Pictorial & machine age · 1925–1960 · Middle East & North Africa

Early Turkish Republican Graphic Design

Also known as Kemalist graphic design, Alphabet-reform graphics, İhap Hulusi style, Erken Cumhuriyet grafiği

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.

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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. — AI-generated by Stylogeny from the style’s design choices. Not a real or historical work.

Use it with care

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.

How it works

Letter every name by hand in the new Turkish Latin alphabet, drawing Ç, Ğ, İ, Ö, Ş and Ü with their marks at display size.
Build the picture around one modelled figure or object, painted in a few flat tones, at times reduced to one or two inks, with crisp patches of light and shadow.
Let a single giant numeral or initial (a lottery draw date, a bank's letter) become the picture, often drawn shaded or extruded and sometimes tilted on a diagonal.
Show citizens, families and institutions as calm, dignified and modern, so the state and its banks speak as a reassuring host rather than a shouting agitator.
Hold labels, lottery tickets and bank material in framed panels with emblems, numerals and borders so that everyday ephemera reads as official.
Print by colour lithography on a light paper ground and keep ornament to a frame, a seal and a rule.

Istanbul and Ankara, Turkey; commissions from the State Lottery, the state monopolies (İnhisarlar, later Tekel), state and private banks, savings and tourism campaigns, with poster training at the Istanbul fine-arts academy's poster atelier (from 1927)

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: Isolated object characteristic
Dynamic asymmetry characteristic
Framed panels characteristic
Central symmetry characteristic
Diagonal axis occasional
Space & hierarchy: Single focal point defining
Layered information characteristic
Measured density characteristic
Extreme scale contrast occasional
Typography: Hand-lettering defining
All caps characteristic
Type as image characteristic
Ornamented display occasional
Brush & pen calligraphy occasional
Condensed display occasional
Colour: Limited spot colours characteristic
Full polychrome characteristic
Flat fields characteristic
Light ground characteristic
Earth & mineral occasional
Form & shape: Stylised figuration defining
Naturalistic depiction characteristic
Surface & texture: Painterly brushwork characteristic
Hard offset shadow occasional
Ornament: Restrained accents characteristic
Borders & frames characteristic
Emblems & badges characteristic
Imagery: Painterly illustration defining
Line illustration occasional
Medium & production: Lithography defining
Architecture & signage occasional
Tone & intent: Authoritative & institutional characteristic
Utopian & idealistic characteristic
Warm & approachable characteristic
Agitational & persuasive occasional
Avoids: Non-representational, Abundant decoration, Collage & layering, Experimental & distorted, Lowercase only, Rebellious & subversive

Palette

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#cf1f2e
#1b1b1b
#c89b3c
#2c5a7a
#3f7a4a

Typefaces

Hand-drawn Latin display capitals with Turkish diacritics (Ç, Ğ, İ, Ö, Ş, Ü) for brand and institution names
Shaded and extruded display letters and giant numerals
Milli Piyango '7', İş Bankası '12', Köy Halk Kıraatı
İhap Hulusi Görey's lettered logotypes and labels
Kulüp Rakısı, Ziraat Bankası, Kurukahveci Mehmet Efendi
Parallel strand
Emin Barın's custom Latin lettering informed by Ottoman calligraphy (Anıtkabir inscriptions, 1952–53)

Known for

İhap Hulusi Görey (1898–1986), cover illustration of the primary-school Alfabe primer for the new Latin script, showing Atatürk teaching his adopted daughter Ülkü
İhap Hulusi Görey, Kulüp Rakısı bottle label
1930
İhap Hulusi Görey, Tayyare Piyangosu / Milli Piyango (State Lottery) posters and tickets (1928–1975), including the poster built on a giant red '7'
İhap Hulusi Görey, 'Bursa' and 'İzmir' posters, awarded at the Vienna International Poster Exhibition
1948
İhap Hulusi Görey, 'Yalova Kaplıcaları' spa poster, and 'Egypt for Sunshine, Sport & Gaiety' travel poster
c. 1937, printed by S.C. Allen & Co., London
İhap Hulusi Görey, Türkiye İş Bankası '1952 İkramiye Planı' advertisement built on a giant shaded '12' (Bahçeli 12 ev; Hürriyet, 1 December 1951), Ziraat Bankası savings poster with a diagonal 'Z', and the Ziraat Bankası and Kurukahveci Mehmet Efendi logos
Münif Fehim Özarman (1899–1983), theatre posters, stamps and book covers
Kenan Temizan (1895–1953), Berlin-trained poster artist who made film posters for UFA and Tobis before returning to Istanbul in 1943; 'ECA malgré tout', Turkey's prize-winning entry in the Marshall Plan (ERP) intra-European poster competition (1950)

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