This was more or less my first exposure to actual graphic design from Iran. I'd been helping other students in the lab with the posters Ken's class was making for this lecture, so what I was looking at was American interpretations of what they thought Iranian graphic design looked like. Sort of like American Chinese food. I wasn't expecting to be so impressed, but I was, because I've always been really enamored with cultures that I have absolutely no biological roots to.
I was extremely excited about a lot of the pieces that Ms. Toontoochi showed because I actually took a Typography course with Ken a few semesters ago, and it made me obsessed with letterform. The things that these artists were able to do with the Persian Alphabet were really just sweeping and beautiful, and around about impossible to accomplish with ours.
Not that there's anything wrong with the Roman Alphabet. I just haven't seen a lot of Old English calligraphic forms in magazine advertisements lately.
I guess one of the reasons I seem to be so drawn to foreign imagery is because status quo USA rejects their traditional roots. Actually, the U.S. technically has no traditional roots because caucasian american culture is made up of people who decided to leave Europe for some reason or other. And in general, the average american doesn't really have any particular interest in their heritage other than "Oh hey, I'm Irish! Let's drink!" and football. Not that there's anything wrong with drinking and football, but it just seems much less interesting to me than say, the Renaissance Festival or the latest manga that's come out. Then again, I also consider myself a squirrelly escapist hippie artist kid, too.
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