Raaznet.
For generations, our secrets have been used as weapons against us.
رازنت اینجاست تا فصلی تازه بنویسیم.
A Persian-language brand system and product design for readers whose safety depends on what the brand does not say out loud.
Raaznet is a Persian-first counter-surveillance and digital-rights publication for readers in Iran and the diaspora. The brand had to read as legitimate to two audiences at once: technical researchers who'd dismiss anything that wasn't sharp, and first-time readers who landed on it from a 2am Telegram link.
I led the engagement end-to-end: strategy, positioning, voice, controlled lexicon, logomark, color, typography, iconography, motion, the bilingual RTL system, and the AI-assisted production pipeline that lets a contributor ship a brand-accurate Persian post in under twenty minutes from someone who has never opened the guidelines.
- Sanity CMS
- Next.js
- Figma
- Adobe CC
- Canva
- Remotion
- creative-department (open-sourced AI pipeline)
Every decision routes through Paria or Sina.
A young Tehran professional. Working in a marketing agency. Uses Telegram for everything. Reads news on Instagram. Knows the apps are watching.
- Is this app on my phone watching me right now
- Can I trust this VPN that my friend recommended
- If I share this article, will my account get flagged
A student activist. Writes for an underground newsletter. Lives outside Tehran. Has been called in for questioning twice. Trusts almost nothing.
- How do I send a tip to a journalist without leaving a trace
- Which messenger actually protects me when the network is hostile
- What happens if my laptop is seized at a protest
The story and the design.
Raaznet's visual system is in direct dialogue with Fido Nesti's 2021 adaptation of Orwell. The concentric ring and red spotlight on the cover became the logomark. Nesti's slate and red turned into Cipher Blue and Alert Red. The halftone treatment runs through every Raaznet photograph that ships.
- 01 · The mark Concentric ring + red beam → the Raaznet logomark
- 02 · The palette Slate + red → Cipher Blue + Alert Red
- 03 · The texture Halftone print weight → photography pass
- 04 · The voice "WAR IS PEACE" propaganda → Memory tier headlines
A logo is the argument you make in seven seconds.
Eight months as Creative Director on a counter-surveillance and digital-rights platform for people navigating a censored internet. Two languages, full RTL, and a brief with two constraints that cancel each other out: the mark can't look like surveillance itself, and it can't look naive about it either.
The mark is a circle inside a circle with a triangle cutting through it. Together: not a symbol of surveillance but the apparatus. The machine, drawn.
600 milliseconds. I tested 800 and 400 first.
At 800 ms the reveal felt apologetic; at 400 the resolve was over before the eye registered it. 600 is where the lens visibly forms. Hand-tuned easing with jitter bounds — closer to a pen flick than a spring. The mark holds the rest of the loop. SFX exists in the source files but is off by default; almost no shipped surface plays sound.
Five hues, two type families, twenty-one icons. That's the whole surface area.
Every layout was sketched in Persian. The English landed wherever it fit.
Persian text runs ~25% longer per line than English. The grid was built around the longer language. The audience isn't waiting for a translation — and the page reads worse if Persian gets the leftover space.
نظارت را افشا میکنیم. خواننده را توانمند میسازیم. ترس را به عاملیت بدل میکنیم.
Expose surveillance. Equip the reader. Turn fear into agency.
The voice maps to BJ Fogg's behavior model. Used unequally.
"You are a sentinel. You are smarter than the system."
"The danger is real, but it is beatable."
"For generations, our secrets have been used as weapons against us. Raaznet is here to help you write a new chapter."
What we don't say. What we say instead.
The brand bans certain words. Not for politeness — for source safety. Coded, metaphor-aware language that insiders understand and automated censors miss.
What got delivered. What it looks like.
What's actually live. Across every platform Raaznet touches.
The system worked for the audience it was built for.
Source · Publer analytics · 1 Jan – 12 Apr 2026 · audience predominantly Iran (Semnan, Iranshahr, Tehran)
A brand built around one non-negotiable: it does not get its readers questioned.
رازنت اینجاست تا فصلی تازه بنویسیم.