The Letters of Sakarya
A printed archive of the city’s letterforms, the people who made them, and the stories that survived in workshops, family albums and streets.
After seven years of research, my book The Letters of Sakarya: In Pursuit of Commercial Artists and Sign Paintings was published in Turkish with the support of the Sakarya Chamber of Commerce and Industry (SATSO). Unveiling the forgotten legacy of commercial artists (sign and horsecart painters) who worked in the Turkish city of Sakarya between the 1940s and 1990s, the book features over 650 photographs and archival documents.
The first section contains detailed biographies of 48 artists, compiled from interviews with their first-degree relatives and witnesses. These reveal how the tradition of lettering and painting was passed down through the generations among these artists. The second section showcases the city’s typographic heritage across six categories, including nameplates, industrial zone signs, shop signs, and window lettering, through photographs taken by Ali Yıldırım and me.
- Format
- 19.5 × 23.5 cm
- Extent
- 432 Pages · Full Colour · Hardcover
- Publisher
- Değişim Publishing
- ISBN
- 9786253900311
An archive
in print
Rather than treating local lettering as a surface style, the book preserves the networks behind it: sign painters’ authorship, their working methods and the everyday settings in which their work was seen.
From fieldwork
to book
The publication is organised to move between people, places and typographic evidence, allowing individual memories to form a broader history of the city.
- 01
48 artist biographies
Compiled from interviews with the artists’ first-degree relatives and witnesses, revealing how the tradition of lettering and painting was passed down through the generations. - 02
650+ photographs and documents
Signage, workshop material, family archives and street-level traces assembled into a visual record. - 03
Two connected sections
Artist biographies, followed by the city’s typographic heritage organised across six categories, including nameplates, industrial zone signs, shop signs and window lettering.
Reading
the city
The sequence pairs documentary material with close editorial framing. Images are allowed to carry the character of the street, while contextual information gives each specimen a place in the larger story.
A visual culture
kept in view
The Letters of Sakarya gives an overlooked creative tradition a durable, shareable form, one that can be revisited by researchers, designers and the people of Sakarya alike.
Featured in
- Sign Design Society Newsletter, February 2026
- Perspective Magazine, ARED, March 2026