Christian Solorzano [00:05]

You are listening to Underscore, a show by the Chicago Graphic Design Club. I am your host, Christian Solorzano. On today's episode, I have a rich conversation with Chicago-based educator and graphic designer Sajad Amini. We discuss ethics and the role and responsibility of the graphic designer and the variety of ways in which language and semiotics come together to create realities that more often than not are unexpected.

Sajad shares examples that showcase graphic design as both being a method of problem solving but also problem making, and the importance of making decisions that are value-driven and equitable. He shares with us his teaching philosophy and his methods for encouraging critical thinking amongst his students and the reasons why authenticity and experimentation are crucial within the graphic design process. It's a wonderful conversation full of thought-provoking ideas that I hope you find inspiring as I did.

As always, I'm happy to be sharing this episode with you, and to learn more about us, visit us at www.chicagographicdesign.club.

Sajad Amini [01:21]

Good afternoon, Sajad. Good afternoon, Christian. I'm happy to be with you in this interview.

Christian Solorzano [01:32]

So you and I, we both started teaching at DePaul University here in Chicago around the same time. However, you have experience being an educator for quite some time before coming to Chicago and we've, and we've interviewed a good, a good amount of educators in the past. So it's always nice to speak with someone that is that's in the teaching field.

The first question that I have for you, and it's based off me spending some time looking through some of your work, looking at some of your case studies, looking at some of your projects, I came away with the feeling that you're more interested in coming up with questions as opposed to answers.

And I sort of saw that as just playing a large role through some of the projects that I got a chance to see on your website. So I want to ask you, what, for you, what is the role of graphic design? What does graphic design mean to you?

Sajad Amini [02:30]

That's actually a great question. The short answer is I really don't know. But at the same time, from my perspective, when I'm thinking about the design, it's some people believe that graphic design or design in general is problem solving, that they don't have that feeling at all. And some people have, Winelli mentioned, a great graphic designer mentioned that design is a fight against ugliness.

These are some great ideas about design, but I don't have that kind of same perspective about design because in some cases this design seems to be problem-solving, but at the same time it's a kind of problematic or problem-making at the same time. You're taking consider the case of the defensive design, for instance. It seems that all the kind of the benches has an armrest for every everybody who wants to sit on the bench.

But at the same time, this arm set is preventing people to sleep on this on these benches. And this kind of idea of the defensive design goes in many different kind of criteria. But the things that I'm trying to kind of say is. Considering that is there is a sole solution to something, and the design is something that can produce that kind of outcome. I don't think it's a kind of accurate kind of definition of the design.

Design can produce some solution, but at the same time it will produce some other outcome that is may not be a kind of desired outcome for that problem. For me, graphic design is a powerful tool, and it's played a huge and kind of very powerful role throughout the history, from the politics, from the social kind of environment, and also designing a product and corporate kind of identity.

So we can go through each of these deeper, but I'm really interested in the power of the design itself and how these tools can make a huge change in the society that we are living in.

Christian Solorzano [04:45]

Yeah. And for you, what do you consider to be some of the most powerful forms of graphic design today?

Sajad Amini [04:51]

So you mentioned about kind of at the beginning of the conversation, you mentioned that your work is kind of more asking a question. Now I'm asking myself question many times. So when I was looking at this kind of plaque of Apollo 11, mission to moon. And I don't know if you've seen this plaque, that there is a kind of— there's a word says that here human step on the moon with peace.

It's 1969, it's a Cold War on Earth, but the typeface that they used on that plaque is Futura. It's very absurd. It's very interesting. It's a beautiful typeface, but at the same time it's very absurd that what kind of typeface we use to introduce peace to extraterrestrial entities outside that we don't know anything about them. And we present ourselves as peaceful creatures, but we are at the same time, we are experiencing war, Cold War, and on Earth at the same time.

So these are the questions, or you are going back and you're going back to 2000 election that was between Al Gore and Bush. And I don't know, have you heard about this story of the graphic designer who made a mistake and designed a kind of a butterfly ballot that people mistakenly kind of put the ballot— they vote for Al Gore for someone else, and Al Gore lost that election. And then you, after that, in 2003, you have Iraq War.

And we can think about it. And so if that incident didn't happen, Did we still have rock war? So these are the questions that you can ask, and there are many examples of such a thing that the power of design changed the trajectory of the world forever. And I have a bunch of this kind of example. But that's the part that is very interesting for me.

And at the same time, I'm thinking about what are the components of design, that one of those is the typography that is very interesting and fascinating to me as somebody who can kind of speak almost 4 languages, that I can compare the kind of the differences between the word and sign. That amazes me and helped me to kind of produce some work that kind of questioned the nature of the design and the work that we did.

Christian Solorzano [07:14]

So it seems like you really just love to deconstruct what design is and sort of look at it from different angles, which I think is really necessary. And sometimes I think it's much more interesting than, graphic design that's used for consumerism or things for profits. But I mean, with both domains, whether it's, a plaque on the moon or packaging for cereal, I think that they both inherently have some sort of power to manipulate and to deceive.

