In order to build closer relationships with Ashland’s business and service department, Ashland University’s bookstore has started a t-shirt series called “Accent on Ashland.”

The bookstore is making different styled t-shirts that have logos of the collaborating departments, including Wendy’s, the Ashland Fire Department and the Ashland Police Department.

The Production Manager for the AU bookstore, Jonathan Hunn, has been helping with the designing and producing of t-shirts and is really excited about the series.

Hunn sees this as an opportunity to introduce local business to AU students.

“These are all groups of business that are pretty famous in Ashland and the students really don’t know a whole lot about, so we wanted to create something that promotes those businesses in groups,” Hunn said.

The designing of the t-shirt series was rather freestyle. Some companies did not have a preference on what to put on the shirt, so Hunn and other staff came up with some logos and once the idea got confirmed, they started producing. Other departments already had a clear concept and pictures they wanted on the shirt, which helped the production process.

Other than promoting local business to students, “Accent on Ashland” tends to help charities in the area. The prices of these t-shirts are only $11.99 and the AU bookstore encourages student to buy them.

“Typically with those other companies you need to buy like 200 shirts in order to print a design, and with me, as you can see, I can print one or two shirts at a time and it’s a little bit less for me to do that,” said Hunn. “But also, the cool thing about these shirts is part of the sale of the shirt goes back to the company, and so these companies use that money to donate to different charities and scholarships that they have.”

According to Hunn, the AU Bookstore is looking forward to gaining more attention from students regarding this program and they also want to work with more businesses and service department in the future. The goal of the t-shirt series is to update the t-shirts series every three or four months.