Style combination · Contrasts

Turkish Modernist Poster × Early Turkish Republican Graphic Design

İhap Hulusi's generation modelled figures in lithographed light and shade for banks, monopolies and state campaigns; the modernists who followed worked for theatres and festivals and replaced the modelled figure with a flat sign and, later, with type. Use the Republican posters for warmth and official confidence, the modernists for wit.

From the research on Turkish Modernist Poster & Graphic Design

Mix them and make something Turkish Modernist Poster Early Turkish Republican Graphic Design

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Early Turkish Republican Graphic Design, their arrangement from Turkish Modernist Poster, 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.

Turkish Modernist Poster & Graphic Design Early Turkish Republican Graphic Design

Type from Early Turkish Republican Graphic Design: Hand-lettering
All caps
Colour from Turkish Modernist Poster: Limited spot colours
Flat fields
Form from Early Turkish Republican Graphic Design: Stylised figuration
Naturalistic depiction

Turkish Modernist Poster avoids naturalistic depiction: this is where the two pull against each other, which is the point of the contrast.
Composition from Turkish Modernist Poster: Isolated object
Single focal point
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 · Early Turkish Republican Graphic Design

Home

Bungee Shade, standing in for Shaded and extruded display letters and giant numerals (Milli Piyango '7', İş Bankası '12', Köy Halk Kıraatı)

Text · Turkish Modernist Poster

The posters of Istanbul's first generation of professional graphic designers for theatres, films, festivals and exhibitions. Mengü Ertel, Yurdaer Altıntaş and later Bülent Erkmen reduced each play or film to one visual idea or pun: a figure, mask, eye or object drawn as flat, simplified shapes in two or three inks on an open field of colour or white, with a hand-drawn or bold serif title. From the 1980s Erkmen pared the language down further to a giant word, a stripe or one photographed detail.

Newsreader; Turkish Modernist Poster used Hand-drawn title lettering by the designers themselves, e.g. Altıntaş's heavy lowercase 'aptal kız' (Kent Oyuncuları, 1961) and his condensed brush capitals for Dormen Tiyatrosu's 'Bugün Git Yarın Gel' and Bold and book serif titles centred above the image (Erkmen's Kent Oyuncuları posters and 'Les Civilisations Anatoliennes', 1983, in a Times-like transitional serif), and heavy serif capitals on Ertel's 'Jan Dark'ın Çilesi' and 'Le Gardien'

The colours

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

Turkish Modernist Poster & Graphic Design Early Turkish Republican Graphic Design

#efe8dc ground · 36%
#111214 ink · 14%
#c8162d accent · 18%
#007266 accent · 14%
#c89b3c accent · 10%
#36345a accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #efe8dc;
  --ink: #111214;
  --accent-1: #c8162d;
  --accent-2: #007266;
  --accent-3: #c89b3c;
  --accent-4: #36345a;
  --font-display: "Bungee Shade", sans-serif;
  --font-text: "Newsreader", serif;
}

Use it with care

Turkish Modernist Poster & Graphic Design: These posters are the signed work of named designers, several of them living or recently dead: borrow the method (one flat sign, two or three inks, an open field), not a particular poster. Karagöz shadow theatre is a living tradition on UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity (2009), and square Kufic often spells sacred names such as Allah, Muhammad or Ali, so do not cut either into decoration without knowing what it says.

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.