There came an Alif*
Mohammad Reza Abdolali
A fair-minded designer who has once experienced type design will admit that this field requires the highest degree of graphical literacy. Furthermore, competent type designers know that type designing for text is the most difficult specialty in type design. Knowledge of the form, insight on the writing traditions, legibility, and performance technique are all the prerequisites for the probable success of a typeface, not to mention the needed persistence and allocation of time. This is why more than five generations of Iranian graphic designers contented themselves with the few solid fonts that were present and suffered the lack of typefaces with different weights. In spite of the long history of teaching letter design in art schools, there are only a few Iranian designers who have devoted their career to designing type. However, during the last 10 years, Damoon Khanjanzadeh designed a significant number of convenient typefaces for body text and titles, many of which include different weights. Born in 1975, Damoon studied at the College of Fine Arts and Tehran University of Art. He is the first-class calligrapher of Nasta'liq hand and has studied under masters such as Morteza Momayez, Mohammad Ehsaei, and Abdullah Foradi. He has an outstanding knowledge of typography and the peculiarities of letterforms, and is literally pursuing type design as his profession. In addition, Damoon has won several awards such as the highest award of the Seventh Biennial of Iranian Graphic Designers (Noon Cultural Establishment), the special award of Mohammad Ehsaei, chair of the Ninth Biennial of Iranian Graphic Designers, the highest award of the Second Sharjah Calligraphy Biennial, and the selected font award of the Second Silver Cypress. Persistence, seriousness, professionalism and strictness are the major characteristics of his work. His impressive teaching methods in his type design classes (held around a table in a small room in Vije School of Visual Communication) was more fruitful for the graphic design of Iran than any other education provided in art universities. It was his efforts that led to the recognition of logotypes as a product that can be ordered. Although he has also designed posters and cover designs, his competence in type and logotype design has put him into his unique position.
Damoon is clear about accepting graphic design orders — he chooses works in which writing plays a significant role and rejects all others. The numerous logotypes he has designed fall into two categories as far as the manner of using calligraphy is concerned. The first category includes logotypes that are designed with a formalistic conception of Nasta’liq or delicate handwritten Shikasta. Exaples include Noon, Vije School, Tehran Emrouz, Neshane Ordibehesht, and Black Miniatures. Although classical, these types exhibit an innovation in the form. The second category is the geometrical logotypes that are inspired by Naskh and Muhaqqaq bases (for instance, Digar, Saman Bank, Sharestan, and Rira). Damoon has truly devoted his life to type design. His expertise in type design is so salient that he can be viewed merely from this angle. Days and nights of tireless working have led to the creation of typefaces such as Vije, Meshki, Karnameh, Diba, Bina, Chista, Persian Wikipedia, and Adab in different weights and for different applications. These pleasant innovations are now used in the works of many designers and resolve part of their concern about types. Damoon has a particular philosophy and viewpoint about type and has spent a lifetime reflecting on what he does. Evidently, an evolutionary process can be traced through his works, but typefaces such as Vije (designed many years ago) are still flawless and eye-catching. Interestingly, the passage of time has not made Damoon more conservative; it has rather brought him a certain audacity and dexterity. In spite of being a first-class calligrapher, his work and approach is mainly based in design knowledge. His diverse ways of treating typefaces are modernist and innovative. He prefers creativity over perfection and, contrary to many calligraphers, “does not see calligraphy as sacred.” The transformation of letters from calligraphy to geometry or vice versa is evident in all of his work. Even typefaces such as Vije, Karnameh, and Adab are based in calligraphy. They include flat forms, curves, and nib angles that end in authentic geometry with regular angles. In all his typefaces, letterforms, punctuation and digits are designed with an artistic obsession and are extremely beautiful.
Damoon is strict about everything being in its right place and having the right function. His body text types have their own character and accent while remaining legible and create a consistent, distinct texture. He unveiled Vije in a specialized meeting named Korsi. As his first widely used Naskh-like type, Vije was a perfect manifesto for the beginning of his work and is still among his best work. The specific features of Vije include the small variation of strokes, high, wide teeth1, full curves, quick pen movement (called Ersal2 in Ghalam Andaz pieces), small curved-tail bowls, short ascenders and descenders, presence of alternatives such as Kaf-e Sheipouri3 and Ya-e Bargardan4, and various ligatures.