And I think there's always those two sides of the coin, and there's always that power dynamic that I just see throughout your work a lot.

Sajad Amini [07:51]

Yeah, and I think the most problematic part of design and graphic design specifically is the language and typography. I think that's the most important because the reason that I'm saying language, it's not just about the language, it's all about the sign and semiotic. That's a kind of the major kind of component of my whole projects that I have done so far. David Brainford wrote a recent book, a New Program for Graphic Design, and he categorized this program to 3 things: typography, gestalt, and interface.

And I think it's a very interesting book, but the component that I'm missing in that book is the semiotic, the part that is kind of talking about how we, how we understand sign. And the majority of this sign associated with the language. I can give you a very simple kind of example. I'm right now I'm working on a project. It's called the Language is not Innocent. And the idea came to my mind when I moved from Iran to US in 2017.

It was a kind of President Trump era travel ban against my country. So there was zero communication. There were a huge amount of sanctions. And I started kind of filing my first year taxes, and I was looking for the forms. And I found out that the form that associates with people like me that comes to US as an international student is non-resident aliens. This is the title of the people that comes to this country as a foreigner.

And it was, I was kind of very kind of interested in what is the meaning of this word alien, non-resident. And I was thinking about how this language, how this word is kind of defining me. And the typeface was Helvetica of Arial, the knockoff of Helvetica. And I was thinking about the whole thing, and then I got involved more and more in the language and comparison between English language and Farsi or Turkish, my other languages.

And it's very interesting that you have, for instance, in this project, I'm thinking about some alphabets. So you have a, B, C, D, N. And as soon as you add the asterisk to one of these components of alphabet, the meaning completely changed. The a became an a word, the B became a B word, the C, and all the way you can, I guess, the rest of that.

And how we change the meaning of the simple sign with just adding one component to the basic of the language, the alphabet. And these things happen all around the world. It's not kind of just limited to the English language and Latin kind of alphabet, but it's something that is very interesting. And then you can start kind of questioning the nature of this language. I was kind of working in a grad school, and we had this class called Studio Practice in University of Oregon.

So in the description of the course, it says that you need to work for the a grade, you need to work at least like 3 hours, 4 hours in the, in the studio as an artist. And I was thinking about how they can measure my working, me working on a art project in the studio. So if you go to my website, the background of the art project is a door of my studio, and there's 2 signs.

It says, we are making art, we are not making art. So I make this kind of light box that I can kind of change the lighting behind these 2 phrases. So I turned the light on when I was thinking about making an art project that helped my faculty, my mentors, to figure it out that this student actually working on art project, and it just kind of showed the absurdity of the language of the description of that course.

So I really interested in kind of playing with this tiny micro association with the meaning of the language and deconstructing, as you mentioned. And also it's a kind of the kind of the specific word associated with the poststructuralist thoughts about the language. And it's really fascinates me how the language itself actually works and how powerful it could be.

Christian Solorzano [12:19]

Tell us a little bit about— so you grew up in Iran, and I'm curious about hearing some of— hearing you speak about some of the, some of the visual media that perhaps you were consuming, and maybe what were some of the earliest forms of graphic design that sort of, stayed with you and that perhaps to this day still holds some influence over the work that you do?

Sajad Amini [12:40]

So going back to Iran, I studied cinematography and photography in my bachelor, and at the same time I was working as a graphic designer. And the things that at that moment was very important for us because we are— we were living and we are still living in the sanctions. So no Adobe, no camera, no nothing. So still you cannot have access to that unless you have some Huge amount of money you want to spend, and all of those is kind of not legally reached to Iran.

So for in that moment, the most important part of graphic design and design in general for us was the technology that we didn't have access to. So, and it was really important. But at the same time, I was working in as a kind of freelancer and some agency as a graphic designer. But as soon as I kind of, I kind of work, and when I work with many companies in that time, and unfortunately many of them, after kind of many sanctions, they went bankrupt.

So, and I lost a huge amount of my resume in that I've worked with many companies in Iran. But then when I moved to US and I had this opportunity to kind of compare these 2 situations. In 2017 and life in diaspora and how things is different from the point of view of the person who lives in Iran and the person who lives— Iranian person who lived in US.

That kind of started a kind of questioning my being, my identity, my subjectivity, and how I feel about everything, how these kind of things are kind of Even your nationality, your ethnicity, if you wanted to fill out the form.

I remember I went to the Social Security office in Portland, and I was trying to kind of fill out the form, and I asked the officer, "I couldn't find the things that associate with my the people from my region." And he said that, "Where are you from?" I said, "I'm from Iran." And he said, "Oh, you are white." But he was joking. He said, "You don't have privilege." It was kind of a funny joke, and.

But, the things that happened is that was the first time that I noticed, oh, in the census, I'm considered as a white person. But that's associated with the history of Jesus and the things that happened in the Middle East. Oh, okay. So people from the Middle East are considered as white. And you start kind of considering, oh, okay, so how this language defines you in this country, how people Defining you in this country, and then you are thinking about this association of the language and identity.

