The Iranian-born graphic designer Behnam Raeesian recently completed “We Continue,” a series of six posters that feel particularly personal.
As he explained the minimalist approach: “The series is about living with violence for so long that it becomes part of everyday life. About pain, anger, exhaustion and the strange determination to keep going despite everything. I’ve used familiar objects to express feelings that are often difficult to put into words.”
A poster, like any visual communication, should speak for itself, but I asked Raeesian to explain his symbolism in these minimalist complexities.
A Tender Threat
“When a society lives through war and violence, children carry a burden they should never have to bear. Their attention is drawn toward fear and political realities at an age when they should be free simply to be children. Yet they still play, imagine and find moments of joy. Childhood continues, with danger woven into it.
“I chose a balloon because it is such a familiar symbol of childhood happiness. Its string becomes a snake, placing a threat exactly where a child would reach to hold it. The bright pink background preserves the playful feeling, making the danger more unsettling when it is noticed.
“I wanted to show how even the things that promise children happiness can become unsafe. For a child growing up under these conditions, joy and danger can become inseparable before they have ever known another way of living.”
Daily Rinse
“A cup of tea can be a small pause in the day—a moment to breathe, gather ourselves and carry on. I replaced the tea bag with a washing machine to turn that familiar moment of comfort into a repetitive cycle.
“I often wonder what happens to us as we absorb distressing news, return to our routines and prepare to face it all again tomorrow. Perhaps what is gradually being washed away is our sensitivity to the pain. The violence continues, but we become more accustomed to living alongside it.
“This is what makes the image personal to me: the uneasy thought that the habits helping us endure may also be teaching us to accept what hurts us. Even a quiet cup of tea becomes part of that uncertainty. Have I found a moment of peace, or am I learning to live with something that should never feel ordinary?”
Hooked on Hurt
“I made a bandage burn like a cigarette to express the fear of becoming addicted to pain. The bandage carries the presence of a wound; the cigarette brings in the urge to return to something even as it harms us. Together, they suggest a hurt that has become difficult to let go of.
“What troubles me is how deeply suffering can settle into everyday life. We learn its rhythm, anticipate its return, and build our days around it. Eventually, its absence might feel like something missing. That is the feeling I wanted to capture: reaching for a familiar hurt almost as instinctively as reaching for another cigarette.
“This is personal because I worry about how much of that familiarity I carry within myself. The smoke gives that fear a quiet form. Something is being consumed, slowly, while the gesture has become ordinary.”
Return to Sender
“I combined a boomerang with the radiation symbol to capture the dread of something returning after we thought it had gone. As it travels away, there is a moment when distance can feel like safety. But the curve is already bringing it back.
“What hurts most about this image is that the people who suffer its return may have had no part in throwing it. I think of someone at home, making ordinary plans for tomorrow, whose life can be overturned by a decision made far away. The title says “Return to Sender,” yet the return address could belong to an entire generation.
“The soft curves almost make it look like a toy. That familiarity unsettles me: something we can casually hold and throw carries a threat far beyond our hands. I wanted to express how fragile our sense of safety becomes when people believe they can send destruction into the world and remain untouched by its return.”
Necessary Ruin
“This is one of the most painful images in the series for me. It comes from the feeling of being pushed into a corner where a better future seems to demand something of you that you may never recover. You want to live, to make plans, to grow old. Yet you find yourself thinking about what you might have to sacrifice so that those who come after you will not have to endure the same things.
“I joined a wrench with a bomb because I wanted the desire to repair and the impulse to destroy to inhabit the same object. Under unbearable conditions, the thought can take hold that something must first be broken before anything can be rebuilt. There is a deep sadness in reaching that point—in struggling to imagine a gentler way for change to happen.
“For me, the wrench still carries the wish to make life better. That wish survives inside a frightening shape. I think of people holding on to the possibility of a future they may never get to share, hoping that someone they will never meet might one day live more freely. What makes this image so bitter is the distance between wanting a life of your own and feeling that you must give so much of it away.”
We Continue
“For me, this image holds as much hope as sorrow. I placed grave markers along an infinity loop because continuing means carrying those we have lost into days they will never see. The line keeps moving, but it never becomes free of their absence.
“After all the fear, failure, disappointment, and lives sacrificed, we are still here. Sometimes that feels like being condemned to live: morning arrives even when we have no strength left for it. Yet we get up, care for someone, make something, and find ourselves imagining a better life again. Even exhausted, we still have wishes.
“The infinity symbol holds both possibilities for me: suffering that keeps repeating, and a determination that refuses to run out. I wanted that tension to remain visible. We can feel trapped in the same cycle and still struggle to change what the next person will inherit.
“This is why I called the whole series ‘We Continue.’ There is grief in those words, but saying them also means imagining ourselves here tomorrow. We are still able to say ‘we,’ still able to imagine something beyond today. I want that continuation to lead somewhere—to a life in which we have the freedom and energy to do more than survive.”
