In 1919, 18-year-old Ivan McLean started Quality Sign Co., eventually becoming the predominant sign printer for the city of Lansing. His company produced an innumerable amount of landmark signs for Lansing including the Boji Tower clockface, the Frandor signs, and the “One-Legged Shopping Lady” at the former Okemos Schmidt Store. In 1954, Ivan changed the company name to H. Ivan McLean Screenprint. This is how Kirk MacKellar knew them when he responded to a want ad in the 1970s, beginning his own journey into the silk screen printing business.
By the 70s H. Ivan McLean Screenprint was already well known around town for advertising and graphic works that a printer couldn’t do, yet Kirk had a strong desire to embellish the artistic side of production. In 1975, shortly after joining McLean Screenprint, Ivan brought Kirk into the Michigan Advertising Club, an organization that would later evolve into AAF Lansing. In this club, Kirk was able to meet and forge better connections with existing, as well as potential customers. This would mark the beginning of Kirk’s push for McLean Screenprint to have an artistic focus.
About 1979/1980, while still working under Justin Ward–Advertising, Lauren Ciesa and Mark Johnson would produce a series of lithographic posters for the State of Michigan. In addition, Kirk MacKellar would help print wood-cut standees of President Garfield as part of that same campaign. Kirk recalls this series as the first big project Lauren and he worked together on and would be the beginnings of a lifelong friendship—a common trend with Kirk and members of the Ad Club at that time.
The industrial side of silk screen printing left Kirk desiring more of a challenge, and he knew there was nothing more challenging than having a designer put you to your paces. Kirk knew Johnson Ciesa Inc. (what would culminate into Ciesa Design today) was the best, and reached out to get a new project started between them. Quarterly calendars began as a means of personal promotion for both Ciesa and MacKellar (still McLean Screenprint). Those calendars hung prominently in every studio and business that dealt with art and printing at the time. Demands of production were hard to maintain for H. Ivan McLean Screenprint as the previous poster series’s notoriety would bring in a lot of business, and yet many more artistic projects were soon to come.
Around the same time as the calendars, Ciesa would team-up with MacKellar to produce screen printed Christmas cards. Chris VanWyck designed silk screen cards on behalf of Ciesa, and McLean Screenprint would produce them, delivering them to important clients and friends of the company. They were a major success! Years after the cards were printed people are still sending Kirk pictures of the screen prints among their decor each holiday season. The success of this project was thanks to Kirk’s drive to produce more artistic prints and Chris’s skill in designing for screen printing processes.
Kirk had previous experience with producing artistic work, having a few years of printing East Lansing Art Festival posters with Jacobson’s. Following a long hiatus in Art Festival production, Lauren came to Kirk saying Ciesa was designing the posters and they wanted McLean Screenprint to produce them. 1990 marked the first year Ciesa designed the brand identity for the East Lansing Art Festival, and McLean Screenprint printed all the collateral and merchandise. This work was done pro-bono for over 35 years and the portfolio of work designed and produced by Ciesa and MacKellar for the Art Festivals alone could fill a gallery floor-to-ceiling. With such a successful local campaign tied to their name, both companies received requests for more creative brand and poster designs. Chris VanWyck of Ciesa teamed up with MacKellar again and produced the forever icon series for the Board of Water & Light’s annual Chili Cook-Off. The posters were a coveted collectable that would be printed, framed and delivered to participating restaurants and donors. Starting years required about 30 posters while the most popular years required 100 posters to be printed, framed and delivered.
On a pro-bono art kick, Kirk would reach out to Chris VanWyck on his own to suggest the two of them offer to work independently with Airstream. Having each recently purchased one of the campers themselves, the two extended the offer to the marketing director at the time. After some back and forth, the director was on board and Kirk and Chris began designing for Airstream. On the printing side, Kirk would print a lot on metal for Airstream as well as reproducing their vintage signs. Chris made posters such as the experimental “Agent-99” using neon and metallic inks as a challenge for Kirk and as a creative means of calling to the Airstream campers without directly showing them. These were just some of the posters and signs Kirk and Chris would create for Airstream. To this day, the walls of the Airstream offices are decorated with Chris and Kirk’s productions. Kirk is still a major Airstream supporter having started UrbanAir, an annual event celebrating Airstream campers and the community behind them. This year Kirk’s passionate efforts have brought UrbanAir back to Michigan again, the event will be in Eaton Rapids, MI from October 2nd through the 5th.
Overall, Kirk and MacKellar Screenworks (renamed in 1998) are a kingpin in Lansing. Standing on the shoulders of giants like Ivan McLean allowed Kirk to more directly pursue his love of art and posters in a professional and high-visibility way. Volunteering his time and product out of desire to better his community provided Kirk the many opportunities to flex those artistic skills. The production styles today are much different than they were just 5 years ago, and you can see it in the event fliers around town. Kirk believes that the silk screen printing business needs artists to survive. With digital processes having the ability to print on substrates typically monopolized by screenprinters, and most advertising moving to digital platforms, the industry will need the support of creatives — for the love of artistic printing processes.