So I started kind of questioning all of that, and it's not just about the just the location; it's about the whole life experience for me. So, for instance, I was kind of I remember I was watching a series. I don't know what series I was watching, but there's this phrase at the beginning of the series. It says, "This is a true story." And I was pausing that phrase for a couple of hours, and I'm just reading that phrase. This is a true story.

And when you're thinking about the word true and a story, the true is something factual, is objective, and the story is a subjective thing. When we put these together and fuse them, the synthesis is something based on fact. But it's all a story and questioning this thing. And then I started thinking about that and making some work about it. And I thinking about a neon, a continuous light that comes from the language.

And I made that sign that I had some exhibition about that in Portland, Oregon. But that's kind of how I associate my personal experience of life coming to US and the work that I'm producing. Until now and how the language kind of played a kind of very important role in my life.

Christian Solorzano [16:58]

So on your website you speak a little bit about some of the— you, you've been an educator for some time and most recently you were a professor at Georgia State University and now here in Chicago at DePaul University. And I want to ask you a little because I, in my opinion, I think the educator plays a huge role in sort of like dictating the industry and sort of the future of new generations of graphic designers.

And I think, I'm sure when both you and I were learning graphic design many years ago, like it was just like a very different world. Like the problems were probably still there, but I think technology and media sort of shifts the way that people perceive reality.

So for you, what sort of like, what role do you see graphic design education playing, and how do you balance that line of having critical mindsets and being someone that questions authority and questions power structures, but at the same time, the other side, which is more about your career and the more capitalistic approach to design that's, about having a job, having money, having clients, all that? What is— what are those 2 worlds? How do they exist for you?

Sajad Amini [18:29]

There's a huge gap. There's a huge gap between kind of making your ends meet and also being a person that you are proud of. That's a huge gap. And but I think the, as you mentioned, the role is very important. The culture, the things that I would say is the culture from different region is completely different. So West Coast is mostly kinds of conceptualization of design and art. It's very associated with the kind of the concept and idea behind the work.

When you go to the South, it's more about the values and the beliefs. And here in Chicago is more about the corporate and the kind of the business and our old friend capitalism. So this is a kind of different dynamics that I witness throughout this kind of 3 regions that I worked as— I studied and also I work as educator. I think the role is very important. There are 2 sides of teaching design that I think it's very important.

One of those is teaching the student being a creative, critical thinker, and the other part is teaching a student be that a student needs to be a creative producer or creative, a creative mind. I think there is huge differences between these 2, that being critical is talking about or kind of evaluating or kind of deconstructing that something exists there. But being creative is about something that hasn't been produced. It's not exist. It's just an idea.

The second part is the hardest part, because you are talking about something that is not tangible for the student. And I think that's important role of an educator, that how we can kind of build a kind of infrastructure for this student that they can produce that something doesn't exist. And as you mentioned, from the time that we learned graphic design till now.

Many things change, and specifically this year, last year, we have this kind of idea of AI that came into the picture, and everybody got freaked out that Midjourney gonna be the new graphic designer, and we don't need any agency and all of those things. I don't really worry about the AI. I have my own point of view about AI, but one of the things that is very important here is Žižek, the philosopher, is talking about capitalism, and he's saying that capitalism doesn't sell you the product.

It's selling you the desire. It's selling you that what you need to kind of desire in your life instead of that the product itself. And I think one of the things that is very important is for us as an instructor to teach to our student is a conscious design, a design that is conscious.

It has this kind of idea that what's going on around the world, and what is my position as a designer, that what I'm gonna do with the powerful that I have in my hand. So I think that part is very important. And you can see in many kind of companies right now we have this kind of the brand profile. We didn't have that back in the day. It was just the identity, and the identity was the color, what the font, what.

But right now we have the profile. The brand is talking. The brand has a social media. The brand has opinion, political opinion. And these are the things that is a new thing that we are facing with. And as a designer, we need to think about that how this brand's gonna evolve throughout the time, how this brand can communicate with the clients and the target audience. So these are the parts I think very interesting in the new graphic design world.

But at the same time, AI and the tools, it's on a other story that we can kind of talk about the AI if you like, but I think that's not a huge problematic issue right now.

Christian Solorzano [22:46]

So going back to what you were talking about, which was power of language. I think it's interesting because, and from what I see, I think as designers, we need to be a little bit more honest about the decisions that we're making and like the results that are happening as a result of those decisions.

Because to your point, I think sometimes what we're doing is, yes, we're creating desires for people to want something, and those desires often aren't very— I mean, they're not taking into consideration the best interest of the person. And I often see in graphic design that we tend to celebrate things in a very binary way as like, this is good or this is bad.

But we don't really dive deep into— we don't really have a criteria or like an assessment of why things are good or why they're bad. And I think it would be, it would, it would be really interesting if we could be more honest and if we could say, this project is winning an award because it was— it did the best job at like manipulating or raising, obesity.

Yeah, I just find it so strange that I think just as an industry, our values, I think, need a lot of work. Yeah.

