“An empty canvas is a living wonder.. far lovelier than certain pictures.”

Non-being

i- aim of Project

“Clay is molded to form a cup, But it is non-being that the utility of the cup depends on. Doors and windows are cut out to make a room, But it is non-being that the utility of the room depends on. Therefore turn being into advantage, and turn non-being into utility.”
“Lao-tzu” from the book “Tao Te Ching”
1- I try to use negative spaces or spaces between the forms as object in Graphic design. As I believe by this way we can extend the borders of graphic design further than borders of paper.
My project is about the designing the spaces in between the elements of graphic design. For me, the design process does not start by putting some shape on a plane paper, rather I design the hidden area surrounded by forms and make it visible. As viewer will find vast fields of color around of objects in poster, that seems are not designed, this part could be main part of design for me.
2- On the other hand, I accept as true that, viewer memories, believes and backgrounds will effect on an architecture space in the same manner on visual composition. The author is not the person who starts and finishes a design lonely. Viewer mind is part of design as he completes the work.
Historically, The minimal artists tried to use audience mind as area of impression. In minimal artworks, not only objects but also the spaces surrounded objects were material of work. Personally, walking through Serra sculpture in Guggenheim Bilbao, I felt different artwork in different moods.
ii- Visual language
ii-1-image the common language of mankind.
I believe that the base of human brain is visual. Our dreams and wishes do not sound or smell mostly. In this respect impressing feelings with a picture is more precise and closer than other non-visual mediums. Even a reader of a book illustrates objects and subjects again in his mind but, an observer of a picture, for example one of Pollock or Rothko’s paintings, does not need any re explanation to understand the meaning. Observer understands the form directly just the way it is. That is why I think, image is one of the most epidemic ways of inviting the whole human race to Peace, Friendship and Humanist.
ii-3 Semiotic
Semiotic is the science of reading the images. It includes the study of how meaning is constructed and understood. In process of reading the image, the visor changes the work by looking from different points of view. His beliefs and background effects on understanding and developing the composition.
An example makes it clearer:
:) :(

ii-4 Audience mind, part of work
It is the window that adjusts how much light can come in. The ears set up amount of message for listener! So, according to audience capacities, potentialities, actualities and limitations the Idea transfers through designer to reader.
For me, graphic design can be an instrument and not just a message. While poster invites audience to involve the work, he improves the meaning and turns around the various aspects of idea.
Using audience mind as an area of work, while breaking the borders of paper, happens in process of understanding. Delthey argues about it under title “empathy”.
For me, If there were not any person in space, if no body feels the space, we do not have architecture. If nobody look at a poster there is not any poster

iii- Methodology:
iii-1 literature and culture
iii-1-1 Rumi

Poem plays an important role in Persian culture; it is joined with our art and traditional images.

Rumi, was a 13th-century Persian poet, Islamic jurist, theologian, and mystic.
He have many poems in case of non-being:

“When you are with everyone but me,
you're with no one.
When you are with no one but me,
you're with everyone.

Instead of being so bound up with everyone,
be everyone.
When you become that many, you're nothing.”

iii-1-2 Sufism
The Sufi movement has spanned several continents and cultures over a millennium, at first expressed through Arabic, then through Persian, Turkish, and a dozen other languages.
One of the basic ideas of Sufism is to minimize the self or individual identity. It is said, “a Sufi is one who is not.”

iii-1-3 Buddhism and Emptiness
Emptiness is a key concept in Buddhist philosophy, or more precisely, in the ontology of Mahayana Buddhism. The phrase "form is emptiness; emptiness is form" is perhaps the most celebrated paradox associated with Buddhist philosophy.
The concept of Emptiness - as explained in Buddhism - questions our belief that we have a separate self and helps us see ourselves in terms of relationships that connect us with the rest of the Universe.

iii-2 Non-being in form

iii-2-1 Architecture
Architecture is not the forms that are drawn but the spaces between the forms. We live between the architect lines; actually, the architecture without free spaces is not architecture. Architect should not only design the frame or forms but space. His forms should be affected by spaces .his spaces leads him to modify the forms instead of modifying the forms to explore the space.
In Islamic architecture we face to non-designed spaces, in this architecture we usually confront inner spaces and not monumental structures. In this system, the architect not designs the form but the spaces between the forms and it is one reason that why this architecture is inner more than being outer.




iii-2-2 Persian miniatures
In the miniatures, especially those from the first half of the thirteenth century, there are large blank areas, often even devoid of painting and with only the papers as background. Or considerable areas of the background are left blank, though there is a gold ground that gives an entirely feeling of space than a real void.


iii-2-3 Persian patterns
Looking closer at Persian traditional patterns, we will face to a non-being in middle of the shapes. This leaved field area, sometimes refers to God or light. This patterns called shames witch comes from shams means Sun, depicts non-being believes .


iii-2-4 typography is white
In Helvetica movie is mentioned: Some designer think typography is black and white, but typography is really white and is not even black. It is the space between the blacks that really makes typefaces. We consider typefaces in the words and sentence but single letters. The relation between the types makes typeface .it is why the spaces between the types are really typeface. A good typographer always has sensitivity about the distance between the letters as well this space leads eye to pass the forms.
iii-2-5 Bowls from 9th-10th century
The inscription placed in a dramatic position. Using free spaces as part of design inspires me.

iii-2-6 Silence
In my point of view without silence we cannot speak, the most important part of speech is silence and in a sense, it is like music. It is not the notes, but it is the space between the notes, that makes the music.
In Music, While the western classical tradition was emphasizing the Continuous, connected words of melody and harmony, eastern classical music was equally concerned with the role of SILENCE!


