, the local ties they incorporate into a tee aren’t so much about nostalgia. Mr. Schultz is plugged into the local music scene — his wife is in Toledo-based band Noisy Neighbors — so he said many of his nine or so designs appeal to that audience.
One features the outline of a guitar pick, with the local area code offered as a millimeter thickness. Another simpler design reads “Support Local Musicians,” with the area code and state outline making clear what’s local. And his latest has been received well.
“You might not be world famous,” he said, “but you might be Toledo Famous.”
Mr. Lark brings a graphic artist’s eye to his catalog of 30 or so designs. He’s instructed in that specialty at Woodward High School and, currently, at Penta Career Center.
He said he starts with a general idea of what he wants a design to look like, maybe just a theme, as he’s done in designing community-specific shirts. (For Sylvania, for example, he knew he wanted to a tree as a nod to their status as Tree City USA; in East Toledo, he knew he wanted to play with the nickel nickname.) Then he plays with his sketches, eventually translating them to a computer and adjusting the fonts and colors until it’s just the way he wants it.
Sometimes that’s a quick turnaround, like the gesture drawing inspired by Jeep that he said came together within three days. Other times it’s weeks of working and re-reworking, like he recently went through with a punk-rock design that’s his current favorite.
Others of his designs incorporate a high-top tennis shoe, a cassette tape, and a fist — 419 splayed across the knuckles — that locals might have seen around town. That one’s among his most popular, he said.
Like Mr. Schultz, Mr. Lark said it’s rewarding to see a stranger wearing his designs. A lifelong Toledoan himself, he’s happy to offer strangers a way to enthuse about their city.
“Knowing that I was able to provide to them, for me, it was part of the reason why I did it,” he said.
First Published July 11, 2019, 4:00 p.m.