Sajad Amini [24:06]

And, sometimes when you're thinking about the history of graphic design, that is, I think it's very important for the student to know. Few days ago was the anniversary of the Iranian 1953 coup that MI6 and CIA both together overturned a democratic elected kind of prime minister, Dr. Mosaddegh. And after that, we didn't have any democratic systems, and we are fighting for it right now.

But the one of the kind of the most important player in that coup was a company that right now called BP, British Petroleum, that has a beautiful greenish kind of flower shape logo right now. They changed the logo many times. The actual name of the company back in the day was Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, and they participated in a coup, and after that they changed the name. And then they have a leak, like oil leak in the ocean. They ended up. Changing.

And the new logo is from 2000, I believe. And they kind of trying to change this logo and creating a new image for the company. And you have the same history about a story about the Facebook that they changed to Meta, and many other kind of companies that they rebranded themselves to kind of erase the history. And that's how design actually act as a kind of some kind of cover-up for this.

And I was many times I was thinking by myself that if they offered me a huge amount of money to rebrand this company, what should I do? One side you're thinking about, oh, I need to make money. I'm a human being in this world and I need money for bills and housing and whatever. But at the same time, you're thinking about the ethical aspect of you as a graphic designer.

And I think that part became more and more important when you're thinking about the power tool that you have in your hand as a designer. And I think the one of the things that the educator in this realm needs to teach to their student that how this powerful, how this tool as this tool like graphic design tool is, could be so much powerful that you can change the world. With that, I can give you one example of the same design that changed the whole thing.

In 1979, after the revolution, the Islamic government, the provisional government, they didn't have the kind of a public international kind of appearance in the whole world. So they decided to have a referendum for the people to make a decision if they wanted to have this system or they're going to change it. They create this ballot and a graphic designer behind this ballot. They designed 2 ballots. One of those was green yes, and the other one was red no.

And with the very tiny, very fine— I think it's kind of point in like the point size was 6 or 5— they wrote, and with the very difficult kind of scripts that is Nastaliq, they wrote that the constitution of the new system will be announced later. So, and then they had this referendum, and 96%, according to them, 96% of the people who were eligible participated in this referendum, and 98% says yes, we need this system. And that's the kind of role of one designer behind this.

They changed the whole thing. And after that, it's 40, 40-some years that we are fighting to go back to that no. But we cannot go back.

And so this is the job of designer, how this kind of ethical part of design is important for you to make sure that everybody knows what's going on. And that's your job. You can just push this kind of— keep this corner of this text box and make it bigger and bigger for the people to see, change the typeface. It's very important to be inclusive. Sometimes it seems that it's not a big deal. It's just a company. It's just a brand, but sometimes it's very important.

Christian Solorzano [28:29]

Yeah, that's— I mean, that those are, those are the kind of things that keep me up at night all the time. And it's so difficult because I think the graphic designer, from my experience, like sometimes we don't have— there's the stakeholders and there's like, all these people that sometimes you need to get buy-in from.

So I think yeah, it's just, I don't know, like I haven't figured out an answer of like, how can we be better at convincing and how can we be better at like showing that speculation of, this is potentially what might happen if we do XYZ.

Sajad Amini [29:09]

And I think, that part, Christian, is also at the same time, I would say that ethical part is very important, but at the same time, you're really thinking about the design. And you're thinking about the finish of some product. When I, when I'm looking at this Apple computer, and I'm thinking about the finish of the aluminum on the surface, and thinking about the new material for the computer, that's an amazing kind of gesture of designer that they decided to go with this new design.

I really like that part, and that makes my life much more interesting. At the same time, I'm not thinking about the class. The price, the origin of the company, and all of those things. But just a kind of point of view of designer, when I'm thinking about this beautiful thing that makes me happy. So I'm not, I'm not trying to overlook the job of designer to make the world much beautiful.

And still, when you're looking at Helvetica, you have this kind of the feeling of cleanness. So that's the kind of amazing job that has been done by a designer or the architecture in here in Chicago. It's amazing. I usually go for my coffee to Van der Rohe Building Federal Building. These are 3 giant kind of a sculpture that's very amazing to look at. But at the same time, you have that other part that you need to be I wear about.

Christian Solorzano [30:41]

Yeah. So on that topic, what sort of today, what sort of contemporary design are you finding really exciting? What are, what are your examples of really great design?

Sajad Amini [30:55]

I think the most recent contemporary design that I kind of see right now, it's more about the designer and their feeling than more about the kind of the logic and the kind of the principles and the rules. And I really like that. So in the history of graphic design, in a kind of in few decades, we have this kind of international style and we have grunge style and we have this pop style. But right now we are kind of seeing a combination of all of that.

You see the international style the Swiss style comes and sits with the grunge style.

And when I talk— I, I— when I talk to my students about why you did that, they are not shy about kind of revealing that this is my feeling about this and that. And I really like that kind of how instead of the kind of the society pushing this idea that this is the typeface of the year, this is the color of the year, this is the style of the year, I see right now the student more and more, they kind of reveal their feeling.