From the book: Understanding Comics by Scott McCLOUD

iv- Who else has done it:
iv-1-Edward Hopper
Edward Hopper ( 1882 -1967) was a prominent American realist painter and printmaker. By considering at Edward Hopper paintings, we will figure out the main part of the painting is in viewers mind as well.
In Nighthawks (1942) , the painting is the emptiness around the bar and not the bar or in the bar. The emptiness of street makes it cold and dark. This nothing transfers the meaning of the work. This nothing has made this work so impressive.
the painting is not a nude woman but what she is looking at. What she is thinking about what is in out side of the window. The panting is in viewers mind not on the boom.

Edward Hopper painted Night Hawks as an oil on canvas in 1942 Edward Hopper, “Rooms by the Sea”, 1951, Oil on Canvas, 29×40″
Yale University Art Gallery
Edward Hopper A show of his work, including “Morning Sun” (1952), opens on Sunday at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
The above is Edward Hopper’s artwork titled “Excursion Into Philosophy”.

iv-2 Richard Serra, Sol Lewitt and Minimalism
Minimal artists have used this concept in their works. Engaging the audiences is an important issue in minimalist works.

“I am interested in the fact that space is functioning as much as material, so that the void becomes as much the subject as what the surrounding the void and that happens in very very few spaces or places, it happens in some architecture rarely it happens in sort of landscapes ...” Richard Serra




iv-3 Anish Kapoor
Anish Kapoor (born in Mumbai 1954). He has lived and worked in London since the early 1970s when he moved to London to study art
It may be the most valuable insight into Anish Kapoor's work to suggest that the presence of an object can render a space emptier. This quality of an excessive, engendering emptiness is everywhere visible in his work.
He sais: … The curious thing about double mirrors, concave mirrors, when you put them together, is that they don't give you an infinite repeatability… . What interests me is that from certain angles and positions there's no image at all in either mirror. I'm very interested in the way they that they seem to reverse, affirm and then negate…



Sky Mirror Nottingham, 2001


iv-4 Catherine Opie
Catherine Opie (born 1961), is known as portrait and documentary photographer, but I consider her works one step more than portrait photography and documentary. Opie in her collection called surfers, works on field of spaces. Her photo subjects are not only the surfers but the spaces surrounded them.
Icehouses series (2001), can consider as photography version of my illustrations in “Shiny snowy day” collection.



v- End point-(My efforts )
If designer started her/his work with form, Conclusion would not be anything further than it. If start with idea, the idea would find a form to end with.

v-1 How fragile we are

This series of poster is designed for Quanto exhibition in Venice,
Lack of freedom is not intrinsic with prostitution, but is a function of abuse, poverty, bad working conditions, inexperience, and/or desperation. It is therefore indispensable to consider first of all, women and minors as human beings, and as such, individuals with rights (aside from their conditions, legal status, and more or less coerced prostitution activity).
Huge amount of dark space above the girl, an that is under pressure of society burden, depicts why we have to pay more attention to how life goes around us. In this poster the Black area is not only background but plays an important role in design.



v-2 Shiny snowy day collection


While Snow shining in face to rays of the sun. Always this extremely whiteness of snow, which glazes our eyes, inspires me. The coldest element of nature face to hottest one and this high-contrast encountering makes it sparkling. Many of people think when it is dark they cannot see. However, if it was too light, we cannot see too.
In these works, the unnecessary elements have been vanished under the pure luminosity rays of the sun. What we see is only the effects of them. In snowy days, we see some signs of nature and complete the shape in our mind. Just some leftover signs lead us to discover the truth. We see parts of tree and complete it. We look at footprints on snow and imagine the people whom have passed there. We see car tire track and find out here is the way.
I as creator and author do not complete the work, but that being complete without my attendance.




v-3 Up to invisible become visible



This poster is based on one of Rumi poems. Meaning of the poem is when you fall in love then the invisibles become visible. up The negative spaces are an important part of work, until by omitting this unused area all the work will be destroyed.
In this work, form and context depict the same meaning. The relation between form and context is one part of design process. The non-designed area so called background here is the main part of the composition with relation with meaning of the poem.
v-4 poster for homage to Abbas Kiarostami

The idea of poster is based on the motion between the frames. as Using sequences to make motion in cinema. I used it for the poster for homage to Abbas Kiarostami a Persian cinema director. This poster completes in audiences mind and not in paper. so The audience mind is part of the work and the time witch is between the frames are an important point in reading and understanding the idea of poster.

v-5 logo for a consultant-engineering firm
It is a logo for a consultant-engineering firm. This monogram by letter “T” intimates a home. The home shape is made not only by lines but also by the spaces around it.




v-6 Noor complex Logo

Noor in Persian means light; I used sun form in this logo. The nothingness inside the logo, which is a reminder of light, may be considered.


v-7 The Sky is blue…
For me, the design process does not start by putting some shape on a plane paper, rather I design the hidden area and shape by making it a visible form.





v-8 Iran Green movement
In resent months, Iranian people tried to spread their voice by silence demonstration.
People around the world heard this silence!
I designed this poster based on V, symbol of this green movement and the way of splitting the darkness.
In this poster, The black color is not just a background for V but, is part of meaning.

v-7 Quest for global peace

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