[PDF] İstanbul's 100 Graphic Designers & Illustrators.

Istanbul's 100 graphic designers and illustrators Graphic design, since it emerged, is the name of the discipline that, in a sense, carries the knowledge of "urban culture", conveys its message and interprets its content. With its economy, politics and art, we follow the cultural projection of city history most directly in the mirror of graphic design. Every document that has been reproduced by being printed with text and/or pictures is a graphic design product. A graphic design product fulfils the function of conveying a message when it is designed, reproduced by a printing machine or projected on a screen. This temporary process is the first stage of the graphic design product. In the second stage, it gains the quality of a source-document that sheds light on social life. Graphic designers and illustrators have always had a relationship with the city or cities where they produce or where their products are consumed: On the cover of some of the books designed and printed by the printer and graphic designer Ebüzziya Tevfik, the place of printing is written as "Kostantiniye". The signature of İhap Hulusi, the pioneer of modern graphic design in Turkey, includes the words "İhap Hulusi–Istanbul"; he sometimes signed his works designed in old Turkish as Istanbul, and sometimes as Dersaadet. Under the works İhap Hulusi made during his student years in Germany, we see the signature "İhap Hulusi–Munich". The information we trace or discover through graphic design products can lead us to the views of Ottoman and early Republican intellectuals on their cities and countries. In this sense, graphic design products are important source-documents for visual history reading.     "Which" 100 graphic designers and illustrators of Istanbul? We would especially like to state that the aim of this book is not to list the "best" 100 graphic designers and illustrators of Istanbul. Although the title of the book may lead to such a perception, a selection to be made based on "Istanbul" can have many constructions. While preparing this work, instead of trying to choose the best 100 and forcing ourselves to be a scale of good graphic designers, we made a different choice. We divided Istanbul's historical process into 10-year periods of production and included in the book the owners of the works that stood out in these intervals, that symbolised or represented their period. We researched those who left their mark in the 10-year periods between 1900-1980. For this reason, we listed the people according to their dates of birth. Due to the limit of the number 100, there were also those whom we wanted to include but could not; and those who, despite our insistent applications, did not want to be included in the book...   Of course, this is not a history book; moreover, providing information on graphic design in Turkey, which has many changes in its short history, will be limited to reflecting only a general perspective within the physical possibilities of this publication. However, we also wanted our research to be of a quality that would provide a source for similar studies; for there is currently no book that tells the adventure of graphic design in our country. "Today, the History of Turkish Graphic Design course is not seriously taught at any of our universities, whose numbers are constantly increasing. There is no archive or publication at any university to support this subject." Therefore, we gave priority to the unknown, the lost, even those that have been ignored. On the other hand, we thought that the visuals we used should be of a quantity that would give an idea about the depths of our discipline to those outside the profession. For all these reasons, while creating the selection, we embraced the diversity of disciplines we observed; thinking that this is the "big picture" that tells the adventure of graphic design in Turkey, we deepened our research.   As a result, we saw this publication opportunity as an important opportunity for our profession, and putting the keyword "Istanbul" at the centre, we set out after those who produce the works that will lay the groundwork for the – needed – graphic design history books. In the end, we better understood how much we need archaeological work related to our field, how great our losses are, and how much we will gain if this gap can be carried somewhere while there is still an opportunity.     How were the people selected? Who selected them? First of all, we chose a "milestone" person, but we thought of the milestone not as a "starting point" but as a kind of bearing. Due to his general recognition and importance in our design history, our milestone was İhap Hulusi Görey. Then we travelled to before Görey; "If Görey was good, who was he good according to? Who were producing in the same period, even those he collaborated with? On what kind of foundation had Görey laid his stone?" We sought answers to these questions. Thus it was possible to also reach a "starting point". Then we set off towards the present. In this process, we gave priority to those whose names were mentioned in related publications, but whose identity and achievements could not be documented.   Since we were after the unknown more than the famous, we stopped the research when we got to those born in 1970. As people from before 1960 became more clearly defined, we started to drop those born in this year. We finally stopped at Feridun Oral, born in 1961. As a result, in this book, we examined the ten-year periods between Ebüzziya Tevfik, born in 1848, and Feridun Oral, born in 1961.   We had quite a hard time, especially while creating the biographies of some people who are no longer alive. We tried to gather information about their pasts by examining the related news in the newspapers of the period they lived in, and by reaching those who placed their obituaries through directory inquiries. We clarified the findings we obtained from information and document sharing, archive scans and oral history interviews with our discoveries, and we made our decisions accordingly.     Why graphic designers and illustrators together? At the beginning of the 20th century, since the positioning and the related definitions for the graphic design profession had not yet been made, those who did such works were generally artists or craftsmen. For example, many cartoonists and painters lent their drawings to graphic design for personal and periodic reasons. These people were avant-garde figures with multifaceted occupations and an enlightened character. It has been observed that almost all of them had abroad experience and knew several foreign languages. Many of them, with the modest aim of making a living, in line with the average expectations of the period, met the need and indirectly contributed to the formation of the necessary infrastructure for the graphic design profession in our country. In visual history and design history readings, the necessity of evaluating findings by separating the design product and the designer has made the owner of most works a subject of research.   Many people in the book were the representatives of the profession known throughout the 1900s as "painter", "press painter", "decorator painter", "poster painter", "cover painter", whose current equivalent is "illustrator" or "resimlemeci". This conceptual confusion seems to have continued until the 1980s. Historical readings can only be made according to the conditions of their period. Therefore, by evaluating what is produced within the conditions of the periods, we can characterise these people as graphic designers. This situation leads us directly to the reality that graphic designers cannot be separated from illustrators. Thus, we can better understand the periodic ties of the actors in the visual communication history research in question.     What we don't know and what we know wrongly! Our research showed that there are things we don't know about Turkish graphic design, and that there are also gaps or errors in things we thought we knew. Therefore, we once again understood that we urgently need in-depth research, design historians, visual history researchers and a comprehensive design museum.   To give an example of what we don't know and what we know wrongly: until today, we thought that the first graphic design exhibition opened in Turkey was the first solo poster exhibition opened by İhap Hulusi Görey in Beyoğlu in 1935. During our research, we learned that a person named "Ömer", whom we discovered, opened a solo poster exhibition in 1932. We determined that the same person also participated in the Galatasaray Exhibitions with his posters before 1932, and that his full name was "Ömer Nuri". We were able to reach a magazine cover work by the designer and a few of his illustrations. However, unfortunately we have not yet been able to reach information such as "What surname did he take with the Surname Law?", "What kind of education did he receive?", "Where was he born?". In this case, we have determined the existence of those who, before Görey – with the values of the day – also opened poster, that is, graphic design, exhibitions in Turkey. There may be people who produced works in this field even before Ömer Nuri. However, we don't think the answer to this can be given with the information we have.   With this publication, you will get to know many people and learn information about important developments concerning the graphic design profession: the answers to questions such as "Who gave the first lesson with the name graphic?", "Who coined the term original printmaking?", "Who is our pioneering female illustrator?", "Who was sent abroad to receive a graphic design education at the beginning of the Republican period?" are in the stories of these 100 people.   DOWNLOAD: Istanbulun_100_Grafik_Tasarimcisi_ve_Illustratoru-_Omer_Durmaz