Today, typography is of increasing interest to the younger generations of Iranian graphic designers, who do not hesitate to use powerful instruments such as computers. Thus, calligraphic typography has evolved remarkably during the last ten years, qualitatively and quantitatively. Like graphics, typography is an imported art industry that has undergone its own evolution in Iran. In recent years, the situation of writing in Iranian graphic design has changed so much that certain writings, long almost forgotten, such as Kufic, Naskh and sols have once again found a place of honor and that a calligraphic style as complex as the shekasteh has been more or less resuscitated through graphic use.
A problem remains, however:
Today, the advances made possible by digital technology, the ease and speed of computer-assisted work and the use of software specialized in the creation of new compositions, have opened up vast fields of exploitation where more easily to exercise the creativity of artists. However, the use of word art requires an absolute condition: knowledge of a refined, complex and deeply codified art. Only a true professional calligrapher, mastering the rules of this art, can preside over the composition and use of word art in graphic design. In case of the Custom Word Art this is important.
It should also be remembered that writing and word art are two different things
Writing has many functions. Sometimes, the excessive use of writing in a graphic work causes the opposite effect: the writing hides the work. The artist must therefore be aware of the need for a certain sobriety of lines. On the other hand, as we have said, the complexity and careful codification of Persian calligraphic styles make it imperative for the graphic designer to know word art on a professional level. Thus, it is absolutely necessary that a graphic designer first know the anatomy of writing.
- Thirty years ago, we only used typographical letters since it was possible to place them between two parallel lines, like a kind of spot of light, while it is impossible to do the same with writes as elaborate as the nasta’ligh, the naskh or Shekasteh.
Conclusion
Even today, many graphic designers, believing that it is impossible to make good use of the writing placed next to an image and shapes, are satisfied with the use of typographical letters without taking into account the fact that the freedom of each calligrapher allows him to create works of art which, put side by side with a graphic work, can provoke and reveal the aesthetic correlations of these two pictorial genres in a whole. But at the very least, this work must be the result of the collaboration of a graphic designer and a calligrapher, each mastering their art.
