The American Muslim Medical Student Association

Through referrals from previous satisfied clients, I got connected with AMMSA, a national organization with the goal of providing resources and community to Muslim Med Students. Here’s what they wanted to capture with the design for their clothing collection:

• Medical history

  • Islam’s and Muslims’ role in the practice of medicine

• Islamic excellence

  • Highlighting AMMSA’s philosophy of striving for excellence, motivated by religious roots

• Chicago

  • The clothing was to be presented at AMMSA’s annual conference, which called upon some inspiration from its site, Chicago.

The first version of the design…

• Commemorating Muslim giants in medical history

• Starry sky:

  • captures AMMSA’s air of aspiration and “reaching for the stars”

  • Pays homage to sciences in the Muslim world, which made countless contributions to astronomy.

  • Cleanly Ties the bottom of the design to the top, telling a subtle story following Newton’s famous quote “we stand on the shoulders of giants”

• Bottom is dedicated to one of the most prominent figures in medical history, Ibn Sina

  • the images to the right of his name are actual diagrams of surgical instruments from ibn Sina’s Canon of medicine

  • Ibn Sina is resting on the bottom, looking up to the names above, communicating both his legacy and the predecessors before him

The Final Design

• What needed to change:

  • Include Chicago

• Remove the image of Ibn Sina due to religious restrictions (Muslims are discouraged from depicting entities with souls on clothing, especially when they pray.)

• Less text!

• Other updates:

  • Including AMMSA’s history

  • More explicit link to the Chicago conference event