Spoken language and written script are two defining characteristics that a nation will use in order to unify its members and to distinguish itself culturally. The region now comprised of the Republic of Turkey, once using the Arabic alphabet, made a radical, and often deemed “over night” change to the Latin alphabet. This was a revolutionary decision that affected the course of typography in the country. This paradigm shift between language and script required further adaptations with the linguistic pedagogy. In order to accommodate certain phonemes, the Turkish Language Association added several diacritical marks to (ç, ğ, İ, ı, ö, ş, ü) and excluded several letters from (q, x,) the Latin alphabet.
This panel session will discuss certain typographic pedagogies that accommodates the major paradigm shift that took place in 1928. Speakers will aim to open a discourse on typographic eduction in a country in which entirely shifted its visual communication 84 years ago. Panelists including Namık Kemal Sarıkavak, Özlem Özkal, Alessandro Segalini and Onur Yazıcıgil will be sharing their views on this matter while showing visual samples from their classes and students.