Damoon is frank and far from hypocrisy. He becomes zealous when it comes to type. He designed a beautiful typeace called Meshki for the titles of some Meshki Publications books. Meshki type has solid eyes and a heavy weight. All flat parts of letterforms are situated on the baseline, and it has small curved-tail bowls. Almost anything written with it needs no alteration to become a book title.
Damoon has a large, high-quality gridded notebook for designing sketches — and he discovers forms day and night. He practices letters, special symbols, and monologues in this notebook with various colors and tools. He copies his letters from one parchment paper to another; finally, he scans and creates them accurately to keep the disordered curves of the letters. He is interested in technology and knows how to work with different software, but he does not leave their detail design to the automated programs. He redesigns the types in different weights. The Karnameh typeface (that has ten different weights from light to extra bold) has the highest partial and holistic accordance with the Naskh and Thuluth calligraphic hands. Many of the Saraks5 of Alif are preserved in this type, which perfectly fits the subject due to the balance between flat forms and curves, and its precise design. Apparently, Damoon’s tendency towards these calligraphic hands is influenced by the classical structure of the insights of Mohammad Zahrai, the ex-director of Karnameh Publications.
The birth of Diba Khanjanzadeh, Damoon’s daughter, has had a positive influence on his work and future career path. The pictures of her toys in dad’s sketch notebook, aimlessly or orderly, are much better than his previous posters. He has designed a typeface named after her daughter and its benefit is donated to cancer-stricken children of the MAHAK charity institute. During recent years, it has turned into a trend among graphic designers and graphic campaigns — studios have largely utilized it. Diba, as a black title type, is the daring outcome of his knowledge and mastery of geometric and abstract letters. Its single and compound forms can be compared to the sculptures of Fernando Botero that are curvaceous and well shaped (although plump). Double weight, sharp edges and angles, geometric cavities and upright teeth are among this typeface’s characteristics. Diba’s digits, punctuation and diacritics, particularly its Shadda, is designed in a concise manner.He has a watchful eye for discovering the written subcultures, from the writings on the back of a car to the prices written in the grocery store of his neighborhood. Bina is a
collection of ordered and disordered curves of Naskh and Muhaqqaq scripts which Damoon has put in order with lines, edges, and circles. Putting Naskh with its rebellious curves into a geometrical framework is like taming a wild horse. This type is composed of two light weights with rounded edges and two bold weights with sharp edges. Even though it is different in weight from Diba, the two types are very similar in details and might have a common gene.
The Chista typeface, designed for writing names on a map, is based on geometry and regular angles and has no calligraphic style. Damoon has achieved a unique aesthetic in designing typefaces based on Naskh and Muhaqqaq. Nevertheless, Chista, his first typeface of this kind, is so far from his other work (since the beauty of Persian type is always measured with the yardstick of Naskh). The reduced number of baselines and, subsequently, the same height of the teeth and the components on the baseline, along with the extremely enlarged cavities and the short lower baseline has created letters that resemble Latin types and are disapproved according to the criteria of Nask.
Among the many logotypes Damoon has designed, the one for the Tehran Emrouz newspaper faced him with many problems. He was nearly hurt by politicians, just like his professional ancestors, Mir Emad, Mirza Gholamreza, and Emad al-Kottab. This dancing logotype preoccupied the parliament members! After some years, he designed the Adab Nasta’liq typeface for the same newspaper in two weights (the Khafi style for text and the Jali style for display). Needless to say, designing such type required theoretical knowledge and practical mastery of Nasta’liq calligraphy. The Adab typeface contains several glyphs and follows the Qajar style of calligraphy. The elegance of calligraphy is lost in the implementation process in the similar type styles designed by others. However, Diba is full of details that are preserved exquisitely and maturely. This is particularly true in its Jali weight, which is suitable for large-sized writing.
Damoon is now in his early forties and possesses an admirable level of experience, skill, and professional background. It can be sure that he will never become tired of following this uphill path. Perhaps while we are reading this text he is sitting at his desk and is working. But one thing is certain: Persian writing needs several Damoons to remain fresh and lively.
* extract from a poem by Shah Nematollah Vali
1.Dandaneh or tooth: Medial position of some Persian letterforms
2.Quick, sudden movement of pen at the end of certain letters
3.Kaf-e Sheipouri is the kashida (elongated) form of Kaf (ڪ)
4.Ya-e Bargardan is the kashida (elongated) form of Ya (ے)
5.Sarak, Torreh or Tarvis is a calligraphic triangular shape connected to vertical letterforms such as "Alif"