Thirteenth International Conference on Design Principles & Practices

Abstract

Throughout the history of Iran, the ideas and practices of reformation of alphabet/scripts in spite of insisting on their vernacular language raise the following two questions about the relationship between these changes and their preserved identity: Q1: How does the reformation of script during the Islamic periods help Iranians face challenges in preserving their Persian identity? To answer this question, Derrida’s writing theory is remarkable, in particular, where he calls for cultural graphology, a graphology fertilized with sociology, ethnography, psychoanalysis etc., through which the writing structure of the nation’s thoughts will appear from the analysis of their national writing. Consequently, the cultural graphological analysis of Iranian reformed scripts shows us how they have preserved their Persian identity through pictographic, idiographic, and logographic cultural forms in their national writings. Q2: In what ways can Iranian theories of alphabet reformation bring inspiration to contemporary Iranian in order to develop their modernity’s identity? So far in Iran, either the practices or theories of script reformation have been mostly shaped under influences of both Iran’s stance toward foreign relations and Iranian previous national writing. In fact, they have utilized their international parties’ scripts to write their Persian language, while they have reformed it with the design of their previous scripts. It can, therefore, be concluded that the design of typefaces based on Latin alphabet (as the most common script among modern nations) and three cultural aspects of Iranian writings will provide a solid ground to contemporary Iranian modernists for developing their identity.