Mehdi Saeedi was born in Tehran, Iran. He studied graphic design in the Art Academy and afterwards majored in Art and Design at England’s Cambridge University.In 1998, he opened his private studio working with some of the most prominent cultural centers in Iran such as Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, Academy of Art, music centers and the film industry, etc.
He has participated in numerous domestic and international exhibitions, biennials and triennials around the world and has won several important prizes both locally and internationally.
He organized the "Selected 5th Generation Iranian Graphic Designers Exhibition" in 2006 and has attended numerous local and international Competitions and exhibitions as a jury member and also as a speaker. He is also a member of the Iranian Graphic Design society (IGDS) and has taught in the universities in Iran since 2005.
The art of calligraphy in Iran because of the Persian script and the way letters join, its aesthetics and special writing tools is especially important and since its appearance various beautiful scripts were innovated among which the following are noteworthy: Nastaliq also called the bride of all scripts and cursive nastaliq. When calligraphy was first innovated the writing aspect received more attention but throughout times its non-textual use was raised in two aspects:
1-The formalist aspect
2-The conceptual and visual aspect
Various calligraphers in different eras have created beautiful works in diverse forms and inattentive to text legibility they focused on the aesthetics of letter. It was a style of calligraphy that became known as Siah Mashq and its formalist aspect received much attention. Also, some calligraphers directly by use of writing created images from different shapes in which the conceptual and visual aspect surfaced.
In my lecture I will try to show the works which are made applicably by the art of calligraphy, calligraphic-painting and Siah Mashq in graphic design which means I created pictures based on the principles of calligraphy that in addition to having aesthetic property can be regarded as informative.
