Stylogenyin the style of Turkish Modernist Poster & Graphic Design

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Rational modernism · 1959–2000 · Middle East & North Africa

Turkish Modernist Poster & Graphic Design

Also known as Turkish graphic modernism, Modern Türk grafik tasarımı, Turkish theatre poster (1960s–1990s)

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.

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A large black bird with an open red beak and a cream-ringed eye stands against a cream background, with a cream birdcage shape inside its body. Bold red lettering beneath the bird reads “ÖZGÜRLÜK.”
AI-generated by Stylogeny from the style’s design choices. Not a real or historical work.

Use it with care

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.

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How it works

  • Reduce the play, film or festival to a single visual idea, a figure, mask, eye or object, and set it alone on an open field of colour or white.
  • Draw it as flat, simplified shapes with plain outlines and blots rather than as modelled or painted illustration, and let one exaggerated detail or visual pun (Cyrano's nose, the eyes of a father and a son, an eye looking out of a whistle) carry the joke or the drama.
  • Print in two or three flat inks on one saturated or plain field: a pale figure on black or deep blue with one hot accent of red or orange, a dark figure on yellow, green or white, or two strong hues set edge to edge.
  • Letter the title by hand or set it in a bold serif, slab or condensed sans, and gather the credits in a small block centred under the title or hung on one side of an axis.
  • Take local sources (Karagöz shadow figures, Nasreddin Hoca, miniatures, mosaic tesserae, square Kufic) as signs to be reduced and reinterpreted, never as ornament copied whole.
  • From the 1980s weed out every non-essential element, until a giant word, a field of stripes or one photographed detail carries the poster on its own.

Istanbul: graduates of the poster workshop (Afiş Atölyesi, renamed Grafik Atölyesi in 1967, when Mesut Manioğlu and Selçuk Önal brought a 'less is more' language to its teaching) of the Decorative Arts department of the State Academy of Fine Arts, joined after 1957 by the Bauhaus-modelled State School of Applied Fine Arts (which trained Aydın Erkmen and İlhan Bilge rather than the poster makers below) and from 1974 by the graphic design department of the Uygulamalı Endüstri Sanatları Yüksek Okulu, where Yurdaer Altıntaş, Bülent Erkmen and Turgay Betil taught. Mengü Ertel turned the advertising bureau he had founded in 1953 into the design studio San Grafik in 1959, where Erkal Yavi, Turgay Betil and Ahmet Güleryüz trained. In 1966 Altıntaş, invited alone to the Warsaw Poster Biennale, brought Ertel, Betil, Güleryüz and Yavi to represent Turkey; Ertel's 'Aslan Asker Şvayk' and 'Godot'yu Beklerken' appeared in its catalogue, and his 'Keşanlı Ali Destanı' (1967) and 'Kafkas Tebeşir Dairesi' were accepted at the 1968 biennale of the Wilanów Poster Museum and entered its archive. The Grafik Sanatçılar Derneği, the first professional body, was founded in 1968 under Sait Maden with Altıntaş, Ertel, Selçuk Önal and Güleryüz. Clients were the private theatres (Kent Oyuncuları, Dormen, Gen-Ar), the State and City Theatres, filmmakers, the Istanbul Festival and the Ministry of Culture

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Its design choices

From Stylogeny’s vocabulary of design choices: defining choices make the style, characteristic ones are usual, occasional ones turn up now and then.

Layout & composition
Space & hierarchy
Typography
Colour
Form & shape
Surface & texture
Ornament
Imagery
Medium & production
Tone & intent
Avoids
Abundant decoration, Horror vacui, Naturalistic depiction, Skeuomorphic material, Gloss & highlights, Painterly illustration

Palette

  • #efe8dc
  • #111214
  • #c8162d
  • #efd145
  • #007266
  • #36345a

Typefaces

  • 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'

  • 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'

  • Heavy slab-serif display capitals

    Altıntaş's 'Aşk Zinciri' for Gen-Ar Tiyatrosu

  • Condensed grotesque capitals set so large they become the image (Erkmen's 'Bosna Yaşıyor!', 1994) or run vertically along the edges

