Turkish calligraphic holidays

8 min readNov 18, 2019

Last week was very eventful and interesting, we wrote a lot about it in the stories in our instagram account, but we did not have the time and energy to make an informed post in the medium feed.Although the information gathered is definitely not for one post.

Anatolian University (Anadolu University) from Eskisehir, Turkey. There we were invited to be lecturers and participants in the master class at the 11th International Festival of Calligraphy and Typography, and we agreed.

We love teaching, we love visiting lectures and workshops for several days, not mentioning new acquaintances and interaction with different people. It is especially joyful to teach at higher educational institutions, for students, future graphic designers🔥

The topic of our performance th at we chose was obvious for us, “Slavic cursive”. We wanted to talk about cursive writing, about the use of the Cyrillic alphabet in our works. But we adapted the recipe for the Latin alphabet

Over the course of three days, the students were writing exercises with the brushpen, then they were writing letters, and on day 4 they were creating words and phrases.

It’s a pity, we didn’t take all the results, we managed to take only some photos:

One of the days was the opening of an exhibition dedicated to Yunus Emre.

It’s nice that we were so warmly met and that they organized everything at a super level!
Thank you: Onur Kuran, Tevfik Fikret Ucar, Melike Tascioglu, Bengisu Kelesoglu, Aydan Erarslan, Mehtap Uygungoz, Dilek Erdoğan Aydin, Melike Atilkan and Deniz Atasu, Ali Efe Özdemir 🖤

Also, such wonderful masters gave lectures: Oguzhan Cengiz,
Almila Yildirim, Okay Karadayilar

Look at their works, they are really cool.

Teachers and students are very modern, nice and intelligent people, with a clear position both political and moral-cultural. It is nice to see that they love their country and are doing everything in order to develop it.

Dear people who studied with us, there are no names under the photo, but we tag everyone here to capture (almost) everyone (instagram accounts): @fatihkayacii , @nilmuge , @merveliyigitt , @zy_arslan , @oneironautah , @zbunjenalien , @semihkillic , @burakcan__ , @degergumuskaya , @kemalonurtac , @x.whoimart , @ozan.soydan , @miracikk , @gurberkpolat

Also we met Natalia, Marina and Aiden. It was nice to chat with you! I think we’ll meet again.

There were dances, gatherings, informal communication, a lot of tasty food. Maybe we have not only Greek roots, but also Turkish ones?
Why are we so drawn to this country again? :)

Cool university (the best in Turkey!) and cool people. Thank you, now in our dreams, pictures from this trip will flicker for a long time.

We hope to come again!

Then we went to Istanbul. This city cannot leave a person indifferent. Our Turkish friends told us — be careful in this city. Haha, we did the opposite :)
We were walking in the late evenings, and when we were coming back home, we went at random — there, no, there… and each time we came home without problems :)

The atmosphere of the city is European architecture, underground cafes, old and young hippies, interesting people and Asian colors in the markets, some restaurants, and streets in the form of fruit and vegetable sellers, trafic and chaos of pedestrians and drivers in relation to each other.

But how much we liked Istanbul! Here to live for a month! We would like to return here more than once.

We also wandered around the squares, near the historical centers, Ayasofya, the column of Constantine, the obelisk with the Greek and Roman capital font in the signature