Style combination · Contrasts

Ottoman Tughra × Early Turkish Republican Graphic Design

The end of the sultanate in 1922 retired the tughra (its last on stamps that year), and the Republic replaced Arabic script with the Latin alphabet in 1928; its hand-lettered Latin posters are the deliberate opposite of the chancery's sultanic calligraphy.

From the research on Ottoman Tughra & Dîvânî Chancery Calligraphy

Mix them and make something Ottoman Tughra Early Turkish Republican Graphic Design

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Ottoman Tughra, their arrangement from Ottoman Tughra, the finish from Early Turkish Republican Graphic Design. Not a real work, and not an image of either style.

What each style brings

Each part of the design comes from the style with the stronger say in it, and each style gives at least two.

Ottoman Tughra & Dîvânî Chancery Calligraphy Early Turkish Republican Graphic Design

Type from Ottoman Tughra: Brush & pen calligraphy
Type as image
Colour from Early Turkish Republican Graphic Design: Limited spot colours
Full polychrome
Form from Ottoman Tughra: Emblems & badges
Whiplash line
Composition from Ottoman Tughra: Single focal point
Extreme scale contrast
Surface from Early Turkish Republican Graphic Design: Painterly brushwork

The type

Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.

Display · Ottoman Tughra

Public

Cinzel, standing in for Celî dîvânî, the monumental form for panels and inscriptions, mastered by the leading dîvânî calligraphers such as Sâmi Efendi and Kâmil Akdik; after the 1928 alphabet reform it lived on in a few celî dîvânî panels by famous calligraphers of the last generation, and dîvânî is still taught in Cairo

Text · Early Turkish Republican Graphic Design

The pictorial poster, label and ticket art of the young Turkish Republic, led by İhap Hulusi Görey after his Munich training in Ludwig Hohlwein's orbit, with Münif Fehim Özarman and, after 1943, Kenan Temizan. Lithographed figures modelled in crisp patches of light and shadow, sometimes in only one or two inks, giant numerals and letters, framed emblems and bold hand-drawn lettering in the Latin script adopted in 1928 advertised banks, the State Lottery, the state monopolies and tourism, and promoted the state's new alphabet.

Oswald; Early Turkish Republican Graphic Design used Hand-drawn Latin display capitals with Turkish diacritics (Ç, Ğ, İ, Ö, Ş, Ü) for brand and institution names and Shaded and extruded display letters and giant numerals

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Early Turkish Republican Graphic Design, with a counter-accent from Ottoman Tughra. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Ottoman Tughra & Dîvânî Chancery Calligraphy Early Turkish Republican Graphic Design

#f0e7d2 ground · 36%
#1b1b1b ink · 14%
#cf1f2e accent · 18%
#2e4ea6 accent · 14%
#c89b3c accent · 10%
#3f7a4a accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f0e7d2;
  --ink: #1b1b1b;
  --accent-1: #cf1f2e;
  --accent-2: #2e4ea6;
  --accent-3: #c89b3c;
  --accent-4: #3f7a4a;
  --font-display: "Cinzel", serif;
  --font-text: "Oswald", sans-serif;
}

Use it with care

Ottoman Tughra & Dîvânî Chancery Calligraphy: A tughra is the personal mark of one sovereign and spells his name with a prayer for victory: do not redraw a historical sultan's tughra as a brand logo, product stamp or decorative texture, do not present a new design as a historical one, and never fill the form with invented pseudo-Arabic. The calligraphy behind the tughra and Dîvânî, hüsn-i hat, is a living craft passed on through apprenticeship (UNESCO Representative List, 2021), so commission a hattat for a new tughra and have every word read by a fluent reader of Ottoman Turkish. The tughra is also a sign of Ottoman rule: where that rule is remembered as conquest, as in parts of the Balkans, Greece, Armenia and the Arab world, or is invoked by nationalist politics, it can read as a claim to that rule, so check how the audience will read it. The tughra form is also used for sacred texts, such as Qur'anic verses, hadith and the names of the founders of Sufi orders, and Popov showed a 'tughra of Allah' in Kazan; such compositions follow the parent tradition's rules: never crop, distort or mirror them, and keep them off floors, footwear and throwaway surfaces.

Early Turkish Republican Graphic Design: Atatürk's likeness, the Turkish flag and the star and crescent are living national symbols, and Turkey's Law No. 5816 (1951) criminalises insulting Atatürk's memory, so do not caricature, distort or trivialise them when borrowing this style. Much of this imagery was produced for a one-party state and its campaigns, and Kemalist iconography (the unveiled "modern" woman, the six arrows, Atatürk portraits) is still politically charged in Turkey, read differently by secularists, religious conservatives and minorities whom the nation-building imagery left out. Do not present the regime's modernising narrative as neutral, and do not reuse party emblems as decoration.

The two styles

c. 1324–present · Middle East & North Africa, Southern Europe, Eastern Europe, South Asia Ottoman Tughra & Dîvânî Chancery Calligraphy The Ottoman sultan's calligraphic monogram and the chancery hand written beneath it. From Orhan in 1324 each sultan had his own tughra, composed at his accession and redrawn by hand on every decree: his name and titles stacked at the base, three tall shafts, two nested loops sweeping left and arms reaching right. Struck on coins and carved over gates, it was at its grandest lettered in blue outlined in gold, its loops filled with scrolls and blossoms. Below it ran Dîvânî, a slanting, tightly packed hand. A counterpart of the European royal cypher: one owned mark carried across every medium.

A vintage-style illustrated Türkiye travel poster shows a woman in a red dress and white headscarf looking to the right above a blue coastal bay. A sailboat, hillside town with stone fortifications, distant mountains, and foreground trees fill the landscape beneath large red lettering.

1925–1960 · Middle East & North Africa Early Turkish Republican Graphic Design The pictorial poster, label and ticket art of the young Turkish Republic, led by İhap Hulusi Görey after his Munich training in Ludwig Hohlwein's orbit, with Münif Fehim Özarman and, after 1943, Kenan Temizan. Lithographed figures modelled in crisp patches of light and shadow, sometimes in only one or two inks, giant numerals and letters, framed emblems and bold hand-drawn lettering in the Latin script adopted in 1928 advertised banks, the State Lottery, the state monopolies and tourism, and promoted the state's new alphabet.