Website Inspiration
A tribute to my father and to mid-century design
My website was inspired by the Class of 1965 yearbook in St. Thomas Apostle High School in Detroit, Michigan, where, for one year, my dad taught math, physics, and drafting. The website design is a tribute both to mid-century modern design and to my dad.
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Besides its awesome mid-century design, there is one thing in particular that strikes me about this yearbook: for a school where the student body and the nuns overwhelmingly have American first names and Polish last names, almost everyone else – that is, the teachers who are neither clergy nor sports coach – is a man with an Arab name.
Between the near-stereotypical Americana between the yearbook's pages, between the Jacks and Walters and Judys and Joanns, are Mr. Murad, Mr. Kanaan, and Mr. Sahawneh, men from MENA (Middle East/North Africa) countries in a majority Eastern European community who themselves were once eastern newcomers to a western land.
After teaching at the school, my father was hired at an engineering consultancy in Michigan, which offered to fund his Ph.D and ended up keeping him until the day he retired. He was a community leader in the Assyrian community in Detroit and later Phoenix who encouraged young Assyrian kids like me to put education first.
Pages from the St. Thomas Apostle High School Class of 1965 yearbook.
Additional Notes
The color scheme was inspired by the cover of Parallel Magazine's Mid-Century Modern Issue, published November 2014.
When researching mid-century yearbook design, I came across the work of Claudia Mazzie-Ballheim, a mixed media artist who upcycled a thrifted yearbook from 1940 to reimagine senior portraits as modern collages. Her work inspired my portrait on the landing page.