And I can kind of see some— I actually seeing some things that I couldn't think about it before. Like these 2 typeface, they cannot go together. So you see that typeface that is super organic, it has a huge contrast, it's super contemporary, that they can sit that next to the Futura and it works really well. Or the kind of grungy style and this texture right now comes Right now it's kind of after the kind of this grungy style that we had like 30 years ago.

It comes to the picture right now in the graphic design. I really like this kind of expression of the feeling in graphic design that right now I can see in this student work.

Christian Solorzano [32:48]

I agree. I think that autobiographical, work to me is always really exciting because it's not, it's not something, you could do on behalf of anyone else. It's something that only you could do because it's like, your unique perspective. And I know that you, for example, like on your website, not only do you have like your design projects, you also have your art projects.

And there seems to be this dance for you that goes between projects that perhaps are self-initiated, that perhaps are a little bit more autobiographical, as opposed to other projects that maybe have some quantifiable, metric. So could you speak a little bit about maybe for you, what's the importance of that, of having that outlet for experimentation and for play? And how does that inform perhaps the work that is more collaborative or, teaching or working with clients and so forth?

Sajad Amini [33:52]

I think the good design— good designers are people that are great storytellers.

And I always find a good design that has a great story behind it. The experimental part for me is the part that I can tell a story throughout design and artwork. And I think always in the history of design, those experimentations after a few years comes back and became a style. In design. So I think that part is very important. And I'm— one of the courses that I'm teaching right now, Graphic Design Concept, is based on storytelling, that how you can tell a story.

And one part of that project is with the measurement of the daily tasks that you are doing in your life, like how many times you get coffee, how many times you walk, you talk over your phone, how you can explain yourself and tell a story about yourself in a form of poster and design it that it's kind of that poster shows you and it's became you. And it's very important because that's a kind of main source that the artist and designer can make original work.

But otherwise, it's you just need to follow the rules. There is a rule of thirds, this typeface, that kind of rules of editorial design and so on. And you just need to follow that rules and to produce work. But when you have that kind of personal narrative and you inject that to the work, either experimental work or work that you are doing for your client, you make that work your own and no one can copy that because they cannot feel what you have been through.

So this is, I think this is a very important part. And sometimes I was in this meeting with the parents. They asked me, it was last year. And one of the parents asked me, that's, what about AI? What are you gonna do with the AI? And, when I'm looking at this technology and how it's kind of trying to kind of play a role in terms of design or other criteria that AI is very good at, like creative coding and that things.

I'm thinking about the history of, for instance, photography. When the photo, the camera came around, was 19th century. It was 1822 that we have the first of a photograph. People freaked out that they said, oh, this is the end of painting. We are trying to kind of produce a realistic painting, and this camera can capture the reality in 8 hours, according to Niels Bernitz, the first photographer, and his first photograph. But after that incident, the trajectory of the painting completely changed.

And in 1917, we have Marcel Duchamp who brought a urinal inside the gallery and put it on a pedestal and said, this is my artwork. And he signed that piece. And that's a moment that we call— we went through art with lowercase a to the art with capital a. And change the trajectory. And then we have artists like Rothko that who painted the feeling of his kind of journey of immigration from Russia to United States as a painting.

And the painting is not realistic, but it's not about kind of capturing the reality. It's about the expression. It's about the feeling. And I really like that kind of participatory reflecting in the student work that they can kind of narrate their story throughout the color, throughout the typeface, throughout the composition, and also the medium itself. And it— and it's— I think it's a very interesting kind of having that experimental part and this kind of part that you need to kind of face with reality.

It's a kind of resource for you that you can always go back to that experimental work and use some of the elements and bring it to the to the client work and make it your own kind of signature or your style, if you will.

Christian Solorzano [38:09]

And for you, what— you mentioned a little bit about AI, and I think AI, some of the conversations that I've been having, is very similar to photography. I think artificial intelligence is sort of gonna reframe our appreciation for things that are more autobiographical or things that are more like craft-oriented. Because sure, AI can make beautiful things and do things really quickly. But I think what it, what it misses is that human spirit of imperfection or of, I made this in this moment.

So are there like, for you, how do you see AI changing our profession?

Sajad Amini [38:53]

I think there are some parts that we really need something like AI to make the changes. Like there are some kind of dealing with just kind of understanding data. We have a huge amount of data. You just wanted to kind of evaluate those data or make sense of that. AI can play a huge role or coding. You can use natural language and kind of talk to AI to kind of build a code or kind of write a code for you.

That's the kind of amazing part of AI. And I think it's really also important and efficient at the same time. In terms of design, I think unless we have a conscious mind, the mind behind the AI can feel pain. We don't need to worry about AI right now because the original work comes from the people who felt life and they can express that thing.

That kind of life experience throughout their work. And I'm pretty sure, right now AI doesn't have that ability. But at the same time, these are kind of this amazement with the technology. I think that's something that I need to tell my students over and over, that this is not a very important thing. The technology and the tools is maybe 30% of your job.

They're gonna change. And if you look at the great graphic designer and artists right now, they're not really dealing with the detail of the execution. Sometimes they have some people to help them with the execution.