    Altıntaş's 12th Istanbul Film Festival, 1993

  • The square-Kufic grid reworked for Latin letters

    Erkmen's Türk ve İslam Eserleri Müzesi logo builds the initials TİEM on it; Ertel drew on Kufic for a Ministry of Culture logo (İKSV chronology)

  • A rare blackletter

    the title of Ertel's 'Amadeus' for the State Theatres, with a swash capital A (Kahraman & Durgutluoğlu)

Known for

  • Yurdaer Altıntaş, poster for Marcel Achard's 'Aptal Kız'

    (L'Idiote), Kent Oyuncuları, 1961, 100 × 140 cm (date and size from the yurdaeraltintas.com caption reproduced in Özmutlu 2021): a seated woman built from flat purple and black shapes and a black chair on a full-bleed teal-green ground, the title in heavy white lowercase letters and the credits ranged right on her rough-edged purple dress

  • Yurdaer Altıntaş, poster for 'Züğürt Hovardalar', Ayfer Feray–Nisa Serezli Tiyatrosu, 1967

    two flat drawn figures in green and black on yellow, with the title and credits centred on one vertical axis (Özmutlu 2021)

  • Mengü Ertel, poster for Carl Dreyer's 'The Passion of Joan of Arc' (Jan Dark'ın Çilesi)

    at the 2nd International Cannes Film Poster Competition (1974) a special jury prize according to the İKSV chronology (which adds that the jury cautioned him for sending an original rather than a print) and Kahraman & Durgutluoğlu, or only a nomination, withheld because the poster was unprinted, according to Turkish Wikipedia; then, printed at Ertel's own expense, Grand Prize of the International Paris Film Poster Exhibition (1975), shared with Oscar Zárate. An elongated white figure bound with rope on black, a black cross on its head, red flames below, the title in serif capitals at the left

  • Mengü Ertel, poster for the 1st Istanbul Festival, 1973 (German edition 'Istanbuler Festspiele 21.VI–15.VII.1973')

    a rising sun, the city's skyline and the Bosphorus built from mosaic tesserae in reds, yellows, greens and blues on white

  • Mengü Ertel, poster for the Moscow 1980 Olympics, third prize in the Games' poster competition

    a stylised torch whose flame, in reds, oranges and yellows on a red field, streams up from a white cup to an ear of wheat, with the Games' emblem and 'XXII Olympiad Moscow 1980' below (Kahraman & Durgutluoğlu)

  • Mengü Ertel, 'Le Gardien', French poster for Ali Özgentürk's film after Orhan Kemal's novel 'Murtaza'

    (captioned in Kahraman & Durgutluoğlu as a theatre poster of 1986, though the sheet reads 'Un film d'Ali Özgentürk'): a photographed white whistle hanging from its rope, a photographed eye looking out of its window, alone on a white field; the title in heavy serif capitals at top left, cast and crew in small blocks at the edges

  • Yurdaer Altıntaş, Nasreddin Hoca illustrations drawing on the pictorial language of the miniature, printed as a calendar in Iran in 1973 and published as a book by Studio Vista, London, in 1974; Altıntaş also drew Karagöz shadow-theatre figures (Karagöz: hayal ve gerçek, with Sezer Tansuğ, 1987)

  • Bülent Erkmen, posters for Kent Oyuncuları, 1983

    'Babalar ve Oğullar' (Turgenev, in Melih Cevdet Anday's version), two flat violet eyes and brows on a ground split between olive and salmon, and 'Cyrano de Berjerac', a flat orange profile with a long nose and a red mask string on deep violet-blue, both titled in a bold serif centred above the image

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Make something in this style

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04

Where it comes from, and what it’s close to

Before it

The style it grew out of, and the styles it borrowed from.

This styleTurkish Modernist Poster & Graphic Design1959–2000 · Middle East & North Africa

After it

The styles that grew out of it.

No later style in the atlas grew out of it yet.

Alike in its design choices

Styles that make many of the same choices, related or not, besides those above.

