Graduate student Mariam Ali is attempting to highlight Middle Eastern and South Asian cultures through clothing apparel. She incorporates the cultures into designs through her Student-Made Marquette business “South through East”, short for “South Asian through Middle East.”
Ali’s goal with her company is to de-stigmatize negative views of how some people might see Arabic culture.
“By weaving Arabic culture into shirts and apparel, my hope is that the more people that wear them, the more people can come to appreciate Arabic culture,” Ali said.
Ali has created numerous shirts and apparel featuring logos and designs based on Arabic culture. She promotes this business through Student-Made Marquette and Instagram.
Ali said she takes well-known logos across pop culture and turns them into Arabic calligraphy.
Ali said her best work has come from putting the Arabic twist into popular National Basketball Association logos such as the Los Angeles Lakers and Milwaukee Bucks. The Lakers design features an Arabic letter ‘L’ with the team’s primary colors while the Bucks logo has a goat with the team’s colors.
Ali said her best-selling work is her Arabic Marquette Golden Eagles crewneck.
“These Arabic designs are not parodies of famous logos. Instead, they are a different way to promote that specific logo and Arabic culture,” Ali said.
Ali creates all of her work through Adobe Illustrator. Ali said designing Arabic logos can be a long process because of the difficulty of finding fonts that match well with the Arabic writing style due to its more cursive-like style than print.
“I get all of my designed logos as heat transfers from China,” Ali said. “Then, I buy a bunch of shirts and sweatshirts and heat-press the logos on.”
Ali said she got her graphic design minor at Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design through a Marquette program to help kickstart her business.
“I got my first experience printing logos for a boxing club through Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design,” Ali said. “I realized through this that this was something I could easily do for cheap, so I put my artistic skills to use and started my business.”
Ali said her passion for designing art stems from art being her extracurricular as a kid, because her parents never signed her up for sports, so she used art to fill her free time.
Ali said “South through East” is currently just a side business, but she hopes it is something that she can always incorporate into her life beyond Marquette.
“The shirts and art that I make might not change the world, but I believe I can make an impact here on campus that will hopefully extend over time,” Ali said.
This story was written by Gabe Mannion. He can be reached at [email protected]
