Iranian Women Of Graphic Design amplify #WomenLifeFreedom with posters

On 16 September 2022, Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman, died in hospital three days after being arrested by morality police in Tehran; witnesses reported that she was beaten while in custody. In response to her death, protests have erupted across Iran, and #WomenLifeFreedom has become the rallying cry of the movement.

Harnessing the globally-online reach and visual compelling aspect of protest; design collective and protest platform Iranian Women Of Graphic Design (originally a collection of graphic design from female-identifying Iranian designers) looks to amplify this movement further and has ultimately evolved into a protest platform.

Iranian Women Of Graphic Design is a platform featuring graphics by Iranian and non-Iranian designers who have submitted their work to be reused in protests, many reflect upon and, in a way, report on what is presently happening in the streets of Iran. These are currently available for download from this linked database. Some of the designers featured within the collection include: Frank Arbelo, Gianluca Costantini, Laura Acquaviva, Sara Emami, Hamidreza Memari and Farzad Adibi.

Serving as both a documentation and visual aid to facilitate the protests so far, the platform is becoming cetral in the amplification of voices in Iran. When the protests started in Iran, the platform began to receive more and more works centring #WomenLifeFreedom. The more posters published resulting in the more submissions received.

Many posters raise awareness about more specific problems “such as the inhuman conditions in the notorious Evin prison, where many demonstrators are being kept”, the platform states.

The platform is calling for designers and artists to contribute to the collection, post work under the hashtags #WomenLifeFreedom and #MahsaAmini, and to send them to Iranian Women of Graphic Design to be used as open-access protest resources where possible.

Read more