Alireza Mostafazadeh belongs to the fourth generation of Iranian graphic designers. He received his Bachelor’s in graphic design and Master’s in illustration, in the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Tehran, where he currently teaches. His business card introduces him as Alireza Mostafazadeh: Advertising, Ideation, Graphic Design, Copywriting, Education.
To begin, it should be made clear that Mostafazadeh neither swims with the current nor against it; he carefully examines the movement of the water, creates a new stream side by side and redirects the water into it. This is the characteristic of those few who do not act within the framework of their surrounding conditions. They always study themselves and their environment, changing their conditions according to personal desires. Failure is monotony and stagnation—being driven by the tide and doing what others are doing. Victory means new ideas, venturing into the unknown waters, without fear of mistakes or the judgment of others.
The most distinctive feature of Mostafazadeh’s work is that what he produces is far removed from the work of any of his contemporaries. His works display no signs of following a trend or creating a particular style; rather, they are entirely in the service of their subject matter and their audience. To him, the concept of creativity in graphic design extends from form to narration and technique. He also follows a similar uninhibited approach in his job and teaching methods. If he finds a barrier in implementing a solution he has found appropriate, he adopts various methods he may find necessary. Without any attention to his position or status, he either changes his surrounding framework or himself. His teaching method is not dictated by any set of rules or standards. His main concern is to help his students learn and he himself determines the manner in which they do. Mostafazadeh is an inspiring teacher; he not only teaches well at a university level, but also encourages individuals to learn more at a job, if they happen to work with him on a project. He pushes individuals to progress on the same level as him so that they can both compete with one another and develop their potentials. He is a good teacher for his students, coworkers, clients and even for himself. He is a good teacher for learning professional ethics and for reminding people of the fact that “one should always continue to learn”.
There is yet another important aspect in the professional life of Alireza Mostafazadeh: he was one of the founding members of the Eshareh Advertising Agency, and since those early days, he has worked in the company as a graphic designer and an art director. The founding of Eshareh was simultaneous with a revival of advertising in Iran. In this competitive business environment, simply presenting information was no longer sufficient. One had to be different to be noticed. This time, contrary to the pre-revolution period where graphic design was a tool used in advertising, advertising was being born from graphic design. A lover of detective stories and crime movies, Mostafazadeh tried to see his advertising projects as puzzles in need of creative ideas as solutions. He combined conceptual, narrative and visual ideas with graphic design and created a new phenomenon—namely creative advertising.
Trial and error, studying his limited resources, visiting international workshops and most importantly, analyzing any good advertisement from around the world that he could get his hands on, were the factors that changed Mostafazadeh into a self-educated creative director. This profession is independent from graphic design, yet still relevant and highly intertwined. In spite of his unrivalled genius, I believe he was unable to put his full potential to use during his long career at Eshareh. We can perhaps explain this as follows.
An advertising campaign can yield a desirable outcome only when all of the involved parties perform their tasks and responsibilities as they are expected to do. The project manager, creative director, art director, graphic designer as well as any other person involved in this process, needs to be a professional. In our young advertising industry, it is nearly impossible to find experts in all of these fields. The only solution is to recruit gifted individuals and train them accordingly. This however, is no easy task. Mostafazadeh had to face every single person in the chain of command, educate them and persuade them to avoid mistakes or ultimately do their jobs himself. The end result is an accumulation of too many responsibilities for one person: it makes it unrealistic to prevent mistakes and hinders the individual from focusing their talent and skill-set. Though Mostafazadeh faced this difficulty, it also gave him an appreciation for the field of commercial design.
At a time when many were sheltered behind unclear boundaries nicknamed cultural graphic design, throwing tomatoes at commercial graphic design, he defended the commercial industry and tried to share his views with others. In an article published in 2006, titled “From Cultural Graphic Design to Tomato Paste”, he provides a detailed account of the differences and similarities between cultural projects and commercial ones, along with his analyses of their existing frameworks.
Nowadays, Mostafazadeh has once again changed his working format and is now an independent graphic designer. This time, his challenge is creating an independent profession from his previous post of “creative director”; one that is not only meaningful in the context of an advertising agency, but also in the context of an individual freelancer. These days, it’s difficult to find him in a single place. To measure his working hours, a normal business day does not apply. He works at Eshareh Agency a few hours a week, teaches for a number of hours, works in his own office for a few more and spends the rest of his time giving advice and collaborating with clients, advertising agencies and various design studios. He is constantly active and lives to not stand still.
www.alirezamostafazadeh.com