AZAD is a non-commercial on-going collaboration between a group of young Iranian graphic designers and Azad Art Gallery in Tehran, since 2008.
Every two weeks, an exhibition is organized in the gallery. For each of these exhibitions, one graphic designer of the project creates a specific poster. The catalogue of the exhibition is printed on the backside of the poster. This poster-catalogue is then folded up and sent to the public as an invitation. This project was designed by Reza Abedini in 2008 and has been running under the art direction of Aria Kasaei and thanks to the coordination of the Studio Kargah since then.

In 8 years, 43 designers have taken part in this project and more than 350 posters have been designed, printed and distributed. The continuity of this project has drawn the attention of public and cultural organizations in Iran to the importance of visual identity and led them to start new cooperation with graphic designers. Moreover, this project has had an enormous influence on poster design and on Persian/Arabic typography in the region.

The first exhibition of this project took place in Tehran in 2009. The second show was held at the Bethanien Art Centre in Berlin in 2012 as a part of the “Right-To-Left, Graphic Design from Iran & Arab world” event. In November 2014, the exhibition moved to Maxxi Foundation in Rome as a part of “IRAN, Unedited History” event. The next hosts of this project in 2016 were LAU – the Lebanese American University in Beirut and Hinterland Galerie in Vienna. On the occasion of the Graphic Design Festival 2017 at the Musée des arts décoratifs, Paris will be the 6th destination of this project.

Idea & Design: Reza Abedini
Art Direction: Aria Kasaei
Co-ordination: StudioKargah
Project Advisor: Samira Kaveh

Participant Designers: Mohammadreza Abdolali, Cassra Abedini, Reza Abedini, Mojtaba Adibi, Ali Asali, Alireza Askarifar, Shahrzad Changalvaee, Homa Delvaray, Maryam Enayati, Golnaz Esmaili, Farhad Fozouni, Behrad Javanbakht, Aria Kasaei, Sam Keshmiri, Mohammad Khodashenas, Ali Meer Azimi, Leila Miri, Masoud Morgan, Omid Nemalhabib, Peyman Pourhosein, Iman Raad, Sanaz Soltani, Rambod Vala