Financial situation

The Advertisers Society, following a model implemented by the Turkish Society of Graphic Design, began to publish a kind of a price list by the late ‘80s. The list included script writers as well as graphic designers. But how many agencies actually implemented this practice and to what extent, remains unknown. For a lot of clients, graphic design is still seen as just a “promotional gift” by the agency. The practice of “creativity without charge” has been a serious impediment to the growth of design companies and freelance design in Turkey. On the other hand, those agencies with considerable incomes continued to provide graphic designers with the main resources for employment and most designers found their niche in advertising. In the 2000s, the era of “sweet and easy money” met its relative end and hundreds of graphic designers found themselves jobless, with the employers blaming the situation on the occasional outburst of financial crises.

Advertising agencies are working on much lower profit margins compared to the past. The financial crises resulted in graphic designers losing their jobs. Low-paid students and young designers are preferred over experienced designers. This negative development caused many designers to quit their jobs in advertising agencies and set up their own design studios in the last decade. The increase in the number of freelance designers can be said to nourish professional competition. 

Today we are facing a more critical situation: designers fresh out of school are employed as “interns” and their services are used free of charge for months on end.