Just, they just have that kind of the big mind behind the project. They are kind of thinking about how this project needs to kind of go through this path and what we need in this project, maybe what we don't need. But I remember when Before Photoshop and Illustrator, the creating kind of gradient color was a huge deal because you need to use the airbrush and all of those things. When this software came around, people were very obsessed with gradients.

So if you look at the beginning of Photoshop and then CorelDRAW and also Illustrator, majority of the work has this gradient because that was the hardest part that you wanted to do in the actual world with the airbrush and those tools. But after that, it went away because we understood that this is not a big deal. It's not an important thing.

And I think right now AI in the same position that we are very obsessed that, oh, I can kind of think and just ask Midjourney to design this thing for me. That's fine. But in order to think and kind of go through that process, you need to have an ideation process. That you need to spend time on it.

And that's the kind of the most important point for me myself. Always I spend like 70% of my time just thinking, and sometimes I'm doodling about the project, and 30% in behind the software or computer or whatever medium that I'm working on. I don't think that part is the most important part, although right now you see the new trend in design. I think one of the new trends in graphic design is the kinetic typography and the 3D typography.

And 3D world is becoming more and more important because of the— they can kind of produce unreal kind of scenery of the design that I really like at the same time. But I think that's one of the things that is— we are going right now. But at the same time, this part that is kind of thinking about the idea behind the work is much more important than the tools.

Christian Solorzano [42:41]

Yeah, I always compare it to like, I have this comparison or this analogy that I use of like, you could use AI because I've seen some people that will use AI to like write a resume or like a cover letter or like a description of like who they are. But I'm always like, what if, what if you're in an elevator with someone and you have to introduce yourself or you have to talk and there's no technology there to aid you?

In that, in that conversation, what would you say? And I think the same about AI. I think, sure, the work could look great, but if you're asked to talk about it, if you're asked to share the concept behind it and you're unable to, then I sort of feel like it sort of defeats the purpose. It's almost like what you're looking at no longer matters, like it's invalid. So I think the language and like the words that we choose to use just really make a difference.

And I think there's gonna be, I think writers and people that are storytellers, like that's gonna be a superpower because I think, no one else could do that for you. Yeah.

Sajad Amini [43:51]

I don't know if you can put this in your podcast, but Žižek has a very interesting explanation of his prime time with his partner. And he's explaining that what if, and hypothetically, I bring the— his partner— her— his partner bring— brings his— her kind of— he's called this kind of thing stamina unit that is kind of— is a plastic vagina.

And this person brings his plastic kind of dildo thing, and they put these 2 things together to have a sexual intercourse, and they sit on the other side of the room and they have intellectual conversation because they don't need to get involved in that kind of act.

And he's talking about that when I was thinking about the AI and you mentioned the resume, and I was thinking about, okay, somebody is actually producing their resume by AI, and then they send that to the company, and that company is actually evaluating that resume by the AI. This is similar to that analogy that these are, these are the things that happen.

But the problem is that kind of high-quality conversation never happened because in the Žižek example, they have this kind of, kind of, kind of act of conversation. They can talk about something very important. But when you have this kind of interaction of the AI with the AI, you don't have that opportunity to produce Much more important things like that conversation.

So I think it's this is the part that is very problematic for us: that people are actually producing with the AI, and the people that consuming that production with the AI, and that's kind of became a huge gap and alienation with the people. That it's a very similar things that happen in the social media in terms of communication that we thought that oh, that's kind of brings people. Closer to each other. That wasn't the case in most of the kind of social media platform.

So I think it's a kind of similar analogy.

Christian Solorzano [45:56]

Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. And that, and I think that's why conversations like this, and I see, there, there's definitely no shortage of podcasts and shows. And I think people realize the value of these type of interactions because to your point, I don't think this could be, this could be created in any other way. I mean, I'm sure it could be simulated somehow, but it wouldn't be the same.

Sajad Amini [46:26]

Yeah, I tried ChatGPT a lot and I have it on my phone and have it in the kind of bookmark my browser. And sometimes I try kind of to have this conversation. I have, I give, I sometimes I give ChatGPT 3 words to start writing about that, and it can produce a huge amount of language, like 3 or 4 paragraphs about that.

But when you are kind of trying to decipher what it's saying, you see that majority of that is nonsense, is a kind of ornaments around the main idea. And if you just kind of try to concise the whole thing, you go back to that 3 words that you gave.

To ChatGPT. So I think it's in the kind of early stages right now, the AI. But at the same time, Christian, I was thinking about right now in this week, I'm thinking about how I can integrate AI to my course because instead of preventing the student to not using this technology, I'm thinking about, okay, how I can encourage my student to use the AI to empower their ability because it's out there.

They're gonna use that in future, I'm pretty sure. And at the same time, I know that they don't know the value of their own original work. But I'm trying to think about, okay, I need to integrate that AI kind of platform with the project of the class to see how the student kind Interact with that technology.

Christian Solorzano [48:02]

Yeah. So tell us a little bit about some of the classes that you're teaching and sort of maybe walk us through some of the projects. And for the classes that you've already taught, how do you notice that students respond to your projects? Because I'm always surprised by the fact that some of my students one, obviously they're really young, but a lot of them, they grew up with a computer, with a smartphone.