05

Sources

  1. Dilek Bektaş, Türkiye Tasarım Kronolojisi: Grafik, prepared for the 3rd Istanbul Design Biennial 'Are We Human?' (İKSV, 2016), with contributions by Sadık Karamustafa, Gökhan Akçura, Pelin Derviş and Barış Gün, http://bizinsanmiyiz.iksv.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/grafik_tr_opt.pdf (Ertel's 1953 advertising bureau San Organizasyon turned into the design studio San Grafik in 1959, training Erkal Yavi, Turgay Betil, Ahmet Güleryüz, Aydın Ülken and Leyla Uçansu; the State School of Applied Fine Arts of 1957 modelled on the Bauhaus under Adolf Schneck, training Aydın Erkmen, İlhan Bilge, Mehmet Ali Türkmen, Murat Egemen and Tibet Sanlıman; Altıntaş's invitation to the 1966 Warsaw Poster Biennale and the designers he brought; the Academy's Afiş Atölyesi renamed Grafik Atölyesi in 1967, with Mesut Manioğlu and Selçuk Önal teaching a 'less is more' language; Letraset from the late 1960s; Grafik Sanatçılar Derneği founded 1968 under Sait Maden with Altıntaş, Ertel, Önal and Güleryüz; UESYO graphic design department of 1974 with Altıntaş, Erkmen and Betil; Altıntaş's Karagöz figures and Nasreddin Hoca illustrations drawing on the miniature, a calendar in Iran in 1973 and a Studio Vista book in London in 1974; Ertel's Joan of Arc poster, Cannes jury special prize 1974 although the jury cautioned him for sending an original rather than a print, then printed 'kendi olanaklarıyla' and awarded the Paris Grand Prize 1975; GMK founded 1978; Erkmen's Cumhuriyet identity of 1982, his Bosna Yaşıyor poster of 1994, his Türk İslam Eserleri Müzesi logo of 1989 as the first example of a sign language drawn from 'kufi yazı', Ertel's Ministry of Culture logo of the same year using the visual language of 'kufi yazı', and Erkmen's Arredamento covers from 1989; the 'Posters from Turkey' exhibition, Toronto 1992)
  2. Mahmut Erzincan, 'The Evolution of Turkish Poster Art: From 1923 to the Digital Age', Akdeniz Journal of Communication Studies 52 (June 2026): 70–92, https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/pub/ajcs/article/1981593 (1950–1980 as institutionalisation and artistic autonomy; theatre posters of the 1960s by Altıntaş, Ertel and Erkmen as 'conceptual and symbolic graphics; photomontage; visual metaphor' with international recognition through biennials; the 1957 school's Bauhaus-based curriculum, whose functionalist attitude 'followed a trajectory parallel to the International Typographic Style', with a syntax of sans-serifs and grids; 1970s hybridisation of the International Style with local iconographic and chromatic elements; 1990s digital tools; fig. 5 reproduces Altıntaş's 12th Istanbul Film Festival poster, 1993, and Erkmen's Öteki poster, 1996, both viewed)
  3. Ayşe Derya Kahraman and Süleyman Durgutluoğlu, 'Rengin Afişe Katkısı ve Mengü Ertel', idil 56 (2019): 495–501, doi:10.7816/idil-08-56-07, https://idildergisi.com/makale/pdf/1546189288.pdf (Ertel began theatre posters in 1959 with Muhsin Ertuğrul's support; analyses and images of the 1st Istanbul Festival poster built from 'mozaik', the Moscow 1980 Olympic poster with its 'meşale' and 'buğday başağı', the Joan of Arc poster in black, white and red with the Cannes 1974 jury special prize, Le Gardien on a white ground and Amadeus with a black rectangle on cream; images viewed. Its captions call Le Gardien a 1986 theatre poster although the sheet reads 'Un film d'Ali Özgentürk', date the Joan of Arc reproduction 1979, and date Amadeus 1976 although Shaffer's play opened in London only in 1979)
  4. Aytaç Özmutlu, 'Tipografik Sistemler Temelinde Yurdaer Altıntaş Afişlerinin Çözümlenmesi', idil 77 (2021): 1–17, doi:10.7816/idil-10-77-01, https://www.idildergisi.com/makale/pdf/1613501354.pdf (all 104 posters on Altıntaş's website examined; axial systems most frequent, text aligned to one side of an axis; 'Yalınlaştırılmış figür ve formlar, ayrıntısız çizgi ve lekeler' support his symbolic expression; Züğürt Hovardalar, 1967, set on a symmetrical two-way system; Sen de Gitme, 1996, on a grid; reproductions of 'Aptal Kız', 'Aşk Zinciri' and 'Bugün Git Yarın Gel' viewed. The reproductions are screenshots of yurdaeraltintas.com whose captions read 'Poster for a theatre play "L'Idiot" 100x140 cm, 1961' for Aptal Kız, the poster itself on a teal-green ground inside the site's black viewer, and 'Poster for a theatre play "Penniless Vagrants" 100x70 cm, 1967' for Züğürt Hovardalar)
