Project - 1

Without the intention to judge the behavior of “Vije” font, I consider the advent of such a font in Farsi a forerunner of hope. I say hope because in the contemporary drama (show off)-centered society of Iranian visual arts an artist has to take the bull by the horn where the light at the end of the tunnel, if not fading, is too far. Because of the present historical ignorance, the designer of Farsi font has been just as unsung as the font itself while the source of many current graphic design events and the daily activities of art activists in this field are rooted in these fonts. But, unfortunately for our era, consuming an innovation gets more admiration than creating it. In this arena, the attempts by designers like Damoon Khanjanzadeh are praiseworthy. Designing reproducible letters in the west has a background of hundreds of years. Thanks to the unending wave of technological revolutions, a prodigious number of Latin fonts have been created.The hegemony of the quality and quantity of these Latin letters has led most designers of Arabic and Farsi typefaces toward forming their own fonts although there is an abundance of various rich traditional letters. This has ended up in producing affected works which are good enough to fill up a trash-can with. Damoon, however, is a disciple of Iranian calligraphy school, the school which now has conquered parts of Iran. His past perseverance has changed him into a modern artist who, besides this acquired talent, unconsciously injects calligraphic esthetics into Iranian calligraphy. He has been able to find a solution to the problem of his font builds.The thing that makes him important to me is the “Vije” font which is rooted in Iranian austere and poetic freedom of Iranian calligraphy with a sideways glimpse at the regulations of modern design.The products of this font conjure a carver which had inspired Damoon to design this font.Easy legibility, paying attention to positive and negative space, manipulating the height, circles and the width to the advantage of higher legibility, varied weights of the pen, proportionality and scenic movement of letters in small to large sizes, regulating the gaps to insert periods and calculated joints are among the features of this font which can not be found in other Farsi typefaces.