Investigating the Discourse of Cultural Identity in the Typography of Iran's 90s Posters, Using Fairclough's Critical Discourse Approach and Kress and Lyons' Social Semiotics (Research Case: Online Museum of Graphic Designers of Iran)

There had been numerous factors and bases included in improving graphic design and using typography in artists’ works in Iran from the very beginning of its modern graphics design genesis. In this way, various discourses such as critical, cultural and social ones had been actively affecting in sense-making and creating typography works. If we consider the typography posters as a product, it is the artist on one side, as a producer, and the audience who receives and understands the intended design on the other. This case is possible to be seen in art of graphics, esp. in typographic posters. These mentioned posters contain different heterogeneous elements such as title, letters, speech, picture and etc. But, the semiotics tool which gathers them together and turns them to a cohesive semantic structure, has been always the pictorial one; therefore the key to understanding such texts is knowing the semiotics tools which identify the existence of the heterogeneous elements (sentence, picture, number, etc.) in a text. The aim of this study is to identify the social origin of signs of typography posters existed in online Museum of Iranian Graphic Designers, and how to represent the cultural discourse in these posters. The combination of two semiotic analysis methods of Kress and Van Leeuwen, and critical discourse analysis of Norman Fairclough is used for cultural discourse analysis of typography posters in Museum of Iranian Graphic Designers. This study is going to reply to the following questions: 1- What approach did the typographists take with cultural identity in 1390s [of Iranian years (the years between about 2010 to 2019)]? 2- What are the influential ideologies on artists’ performance? This paper is a basic type of aim and descriptive-analytical of method. Data collection is done through library and documentary research method. This study’s statistical population is the typography posters in Museum of Iranian Graphic Designers in 1390s in Iran. This museum has started its activity on the Color Palette website in 2014, with the aim of introducing graphic designers and their works to the public and has made it possible so that in addition to presenting the designs of prominent artists, unknown artists can also be exposed; amongst which thirteen designed posters in the above-mentioned gallery are chosen purposefully. Data analysis method is of qualitative type, and for interpreting information the combination of Norman Fairclough’s “Critical Discourse Analysis” and Gunter Kress’ “Social Semiology” are used. In the case of necessity for these posters' semiotics, it can be said; since identifying the cultural identity of the 90s tyopgraghy posters is the most important issue of this research, in order to achieve this recognition, it must be in addition to examining the field of culture and society, which is done via the approach of Fairclough's critical discourse. It is necessary to identify all the signs and attitudes that are coded, and with the help of social semiotics of the mentioned posters, it reached the discourse of cultural identity represented by the designer. Therefore, the analysis of the discourse of the cultural identity of the posters helps to understand the dimensions intended by the typographers in the 90s. Based on the results that came out of the present research, it could be said that formalism is turned to a need in 1390s, to make the designers differentiate the letters from each other; as if these artists knew the formalism of letters as a part of creation style of modernity. In other words, the content is not an urgent characteristic for the 90s typographers in designing the letters, because the form has safely accomplished its mission in creation of letters’ visual joy. The artist is going to start a new chapter in modern art benefiting unimpressively from Iran’s cultural and historical components. In this decade, they don’t intend to stop in historical moment and to try to represent and to submit their art in letters designing, rather than giving scope to cultural controversies; and as culture activists value their works culturally by creating letters which meet the social process; and as publicizers and producers of impressive letters with abstract and formal appearance, they have a rightful role in art’s economy. Conclusively, it can be stated that what is conveyed by the artists either through letters or images are not solely limited to communication methods, since the specific cultural, social and historical necessities of that particular region could be influential as well.