Non global graphic design: The 5th Color project
by Monica Nannini (SPA! visual design)
Art’o magazine no. 18, Autumn 2005

The importance of graphic design in Iran has been acknowledged lately, although it developed during the fifties, with Morteza Momayez, regarded as the initiator. His unwavering dedication to the design profession continued throughout his country’s political turmoil that witnessed the Shah removal, the 1979 revolution and the 1980 war between Iran and Iraq that isolated Iran for twenty years. The Iranian Graphic Designers Society (IGDS), pre-established in 1968, thanks to the commitment of some designers such as Morteza Momayez, Ghobad Shiva and Farshid Mesghali, allowed the achievement of the social and cultural function of the graphic designer profession in Iran and placed the stylistic and operating basis for generations of Iranian designers.

The 5th Color is a group of four graphic designers in Tehran - Majid Abbasi, Saed Meshki, Alireza Mostafazadeh and Bijan Sayfouri - established in 2001 with the aim to put in communication between them the different project experiences and promote them in the world. The 5th Color has gathered the fathers inheritance updating it through a stylistic and cultural research that sinks its roots in the Persian ancient history and inserts firmly itself in the contemporary with innovative ability and above all with the power of a sign that reflects a point of view that is substantially "other" compared to the western visual culture. What represents the originality of the group is the programmatic will not to be isolated but to share their projects, while maintaining their own personal style and identity. All this has produced very good results: in the last few years the Iranian graphic design has asserted itself on the international scene, recovering the total absence of the previous period. Their designs are now anticipated worldwide at both graphic arts meetings and in publications.

In Italy the work of The 5th Color has been presented for the first time at "suDesign", the AIAP (associazione italiana progettazione per la comunicazione visiva) annual meeting held in Trani in 2004.

But for most westerners, Iranian design poses questions. Where does it come a sign that turns out to be really original neither indulging in easy orientalism, nor being influenced by western graphics, keeping an absolutely influential topicality? Most probably the answer is in the strength of the Persian typography, that is closely linked to Arabic typography but it has developed quite differently: the way to place characters, the sign and the art of Persian calligraphy have had in Iran a different tradition and history, reaching in the history of Persian art a universal and spiritual expression that affirms this unique aesthetic dimension

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