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Graphic design professor Nahid Tootoonchi has been fascinated by pen and ink since she was a child.

鈥淚 was interested in black and white even before I knew how to write,鈥� she says. 鈥淲hen I was younger, my sister dropped the inkwell I was using onto the carpet. The pen nib went through her skin, and she still has a couple of small tattoos from that.鈥�

Tootoonchi teaches a variety of classes in the Department of Art + Design, Art History, Art Education, but her students know of her deep love for typography. She earned an undergraduate degree in graphic design from Southampton College of Art (England) and a master鈥檚 in communication art from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, spending most of her career creating digitally.

鈥淚 tried calligraphy for about a year when I was doing my master鈥檚 degree,鈥� Tootoonchi says. 鈥淏ut I stopped until I became interested in poster design in Iran, around 2007 or 2008. It is famous internationally within the design community, and I was really intrigued by how they use calligraphy, typography and their ancient art effects in designing for the 21st century.鈥�

Earlier this year, she took a workshop in Morocco with a master calligrapher to explore the use of the letterforms as a medium for her artwork, calling practicing calligraphy a 鈥渓ifetime learning process.鈥� One she finds very meditative.

鈥淲hile writing, your pen, your hand, your body join, and you have no choice but to concentrate on that simple movement,鈥� she says. 鈥淵ou think about the content to determine how you want to write it. That鈥檚 very important. When I was in Marrakech, we worked on a poem by Rumi that says,鈥榃e are the body, the holder but our being is from her/him.鈥� The work must have many different layers behind the poetry to truly convey the meaning.鈥�

Tootoonchi practices a 14th-century Persian style called Nastaliq, using organic inks written with a bamboo pen on handmade paper.  

鈥淟et鈥檚 say you鈥檙e writing the word silent,鈥� Tootoonchi says. 鈥淭he stroke of one of the letters may be drawn much longer to convey its meaning. In the English alphabet, letters sit side by side to create a word. In Farsi, sometimes letters stack on top of one another to create a word, and letters must connect to read easily. The shape of a letter changes if it鈥檚 used in the beginning, middle or at the end of a word, so there is a lot of potential for being playful, becoming an art form.鈥