Graphic design in contemporary Iran has not only been a medium for representing religious themes, but also one of the arenas in which the relationship between religion, society, and visual systems has been shaped and transformed in different historical periods. With the victory of the Islamic Revolution, along with political, social, and cultural changes, the production of graphic design works with religious themes expanded in various print and environmental media, and in later years, sequential and digital media. These works, in addition to the increase in presence and quantitative expansion, have also experienced transformations in topics, media, visual language, functions and platforms of production and publication, whose historical investigation can clarify the dimensions of the evolution of the place of religion in contemporary graphic design of Iran.
Despite this, most of the researches conducted in the field of graphic design with religious themes have focused on issues such as analyzing the works of a designer, examining specific media, studying a specific type of works, or analyzing visual and written elements. Also, some studies have examined the graphics of the Islamic Revolution or the Sacred Defense, without studying the evolution of the representation of religion in a broader scope and in the historical context of Iranian graphic design. Although aspects of graphic design with religious themes have been examined from historical, media, and analytical perspectives, there has been less research that has examined the representation of religion as a historical and multidimensional process, in connection with the changes in media, visual language, institutional, and functional aspects of Iranian graphic design after the Islamic Revolution.
Accordingly, the issue of the present research is that due to the expansion of graphic design works with religious themes after the victory of the Islamic Revolution, there is a need to examine and explain the evolution of the representation of religion in these works historically and within a framework that encompasses a diverse range of graphic design media. The aim of the research is to identify the developments in the representation of religion in Iranian graphic design, from the victory of the Islamic Revolution to the end of the 2011 decade, based on the study of works from this period. To achieve this goal, the research uses a historical method to study graphic design works as a unit of analysis and seeks to answer the question: What changes have occurred in the representation of religion in Iranian graphic design since the victory of the Islamic Revolution until the end of the 2011 decade?
In this research, the representation of religion refers to the presence and appearance of religious themes, concepts, and visual elements in graphic design works, and it is studied through the characteristics of the works themselves, the media used, and the historical background of their production. Graphic design works are examined not only as products of visual communication, but also as visual-historical documents that provide research with information about themes, visual language, media, production platforms, and historical transformations of religious representation. The focus of the research is on identifying and explaining developments in the representation of religion in graphic design works, rather than a case study of a few works or an assessment of audience reactions to them. This research studies the representation of religion in a range of graphic design media and in their historical context. Such an approach allows the developments in this field to be identified and explained, not as a collection of scattered examples, but rather as a coherent historical pattern. By providing a perspective on the evolution of the representation of religion in Iranian graphic design, this study attempts to provide a more coherent understanding of the transformations in this field between the victory of the Islamic Revolution and the end of the 2011 decade.
The findings show that in the period under study, the evolution of religious representation in Iranian graphic design is not limited to the increase in the production of works or the expansion of religious themes; this evolution is a multidimensional process that has been realized in production contexts, thematic domains, representation media, visual language, and graphic design functions. In this process, religion, in addition to being present as a subject of representation, has also become one of the formative conceptual frameworks in the representation of some cultural, social, and identity issues. Also, the continuity and reinterpretation of Iranian-Islamic visual traditions, along with the expansion of media and producing institutions, showed that the evolution of this field is based on the continuity and rearrangement of previous visual elements in new contexts, rather than on a break from the past.