And I think that their approach to just the way that they look at life is perhaps significantly much different than, perhaps some of us that grew up before the internet.

Sajad Amini [48:47]

So it's a great question. I think the hardest part of my job or being instructor in general is evaluation. I don't want to be get involved in that part, but unfortunately that's something that I need to do. So in that manner, I develop a rubric for a couple of reasons. One of those is a kind of fair grading the student work, and at the same time, I wanted to student to get a grade, a portion of the grade.

Grade for the, for the things that they are doing. It doesn't matter if the project is not complete. So if you, if you have done this part of the project, you get a portion of the grade for that. Although in the real world, not representing your work or not meeting the deadline, it means zero. It means nothing. But in the class, they are in the earliest stage of their career as a designer. So I wanted them to have a positive kind of idea about the design.

So the things that I'm doing is I have this rubric that is started with the ideation and proposal. So in all of the projects that I have in my classes, the student needs a week before the final week for that project. They need to propose what they are doing, and the proposal is a document, and they present the proposal. So the proposal has a different kind of section that I produce what kind of section that they need to have in their proposal?

The proposal is mostly a PDF file that they send, and it is started from their idea, a written language, some kind of reference work that they do research and find some other artists' work. They put that in their proposal, some sketches, and some final idea. So they produce this proposal. It depends on the project that what is a requirement of that project? And they present, and we have a one-on-one chat about that proposal. So you're gonna do this.

So what kind of things that you are doing? What kind of material that you are using? If I have some suggestion in terms of artists that they need to look up, or in terms of the kind of the typefaces, the style, or whatever, I'll give them that kind of suggestion. And then we have the final week, in the final week of that project. So in the due date of the project, we have a critique session.

So we put all the works on a wall, and the students start to kind of cold read the work. We just stand in front of the work, and we start kind of reading that work. And after that, the student who designed that project has this chance to kind of talk about the project and See how our evaluation is kind of mixed with the, with the actual designer of that piece. And I took some notes of the student thoughts about that project.

So during those kind of rubric that I mentioned at the beginning, I have this concept. I have the execution part. I have a presentation part. I have a critique part. So these are how like 20% 25% of the grade. But at the same time, the things that I learned from my— one of my instructors in University of Oregon, Professor Ty Warren, that he gave us this opportunity to redo our project all the way at the end of the quarter.

So I have this policy for my all classes. It's a huge burden on my shoulder that I need to regrade the students. Project over and over. But at the same time, I'm telling my student that the grade for the project is— it's not the most important part of the project. The endeavor and the kind of the work that you have done in your project is the most important component. So when they finish the project, I'm grading their project.

And when they— if they are not satisfied with the grade, they have this opportunity to redo the project, resubmit it. And I will regrade that project at this again and again.

So this is the process of grading. But in terms of the project itself, I'm thinking about 2 things when I'm designing a project. One of those is how this project will give this student some insight and teach some principles of design. So this is what puts most important part of that project. And the other side is how this project can reflect in the student portfolio, that the student can use this project as one part of their portfolio in order to get a job after graduation.

So these 2 components kind of play at the same time. And I recently put a kind of some of the project that I have in my class on my website, and I published that. So each project, what is the, what is the kind of idea behind the project, and there's a kind of artwork behind that next to the project that kind of explains what's going on in the project as well.

Christian Solorzano [53:47]

Yeah, I really, for everyone that's listening, I definitely encourage to, and we'll put the link to your website on the notes for this episode, but I really like the way that you frame and the way that you communicate a lot of what you do.

So we're almost at time, but a question that I always like to ask our guests towards the end is, for the— maybe for designers that are in some sort of like position of power, whether it's they're educators or running a studio, running a practice, what sort of— what's your call to action? What do you think our industry needs more of right now? What's missing and what do we need to do?

Sajad Amini [54:34]

I think for me myself, it's the most important component of design is recognition and acknowledgement of the power of this tool and how it can play a prominent role in a people's life. And I think if you have this kind of position that you can make change, it's very important to use it in a positive way. And I sometimes, I have this conversation with my student, and we have time.

I'll talk about my home country, or people living in other countries, or sometimes I ask a student that have other kind of experience to explain how the things are going for them, and how we as a designer can help to kind of to kind of, kind of elevate the situation in a positive way, that there's the project that I mentioned about the CTA. It wasn't a project that I don't have a client for that project.

It was me riding the Red Line every day from North Chicago to Loop and facing with different kind of incident in the train, on the train, and I was Thinking about, okay, how we can elevate this situation. It's not about the train. It's not about the structure. It's not about— and it's about the people, how we can communicate with each other that, okay, your music is really kind of irritating other riders. The smell of smoking, of kind of drinking, or of staring.

And we have this conversation with the student, and they kind of— they have the same feeling. But they didn't think about it. Okay, I have this powerful torch in my hand. I can use that. I can design something and put it out there. Maybe I can communicate with CTA authority and talk about that. But that's your job.

