The Agency years
Six years in advertising taught me to defend a position before defending a render.
Before product, before software, before anything I now call my work, there were the advertising years. Two early ones in Antalya, then six in Istanbul end to end at DasIstanbul and Alafortanfoni.
How it started
The first two years were quiet. Small Antalya agencies and magazines in 2008 and 2009, the kind of work that doesn’t make portfolios. Useful at the time, mostly because they taught me what bad process looks like before I had words for it.
By 2010 I had moved to Istanbul and joined DasIstanbul. Boutique advertising agency, the kind where you do the thing you said yes to and the things you didn’t. By the time I left, I’d been promoted to Art Director, not because I’d earned a title, but because there was no one else to wear it.
A year later, Alafortanfoni. Bigger agency, real clients (Turkish Airlines, Sony, Coca-Cola, BMW, Vestel) and a creative direction worth learning under. I started as a Junior Designer and ended as Senior Art Director. Fifty-plus 360° campaigns in between.
What it taught me
A campaign is not a deliverable. A campaign is a position, and the deliverable is the proof. Bad agencies confuse the two.
Alafortanfoni taught me to defend a position before defending a render. Why this story, why this voice, why this medium first. Those questions had to be answerable before the design could matter. I learned to think in claim and evidence, not in moodboards.
The award shortlists (Cannes Young Lions, Crystal Apple) were less the point than the thing they confirmed: that the position was strong enough to read at a distance, in a different room, by people who didn’t know us.
Why I left
Around 2013–14 it became obvious that the work I most wanted to make wasn’t a campaign. It was the product the campaign was selling. The agency model was structured around explanation; I wanted to be structured around the thing being explained.
Bundle News at Dwarf Planet was the next step. The first time I designed something people opened every morning, not something they saw once and remembered.
What I kept
The agency years still show up in everything I do. Position before pixel. Treating the brief as a starting argument, not a checklist. Writing every line knowing it has to survive being read out loud. None of that left when I switched columns.