Since completing my graduate work in US-Middle Eastern History, I’ve been fortunate to lead a number of bilingual branding activities for American marketing and architectural firms. The following examples of logo transliteration and visual translation were executed as part of work aimed at Arabic-speaking institutions and for campaigns executed in Arabic-speaking markets.

I have also been fortunate enough to write—both academically as a historian and editorially as a professional creative—on the subjects of Arab and Islamic culture in the press and on matters of bilingual design. Notably, these writing included Shooting the Ayatollah: Photojournalism, the Press, and the Iran Hostage Crisis, an examination of the imagery used by Newsweek, Time, and U.S.News & World Report to depict Iran and the Iranian hostages. This study describes the entire life cycle of hostage crisis media and tests a number of core assumptions about that coverage, providing a new, more accurate image of the crisis’ cultural impact. 

Additionally, I’ve written on bilingual design issues ranging from Linotype’s adaptation of Helvetica Neue into Arabic script, the fine art of Julien Breton’s (aka Kalaam) light calligraphy, corporate bilingual efforts—troubling linguistic coincidence that “The Home Depot,” translated into Arabic, is Al-Qaeda, and educational examples such as a dissection of news network Al Jazeera’s logo cartouche.

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