date
aim
commercial
At Şu Adımı is a published book cover I designed during my internship at Elma Publishing House, for one of Ahmet Şerif İzgören’s most anticipated releases of its time. The brief demanded immediacy and warmth—an invitation rather than a declaration. I approached the cover as a surface that should work before it is read: friendly at first glance, legible at distance, and emotionally reassuring without becoming naïve.
Alongside the final cover, I explored multiple alternative directions through digital sketches and conceptual layouts, ranging from more minimal typographic treatments to bolder metaphorical compositions. These explorations informed the final balance between clarity and character, ensuring the cover felt contemporary yet timeless. The design was met with enthusiasm by the publisher and readers alike, not only for its visual distinction but for how naturally it translated the book’s values into form. This project remains a meaningful example of how editorial design can shape first contact, cultural tone, and reader trust—quietly, but decisively.
The final design centers on a grid of simple, symbolic icons—each representing a core value explored in the book (effort, knowledge, quality of work, initiative, planning, teamwork, ethics, action, passion). This structure allows the reader to grasp the book’s philosophy instantly, without turning a page. The soft color palette, rounded typography, and hand-drawn icon language were deliberately chosen to counter the rigidity often associated with personal development literature, especially in the Turkish publishing context. At the time, this visual vocabulary—icon-driven, emotionally gentle, and concept-forward—was largely unprecedented in Turkish book cover design, which made the result both surprising and approachable.