“I become happy when the initiative to work on a cover of a book that I read and that excites me is entirely up to me. I think about what I can do for days. I feel like what I do is not enough and always I want to do better. Knowing that those books are in people's libraries makes me happy. In this way, I'm experiencing a sense of immortality.”

ZEYNEP AKGÜL

Ankara- Leyla Çelik is one of the top book cover designers in Ankara. We talk to Leyla Çelik, one of the women who combine their own story with their designs, about her design journey.

Who is Leyla Çelik? Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

I am publication labor. My main job is to design covers for books. My area of interest is generally to make researches on the people of Anatolia and particularly the people of the Black Sea. I am the editor of the collective books called Fadime Kimdir? “Who is Fadime?” (along with Ayşenur Kolivar, Heyamola Publications, 2007) and Yeşilden Maviye “From Green to Blue” (along with Elif Yıldırım, Nika Publications, 2015). I am interested in music, cinema, and literature of the Middle East.

How did your adventure begin, how did you decide to become a designer?     

My adventure started in the summer of 1990 when I was shocked by not being able to pass the university exam after completing my high school education. I wanted to work in a bookstore to read more books. I spent the whole summer looking at newspaper advertisements but I found no one. Until I saw an advertisement saying “Looking for a secretary for a publishing house”…  A little, inexperienced, timid child, who came with her mother, was sitting in front of Özgen Seçkin, the owner of Damar Publishing. We trusted each other and directly I started to work.  

I had a job description that was a mixture of apprenticeship-secretariat and it was quite tiring. At every opportunity, I watched the typesetters and the graphic designer at the lighted desk in the next room. I tried to apply what I saw before no one came in the morning or when they were at lunch. I designed advertisements, announcements, cassettes, and book covers without any help. I explored page design programs on the Macintosh and improved myself typing with 10 fingers. At the end of a year, I learned all the programs, how to use all graphic tools, and became an advanced F keyboard user. But only I knew those, no one knew that I had collected the works of everyone in the publishing house one by one in my mind. One day, when the people working at the office were out for lunch, Ahmet Say entered the office. He had a job to be done in minutes. It was impossible for him to wait for employees to return from lunch. It should have been done immediately, what an unlucky timing it was. "I can do it," I said while watching his rush. My boss was suspicious that I even knew how to turn on the computer but I did the work very fast and he told me, “From now on you will work in this room.”

It reminds me that a play is about to start but the player gets sick and cannot play and one person is pushed to the stage to play instead of the real player and then this person becomes a player. Thus, I started my career as a typesetter. The first thing I did was the special issue of the magazine prepared on the occasion of the death of Ahmed Arif. I heard his name for the first time, like other social realist writers and poets. This experience and learning is an important milestone in my life. Those years widened my viewpoint.

Between 1990 and 2002 I worked as a typesetter for several publishing houses. I prepared hundreds of magazines and books to make ready for publishing. In time, that job became not enough for me. My biggest problem was not being able to include anything to my work. Yes, I was trying to create aesthetics when I typeset and designed pages, but for how long? After all, there was a standard layout and I followed it. If I was going to do something to express myself, I had to learn graphic design programs, and I did. But again, no one knew that except me.

It was 2002, the publisher manager and graphic designer were working on a cover, but somehow they didn’t have the desired work. When everyone was nervous, I plucked up courage and gave a piece of small advice. That advice closed the door of typesetter and opened the door to be a graphic designer for me. They understood that I knew the design programs and they asked me to design the book covers, and that was what I wanted. So I was on the stage again instead of a player getting sick. Since then, I've been working on book covers.

“Books are not things for window display”

What kind of profession is a graphic designer with its difficulties, joys and aspects that many people don't know?

I guess not only me but also all graphic designers’ biggest problem is that we cannot be authentic and free. After listening to or reading the topic of a book, we form an image in our mind. While implementing this image, suggestions from the author and publisher can sometimes cause difficulties for us. Sometimes they don’t suggest, we are asked to use the image they want. They say ‘we want that font, that size, and that color’. That time we are not designers, but applicators. A cover that is completely shaped by them and that we don’t like. Of course, we are not happy with the result; the happiness of the author-publisher can be enough for us.

I become happy when the initiative to work on a cover of a book that I read and that excites me is entirely up to me. I think about what I can do for days. I feel like what I do is not enough and always I want to do better. Knowing that those books are in people's libraries makes me happy. In this way, I'm experiencing a sense of immortality.

Whenever a new book of any publishing house is posted on social media, I read the comments written under it. 90 percent of these comments are about the cover. Most readers are interested in the cover of the book rather than its content, language, or translation. If they like its cover very much, they want to buy it. But books are not things for window display. Although designing a cover is my profession, I must criticize this attitude. A book should not be bought because its cover is liked.

Are there any elements that inspire or motivate you for your designs?

In my thirty-year adventure, my biggest deficiency has been not improving my drawing skills. I don’t even know if I can create good things if I focus on it. In the past, we used to choose images from visual catalogs and design with negative-positive films. Now, we can now find millions of images on licensed image sites.

“Our imagination reflects us”

I said I am not good at drawing. But it's not hard to guess someone's identity, personality, and imagination from what they draw. People who know my cover designs can say "you did this" when they see them somewhere. Not only our drawings but also our imagination reflects us.

How exactly can you describe your style?

Minimal… I have always looking for simplicity and minimalism, although publishers and writers feel that today's book market does not allow this and they want more flamboyant covers. We can reflect the idea and subject of the book very well by using small patterns and non-pretentious colors. Unfortunately, there have been many changes about the readers in recent years and this has forced publishers to publish books with more eye-straining, more interesting, and more populist covers.

"I preferred working for a publishing house to read more books"

Is there a domestic or foreign author you particularly want to design the book cover?

The reason why I wanted to work in the publishing sector was to read more books. So that was my primary goal. For this reason, I have never lost the enthusiasm and desire to read, I am considered as a good reader. Many domestic and foreign writers have influenced me but İhsan Oktay Anar and Gabriel García Márquez have a different place in my life. I get a different excitement when I read their books. I think I'd like to work on these two authors' books.