Anne-Fatima Syed is a Pakistani-American Graphic Designer focused on Branding & Marketing in the Bay Area.
Our Mother’s Garden
Tools used: Indesign + Photoshop
March 2022
Our Mother's Garden: The Bay Area Muslim Community Through the Lens of Motherhood is my love letter to the Bay Area.
Growing up in a large Muslim community, I always felt like I had many mothers. My curiosity with the Bay Area’s multi-ethnic Muslim community led me to the "Bay Area Muslim Study" researched by Farid Senzai and Hatem Bazian.
I was compelled to understand the narrative behind this research, thinking about the journey of of mothers who shifted to the Bay Area and built a foundation for this ever-growing Muslim community. I reached out to the daughters of these Muslim women in leadership and orchestrated interviews focusing on the concept of motherhood. This publication is a compilation of those interviews complemented with excerpts from the "Bay Area Muslim Study."
Process & Design Thinking:
In the interview spreads, each mother-daughter duo has a coordinating color that represents their identity through the use of their motherland’s national flower. The images weree provided to me, which include pictures of objects that represent and remind the mothers of their motherland. The mothers' beautiful hands are displayed in the opening spread of each interview to symbolize their act of "building." Each interview ends with a handwritten note from the mother responding to the question, “What does it mean to be...” in accordance to their identity.
To contrast the interviews, excerpts from "The Bay Area Muslim Study" include a heavy use of the color blue to represent the colors of the beloved San Francisco Bay. A thick Sans Serif typeface is in juxtaposition to the decorative language of the interview spreads.
The book is printed on a Stardust speckled paper and the covers are printed on a textured blue, green, or pink paper.
