On April 23, prior to $2 Tuesday at The Feve, YeoPress hosted an event inviting community members and students to come and customize screen-printed shirts. From 6–9 p.m., each attendee had the option of bringing in their own clothing item or choosing from the selection that YeoPress provided. The three design options included a martini glass, a beer glass and an old fashioned glass. Along the sides of each of the glasses were “Oberlin, OH 44074.”
“I feel like this is a fun way to go to a bar, drink alcohol, and then also make cool shirts for people,” Darby Jahn, a College third-year involved in YeoPress, said. “I’m worried this event will make [The Feve] even more popular than it’s already become, which is a little saddening for me, but great for The Feve. It’s a fun way to get people there before $2 Tuesday, and it’s also some fun advertising for our club.”
To start the process, attendees chose their desired shirt design and then were sent to the screen printing section in the back of The Feve. There, they helped the person screen printing the color onto the shirt by holding down the frame. Once the color was transferred, they brought it to the relief printing station, where an assortment of hand-carved stamps allowed for unlimited customization by the attendees.
Conservatory fourth-year Ethan Pound heard about the event an hour before it began. He realized that he owned no Oberlin Conservatory merchandise and decided to take action.
“I found [the shirt] maybe two hours ago, from the Free Store,” Pound said. “I actually don’t have any Oberlin Conservatory merch, so I was able to get some cool color here and put a frog on it, so now I have a one-of-a-kind [shirt].”
Another attendee, College fourth-year Lily Kohler customized a shirt with a beer glass and a pickle for her partner.
“They wanted something with a pickle on it, so I made sure to deliver on that promise,” Kohler said.
This event was YeoPress’ first partnership with The Feve, the idea having been inspired by another upcoming event in partnership with a local bar in Cleveland called Happy Dog.
“[The idea for The Feve’s event] definitely started with us talking about what we wanted to do for the hotdogs [at Happy Dog],” Jahn said. “Happy Dog has hundreds of toppings you can choose from and so we’re like ‘Okay, how can we do this for The Feve with bar drinks and fun, pretty colors?’ Customizability was important because that’s always really fun.”
By building on to this foundation of events, YeoPress will be able to expand their audience and garner more attention.
“I want to spread the word about YeoPress and us doing fun live printing stuff,” said College third-year Eliza Youngman, co-chair of YeoPress. “If people want us to do events like this again, we’d love to do it.”