  5. Wikipedia (Turkish), 'Mengü Ertel', https://tr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meng%C3%BC_Ertel (1931–2000; Decorative Arts department of the Istanbul State Academy of Fine Arts; more than 150 theatre posters, Keşanlı Ali Destanı of 1967 among his masterpieces; poster for the 1st Istanbul Festival; Aslan Asker Şvayk and Godot'yu Beklerken in the 1966 Warsaw Poster Biennale catalogue; Keşanlı Ali Destanı and Kafkas Tebeşir Dairesi accepted at the 1968 Wilanów biennale and archived there; Paris Grand Prize 1975 shared with Oscar Zárate; third prize, Moscow 1980 Olympic poster competition; State Artist 1998. It names his 1953 studio the Grafik Sanatlar Atölyesi in Karaköy, where the İKSV chronology has San Organizasyon becoming San Grafik in 1959; and it says that at the 2nd International Cannes Film Poster Exhibition of 1974 the Joan of Arc poster was only nominated for the special prize and did not receive it because it had not been printed, against the İKSV chronology and Kahraman & Durgutluoğlu, which report the jury special prize; it mentions no Kufic logo)
  6. Wikipedia (English), 'Mengü Ertel', https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meng%C3%BC_Ertel (first theatre poster exhibition in 1969, shown in Berlin, Warsaw and Brussels; posters in the collections of museums in Warsaw and Munich)
  7. Wikipedia (Turkish), 'Yurdaer Altıntaş', https://tr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yurdaer_Alt%C4%B1nta%C5%9F (1935–2019; entered the Academy's Decorative Arts department in 1952 and graduated from the advanced Afiş Atölyesi in 1957; 1964 solo exhibition at the Türk Alman Kültür Merkezi described as Turkey's first graphic design exhibition; first Turkish designer published abroad, in Gebrauchsgraphik, 1965; led the founding of the Grafik Sanatçılar Derneği in 1968; best known for theatre and film posters; taught at UESYO from 1976 and at Mimar Sinan until 2002)
  8. Wikipedia (Turkish), 'Bülent Erkmen', https://tr.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%BClent_Erkmen (b. 1947, Antalya; Decorative Arts at the State Academy from 1967; co-founded Reklamevi in 1981; BEK in 1995; AGI member 1998; posters for the Anatolian Civilisations exhibition, 1983; every Arredamento cover from 1989; an approach of 'zorunlu olmayan unsurları ayıklama ve yalınlaşma' that peaked in the mid-1990s)
  9. BEK Tasarım ve Danışmanlık, İşler: Afiş, https://bek.com.tr/isler/afis (titles, clients and dates of Erkmen's posters; images viewed: Babalar ve Oğullar and Cyrano de Berjerac for Kent Oyuncuları, 1983; Les Civilisations Anatoliennes, 1983; X. Avrupa ve Akdeniz Okçuluk Şampiyonası, 1986; Hotel Myndos, 1987; Bosna Yaşıyor!, Helsinki Yurttaşlar Derneği, 1994; Öteki / Çağdaş Sanat Sergisi, Habitat İstanbul, 1996; Sahte Kimlikler, Kumpanya, 1999)
  10. BEK Tasarım ve Danışmanlık, İşler: Logo, https://bek.com.tr/isler/logo (Türk İslam Eserleri Müzesi logo, designed by Bülent Erkmen for the Türk ve İslam Eserleri Müzesi and dated 1994 there, against 1989 in the İKSV chronology; image viewed: the Latin initials TİEM in white orthogonal strokes on a square-Kufic grid inside a black square frame)
  11. Wikipedia (English), 'Amadeus (play)', https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amadeus_(play) (first presented at the National Theatre, London, in 1979)
  12. UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage, 'Karagöz', https://ich.unesco.org/en/RL/karagz-00180 (shadow theatre of Türkiye, inscribed on the Representative List in 2009)

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