AMD Week Career Meet Up: Handmade for a Digital World: Art and Activism with Ali Mac

Join Ali Mac, a US-based designer and activist who blends folk-inspired art with social impact for a virtual talk, as part of the Career Center's Spring Arts | Media | Design Spring Career Community Week. Ali creates felt-based artwork, hand-sewn and digitally rendered, known for chalky lines, candy-colored palettes, and playful textures.

With more than a decade of experience working with brands like AMEX, Starbucks, and Jonathan Adler, Ali explores community, equity, and cultural storytelling, making art that feels lively, tactile, and socially conscious. Discover how creative careers can inspire change.
About Ali Mac
Ali Mac is a US-based designer creating folk-inspired felt works, mostly digitally rendered and sometimes crafted with a sewing machine. With over a decade of freelance experience including eight years with agency representation, now with Totally Reps. Her clients have included AMEX, Away, Kiehls, Munchkin, and Starbucks. She began her career designing for Jonathan Adler, creating artwork for licensing collaborations with brands like Toms, Paperless Post, and Dylan’s Candy Bar.

Her signature aesthetic of chalky lines and candy hues evolved during the pandemic, when she began working with sewn, layered felt. What started as a hobby quickly became a tactile form of storytelling, spanning portraits, appliqués, and animations. More recently, she has incorporated digital felt brushes, bringing the tactile quality of felt into her 2-D creations.

Her work celebrates the handmade. In an age of automation and digital polish, she is drawn to materials and methods that feel textured, organic, and human. Chalky lines, tactile layers, and visible stitches are central to her visual language; she aims for the hand to be seen and the process to be felt.

Rooted in childhood memories and a sense of play, her art evokes the freedom and imagination of early years. Whether working digitally or by hand, she creates images that feel playful, lively, and full of personality.