Design critics

Of all the disciplines related to design in Turkey, architecture is the one that has the strongest culture of critique and critical debate. In the field of industrial design however, the culture of critique is not well developed. The attitude towards the work of Turkish designers has been to encourage and support them rather than one that focuses on the development of a critical tradition. In the beginning, both industrial designers and the industries that used design, most needed promotion of design as a way to move forward. As the industrial design activity in industry has increased and many design related events have been organized in recent years however, some people started to evaluate these activities with a critical perspective. Below we will mention some of them.

Professor H. Alpay Er from ITU has a column in the monthly published design magazine XXI. He writes regularly about various matters relating to design such as problems or professional organizations of designers, the lack of political consciousness among the design community in Turkey, design policy, education and management. Professor Tevfik Balcıoğlu from Izmir University of Economics used to have a column in the same magazine writing regularly on different aspects of design.

The writer of the book which accompanied the exhibition titled ‘Turkish Touch in Design: Tasarıma Türk Dokunuşu, Gökhan Karakuş’ also writes on the happenings in architecture, design and art in Istanbul in various Turkish and foreign magazines and recently on his blog (http:// Istanbulmetro.com)

Apart from these names, academics in some prominent industrial design departments which have strong international connections are very active in sharing their knowledge and ideas on different aspects of design in both national and international mediums. Some of the articles written by these academics in relation to the issues of interest in the Turkish design scene can be seen in the list of references.

Designers working in the field of graphic design such as Rauf Kösemen and Ömer Durmaz are also very active and lead web sites and forums on issues related to various aspects of design (e.g. http://tasaplatform.org/)