Defamiliarization in Logotypes of Masoud Nejabati Based on Edward de Bono’s Theory of Lateral Thinking

If we define graphics as a problem-solving process on a two-dimensional level, visual communication is a visual effort to communicate and convey a message to the audience. An audience that, despite the daily routine and repetition, the busyness of urban life and many other factors such as various audio and visual media such as social networks such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube, passes by with a fleeting and unimportant look and towards the surroundings is indifferent. In fact, this relationship is established when the graphic design product succeeds in attracting the attention of the audience, otherwise we are facing a faulty process. In this way, the graphic artist does not have an easy way to communicate with the audience, and the logo as a graphic design product is no exception to this rule.Creativity is the missing link in the process of attracting the attention of the audience, and various ideas and techniques have been presented by artists, theorists and psychologists to find ideas and creatively solve problems, and Edward de Bono is one of these people. French writer and thinker whose main activities are on ways of thinking, finding innovative solutions, creative thinking and teaching thinking as a skill. Among his solutions and theories, we can mention lateral thinking, six thinking patterns and six thinking caps, which is the lateral thinking theory examined in this research.In lateral thinking, in order to prevent the brain from automatically referring to logical pre-existing ideas that only lead to the analysis of the issue and close the way to new ideas, the person intentionally disrupts the problem. In the sense that he temporarily puts aside his judgments and judgments, challenges his presuppositions and mental stereotypes, and gives field to random impulses and instant ideas, so that by breaking the existing structure, it is possible to build it anew. Lateral thinking is the opposite of vertical thinking. Vertical thinking, which is sometimes referred to as linear thinking, gives answers to old and new questions that are often clichéd and fixed, and in fact imitative and uncreative, and its proposal for the movement of the mind is mostly a specific and predefined path. Lack of creativity and using a ready-made product is undoubtedly easy and inexpensive, and this is the achievement of vertical thinking and exactly what the human brain is more interested in, because the brain does not have much desire to be creative and like other organs, it is interested in laziness and following low-cost solutions. The brain cannot be blamed because it is designed in such a way that it tries to think, react and do things with a fixed and uniform formula. It can be said that vertical thinking is the default thinking of the brain that creates mental patterns and their development. Mental patterns mean the same solutions and repeated formulas for solving problems. Lateral thinking, unlike vertical thinking, changes the structure of these forms and creates new forms.Using lateral thinking is an effort to creatively solve the problem and find a new idea in order to attract the attention of the audience and finally convey the message to him. One of the approaches to attract the attention of the audience is defamiliarization. An approach that started from literature and through formalism and opened its way to visual arts. In 1917, the Russian writer and critic Viktor Shklovsky published an article entitled Art as Technique, which is referred to as a statement and policy of defamiliarization. Defamiliarization, like lateral thinking, disrupts the audience’s visual habits that have been formed throughout his life, causing him to draw attention, wonder and think. In fact, defamiliarization is an approach that tries to defamiliarize everything that has become unattractive and unable to attract attention due to everyday life, repetition, and habit, and present it with a new tone, form, and expression. It should be noted that defamiliarization is a goal, not a means, a goal that can be achieved by various means and tools in the visual arts, which includes graphic design, tools such as visual arrays and Gestalt psychology. Lateral thinking also has the potential and talent of using its techniques as a tool for defamiliarization, which this research investigates.In this research, the approach of defamiliarization is attempted as a creative method in the design of signage by using the techniques of lateral thinking theory including choosing the entry point and the scope of attention, creating alternatives, challenging assumptions, dividing into components, lexicalization, dominant ideas and the determining factors investigated. be placed for this purpose, signs including logotype and monogram from among the works of Masoud Nejabati, one of the fourth generation of Iranian graphic designers, have been selected as study samples for examination and analysis in this research.