And I think that kind of experimental kind of aspect of your work at the same time with your life experience can make a kind of this tool much more powerful. This is my life experience. I need to do this because I wanted to make my society a better, a better kind of society for the people that we're living in.

So that's the kind of that's the kind of things that you can do for your community, and I'm trying to do that at my best for my student. I don't know how much successful I was so far, but I'm trying to do my best in order to give this kind of impression to my student that. Your voice really matters, and you just need to use that voice in an accurate kind of, in a proper way.

Christian Solorzano [57:15]

Yeah, I love that because there's a big component of empowerment in that. And I think often students need that confidence of like, your voice matters, you have this powerful tool, and your experience matters, and you could make a difference, or you could try to make a difference. And I think that's to your point, like one of the most powerful things about design is that we have that agency and sometimes we don't need to wait for permission.

And that's, I mean, with the club, like that's been a big part of what we do is like we don't wait for permission. We sort of just do what we think needs to be done and sort of leave it at that. And we haven't gotten into trouble so far.

Sajad Amini [57:56]

Oh yeah. Yeah. It's making a huge change. You're like a Guerrilla Girls and in terms of kind of art museum, when you're thinking about, oh, they didn't need any client or prompt. They just started what they felt about the art world, and they started to kind of do something, and they created a new aesthetic for their work. So I think that's a very powerful kind of gesture, and I really appreciate what you are doing. I see in social media and some talk.

I didn't have the opportunity to get involved. Involved, and I'm more than happy to do whatever help that you may need from my side or the classes that I'm running. But I really appreciate what you are doing. And it's great to have this kind of communities that thinking about design without any kind of financial, I would say, Expectation for the community. It's amazing job that you are doing. Thank you so much for that.

Christian Solorzano [59:00]

Yeah, thank you. And like I always say to people, our doors are always open. So definitely we'll be reaching out to you more often.

Sajad Amini [59:09]

Thank you. Yeah, I'm happy. I'm looking forward to it.

Christian Solorzano [59:12]

Yeah. So before we drop, is there any upcoming projects or anything you want to promote or mention? Anything we should be out on the lookout for from you?

Sajad Amini [59:22]

The only recent project that I'm working on is the project that I mentioned. The project is called Language is not Innocent, and I'm working about how the semiotic of the language has a multifaceted kind of meaning around it and we are using that kind of language every day and how it could be hurtful or sometimes kind of disrespectful to some people and some communities. I'm working on that project and I'm thinking I'm creating kind of some posters around that.

And that's a project that I'm doing right now for myself as a kind of personal project. But at the same time, I'm working on a book that is kind of constituted from the huge amount of photographs that I collected from 1979 revolution that the people wrote on the wall and how that depicted the feeling of the people against the kind of politics and the kind of the political situation of that day.

But the graphic design project that I'm doing right now is the, that the project Language is not Innocent that I'm working on.

Christian Solorzano [60:34]

And when you're not designing what are, what are you doing? What's something about you that we wouldn't learn from your website?

Sajad Amini [60:41]

So I think, I think that the part that, it's when I was designing that website, I was thinking about how your website can be a complete presentation as an artist talk.

Instead of somebody talking about the project, you have a website. So you open the website, there's a film. That is kind of screening at the back. It's a film from '80s that has a strange story that is all about my home country and home city and how it's kind of destroying itself. But when you go through the different part all the way to about page, it's explaining me, my— and the about page is that story again that I'm talking about.

My feeling and how I've been through many things throughout my life. One of the things that I really like, I think I always tell my students that if you wanted to get a kind of— became an amazing designer, read philosophy. If you are not interested in philosophy, study art. And that's the kind of second thing that you can do, because if you look at the history, the philosophy is always far ahead of every kind of aspect of art and design.

And then we have art, and then design is following that kind of path. So most of the time I'm reading philosophy. Sometimes I'm watching film and movies. I'm really interested in specific type of arthouse cinema. But, and one of the most important components of my life are just looking at other designers' solutions.

That's one of the fun things that I'm doing every day, that, oh, how is this Michael Beirut is doing, how Paulo Scherer is doing, or what they are doing, or it's a project that they get involved and how they found the solution about that project and what I would do if I was in that position. This is the kind of the fun part for me to think about the project and my position as a designer. So yeah, that's my fun part of life.

Christian Solorzano [62:51]

Great. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for your time. This was a great conversation. And like I mentioned, let's keep in touch because I love what— I love a lot of what you're doing. And I think there's lots of opportunities to overlap on things. So.

Sajad Amini [63:07]

Thank you so much, Christian, for the opportunity. I'm looking forward to that, to more communication and collaboration.

Christian Solorzano [63:18]

What a great conversation that was. And as always, thank you so much for sticking around until the end and for showing us your support. If you don't know yet, we now have an official online shop where you can buy shirts, sweaters, beanies, and a few other items to show your support for the podcast and for a lot of the programming that we do. So head on over to our website at www.chicagographicdesign.club. We have a link in the menu where you could go to our shop.

Thank you so much, and we'll talk soon.