Alums trace personal and professional timelines to CCS

For Rachel and Sam Conant, move-in day at College for Creative Studies is especially memorable because it marks both the beginning of their art careers and the story of them.

“We had seen each other a couple times, just doing all the things you have to do on the first day of college,” said Sam (Illustration ’05).

The two finally met when he helped a fellow student move some items into her dorm room, and she happened to be Rachel’s roommate. Sam invited them to see a show that night at the Magic Stick with him and his seven roommates, and the rest, as they say, is history.

“We became fast friends within a week or so,” he said. “We were dating by New Year’s Eve, and we’ve been together ever since.”

But CCS is responsible for more than the couple’s meet-cute. Eighteen years later, they continue to use the skills they learned in and out of the classroom — in both their professional and personal lives.

“I look back at the skills that we took away with us from CCS, and some of them were foundational,” said Rachel (Illustration ’05). “Some of them were things to build on. But some of them, we still use every day; things that are as simple as color and light. I started painting again during the pandemic, and I was like, ‘Yeah, I remember this muscle. I haven’t used this in years.’ That’s all CCS-based.”

Sam, who is a senior principal product designer for Yahoo, is quick to point out that the line back to his CCS days has not always been linear. But even though his career is now more technology focused (he was also a staff product designer for X, the company formerly known as Twitter), he sees the links to CCS.

“If you would’ve asked us probably three or four years ago, it would’ve been much more difficult to track back all the way to CCS,” Sam said. “Now, it’s beginning to all lock in.”

Most recently, the Conants were invited to create the first CCS alumni T-shirt, which was given to 2023 graduates and sold to fellow alums. Since 2019, the couple has owned the Northern Shirt Company, a screen printing, embroidery and design shop in a former department store space in downtown St. Ignace.

“No matter what sort of artwork you’re doing, being able to put it into context for what you want to do with it has become really important for us as we own this screen printing and embroidery business,” Sam said. “We still do design and I do a lot of digital stuff, and all of that needs the proper context to be successful.”

Rachel gained most of her professional tools from CCS, including ones gained outside her major. “I learned how to be a student council president, I learned how to be an RA,” she said. “RA training was really good for life skills, dealing with conflict and emotional issues.”

These have been useful to Rachel as a member of St. Ignace’s planning commission as well as for their business, which has morphed into more than a retail store. Inspired by Rose Apothecary on “Schitt’s Creek,” the Conants reimagined the space to include seating, coffee on occasion and a stage for music on weekend nights.

“We purposefully built big barn doors and big open windows so you can see the production area,” Rachel said. “When we’re back there working, people can see us making new T-shirts.”

The Northern Shirt Company is becoming known for specific pieces Rachel and Sam have designed. “As a joke when we first opened this space, we illustrated this little seagull, and then we had him embroidered on hats,” Rachel said. “He was a hit.”

Their seagull now also graces everything from hoodies to T-shirts, and they cannot keep the items in stock. “People love him, and they come back for him,” she added. “Whenever we come up with something new, they want him.”

They also created the “Brevort bear” in honor of a bear who showed up in their front yard a couple of years ago and hung around for a few days. Since no one makes shirts for the tiny village outside St. Ignace, their bear has become a big hit, too.

Even though Northern Shirt Company is in a tourist area, their goods veer away from offering stereotypical touristy T-shirts. “We try to be creative and thoughtful about everything,” Sam said, including designing apparel for local sports teams. “We’re pretty persnickety about what we put out.”

The CCS alumni T-shirt was “a blast to design” and stressful, too, because they had decided “to do CCS right on this one,” Sam said. He and Rachel worked together on the concept. Every element of the artwork has meaning for them, from the colors to what they looked to represent (a Motown record, an Eastern Market mural).

Also not linear: their path to the Upper Peninsula. The day after graduating from CCS, they loaded up a U-Haul and moved to Chicago — without having jobs secured.

“The next day, I walked down the street that we had moved to with a stack of resumes in my hands, and I got two jobs that day,” said Rachel, who worked as a graphic designer and creative director during their years in the Windy City while Sam made the leap from illustration into tech and digital. It was also in Chicago that Rachel was first introduced to screen printing, as well as graphics for product design.

The Conants headed back to Michigan when they were expecting their first child, settling near Flint. But when they had their second son and decided they needed more space, their first thought after selling their home was not about finding another house. It was “boat school.”

“One day, I was watching PBS and they had a special on this crazy wooden boat building school up here in the UP,” Rachel said. “We joked about it for years before it became a thing. In fact, we even started a boat school fund.”

Rachel’s grandfather was a woodworker, and she and her mom inherited that gene. They would build small things together and, at CCS, Rachel took welding and spent a fair amount of time in the woodshop. In addition, her dad did a lot with boats while she was going up.

In the end, they moved to the U.P. so Rachel could pursue her dream at the Great Lakes Boat Building School. She completed a two-year Comprehensive Career Boat Building Program then took a position at a marina. Sam worked remotely (before it was a thing) for Hearst as a design director and then creative director.

With their sons following in their footsteps, Rachel and Sam find themselves leaning into what they learned at CCS to guide their art education. “They love doing art,” Sam said. “Our older son is a phenomenal artist. He blows both of us out of the water. We get to teach that to a 13-year-old, who’s our kid, and be so proud of him.”

A surprising number of CCS alumni live in the Upper Peninsula, allowing them to feel connected to the school that has had such an impact on their professional and personal lives.

“It’s the people, right?” Sam said. “Her being the most important of the people I met there. A big part of my success and what I’ve done is just because of her. I mean, we grew up together.”

“We brought each other up,” Rachel added.