Degree

Doctor of Design (DDes)

Department

Art & Design

Document Type

Dissertation

Abstract

This thesis examines Iranian graphic design as a politically embedded and semiotically charged field wherein visual form operates as a site of ideological negotiation, cultural memory, and symbolic resistance. Focusing on the works of Ghobad Shiva and Morteza Momayez, the study situates graphic design within the sociopolitical constraints of the Pahlavi monarchy and the post-1979 Islamic Republic. It argues that Iranian design practices cannot be understood outside the country’s enduring identity crisis—shaped by the unresolved tension between three coexisting cultural strata: ancient Persian heritage, Islamic civilizational identity, and Western modernity. Drawing on the work of Edward Said, the thesis also critiques how Pahlavi-era modernization internalized Orientalist discourses, equating Westernization with progress and framing indigenous aesthetics as backward or obsolete.

Rather than treating graphic design as decorative or apolitical, this research frames it as a form of epistemic labor—one shaped by authoritarian constraint, symbolic erasure, and visual control. Through close analysis of posters, logos, and typographic systems, the study shows how Shiva and Momayez mobilized indigenous scripts and ornamental vocabularies to reassert pluralist Iranian identity within state-sanctioned formats.

The thesis draws on Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory, Antonio Gramsci’s cultural hegemony, and Roland Barthes’ semiotics to analyze how design becomes a space of coded resistance. It challenges Western-dominated design histories and calls for a decolonial framework that recognizes practices forged under opacity and constraint. Ultimately, the study reinterprets Iranian graphic design as a language of survival and subversion—a visual archive through which suppressed identities persist, cultural memory is reactivated, and dissent is encoded within the contested surfaces of modernity.

Date

11-24-2025

Committee Chair

William Ma

Download

Share

COinS