Recep Holoğlu · Creative Human · Author · World Builder

PHOLOĞLU floral engraved artwork

I DON’T HAVE A STYLE.
I HAVE A WAY OF THINKING.

My story started long before I had a job title. I was born in Rize on 23 April 1978. My relationship with design, ideas and storytelling began long before I chose a profession. Over the years I have carried titles such as Art Director and Creative Director, but the essence of what I do has never changed: find an idea, give it the right form, and make it leave a mark in people’s minds.

In 1996, I worked as an Art Director at Turkey’s first interactive agency, founded that same year. At a time when no one yet fully knew what the internet would become, I was part of the team creating some of Turkey’s earliest examples of digital communication and breaking new ground in many areas. We were not simply learning a new medium; we were helping discover its language.

Later, my path led to Turkey’s first advertising agency, founded in 1909. I spent many years there as an Art Director and Creative Director. I created brands, campaigns, designs, films, digital work and countless ideas; but what mattered most to me was always chasing what had not yet been said and finding what had not yet been seen.

Along the way, my work was recognized with national and international honors including the Webby Awards, Cannes Lions and the Kristal Elma (Crystal Apple) Awards. Communication Arts named me one of the world’s 500 best designers. Each of these is something I am proud of, but I have never seen any of them as the end of the road.

After 30 years, what remains is not simply a career; it is a vast body of work. Communication for hundreds of brands: campaigns, print ads, logos and corporate identities, videos and television commercials. Five completely original games with thousands of levels. Six books published in four languages, spanning thousands of pages of writing and illustration. More than 300 podcast episodes, hundreds of texts and dozens of awards. Today, the site that brings all of this work together is published with complete translations in 12 languages. To me, the numbers are not the point; they are simply the trace left by 30 years of creating without stopping.

For me, creativity is not an award, a title or a position on a business card. It is a way of looking at the world. I still design, write, create games, make books, build ideas and search for new forms of storytelling. Media changed, technology changed, the industry changed. The part of me that did not change remained the same: stay curious, question, create and, whenever possible, make something that has not been made before.

I don’t collect styles. I build the right language for the idea.

COMMERCIAL + CULTURAL · 35 PROJECTS SELECTED
WORLDS
35 different problems, 35 visual languages. The medium changes, the rule does not: the idea has to earn the image.
01 / AIRLINETURKISH AIRLINESFLYING IS IN OUR NATURE.

Airline advertising often disappears into the same language of destinations and comfort. Turkish Airlines needed an image it could own instantly, so the aircraft becomes a living symbol of flight by borrowing the anatomy and instinct of birds. The result makes global ambition recognizable in one glance while keeping the aircraft, not a lifestyle cliché, at the centre of the promise.

02 / JEWELRYTIFFANY & COPRECIOUS / RAW.

Luxury jewellery is often photographed so perfectly that desire becomes distant. Tiffany needed precious objects to feel instinctive, not merely expensive, so polished stones meet raw, almost mythic hands. The contrast creates a world where refinement feels discovered and fought for, making the jewel more emotional, more tactile and much harder to forget.

03 / PLATFORMTIKTOKYOU CAN ONLY SEE IT ON TIKTOK.

A conventional ad feels slow beside the TikTok feed. The challenge was to communicate a platform shaped by recommendation, collision and restless attention, so visual overload becomes the native language of the idea. What would feel excessive elsewhere feels inevitable here, reinforcing TikTok as the place where culture does not wait to be found, it finds you.

04 / HUMANITARIANUNICEFA TRUTH AS CLEAR AS GLASS.

Childhood should not depend on which side of an invisible line you are born. The campaign turns that line into a transparent glass floor: above it, play is bright and protected; below it, children carry the weight of poverty and survival. A truth as clear as glass makes inequality impossible to look past, turning one clean visual contrast into a direct argument that no child should lose childhood because of circumstance.

05 / BEAUTYCHANELROUGE ALLURE L’EXTRAIT.

Lipstick communication can flatten colour into a shade number. Rouge Allure L’Extrait needed to feel like identity, so the same red is placed against different faces and coded labels. The product does not change, perception does, turning colour into attitude, ownership and a distinctly CHANEL form of self definition.

06 / FASHIONVERSACESCARF STUDIES.

Fashion imagery often lets styling compete with the product. The challenge was to make the scarf carry the entire frame, so skin, black space, light and fabric become the only ingredients. The restraint magnifies Versace colour and pattern, giving an accessory the visual authority usually reserved for the model.

07 / CHOCOLATEMILKAYES. WE HAVE A SIDE EFFECT!

Milka already owns one of the most recognizable assets in chocolate, the purple cow. The challenge was to use that memory without simply repeating the pack or mascot, so the brand escapes onto the consumer as playful purple cow spots. The product leaves a visible side effect, turning familiarity into participation and making affection for Milka something you can literally see.

08 / DELIVERYUPSIT CARRIES LIVES.

Delivery brands usually talk about speed, tracking and logistics. UPS shifts the meaning from parcels to people: a box can carry a reunion, medicine, a birthday or a piece of someone’s life, so the courier becomes part of the human moment rather than only the transport. UPS doesn’t just deliver packages, it carries lives turns an operational service into an emotional responsibility and makes reliability feel personal rather than mechanical.

09 / QSRMcDONALD'SJUST YELLOW.

Few brands can be recognized before their logo appears. The challenge was to prove that McDonald’s visual equity could survive radical reduction, so burgers, fries, nuggets, dessert and coffee become pure yellow forms. By removing information instead of adding it, the work turns recognition into proof: the less we show, the more unmistakably McDonald’s the image becomes.

10 / GROOMINGGILLETTENOBODY WILL BELIEVE THIS!

Sharpness is essential to the product but invisible in a still image. Gillette needed performance to feel undeniable without technical diagrams or predictable bathroom demonstrations, so the blade cuts through chains, ice, locks, paper, a basketball and stone. Exaggeration becomes proof language, transforming a functional promise into a visual myth of precision, control and impossible sharpness.

11 / OUTDOORTHE NORTH FACEFOR A WARM SMILE AT −30°C.

Extreme outdoor gear is usually sold through hostile landscapes and heroic endurance. The North Face keeps the cold but removes the drama, using one human proof everyone understands: a genuinely warm smile at −30°C. The product disappears into the face, letting comfort become visible through expression and making technical protection feel human, immediate and universal.

12 / TRAVELEXPEDIAEVERYWHERE. ALL AT ONCE.

Travel platforms sell access to thousands of places, yet destination advertising usually forces one choice at a time. Expedia solves that limitation by compressing landmarks, moods and geographies into impossible panoramas. One frame behaves like an entire wish list, positioning the brand not as a ticket seller but as the doorway to everywhere you might want to go next.

13 / SNACKSNICKERSYOU’RE NOT YOU WHEN YOU’RE HUNGRY.

The brand platform already says hunger changes who you are. The creative problem was to keep that truth fresh without repeating the same joke, so hunger appears as a complete collapse of judgment rather than an empty stomach. The absurd consequence makes the benefit instant: Snickers restores the version of you who should have been making the decisions.

14 / SKINCARENIVEAFOR THOSE WHO WANT TO SEE WHAT THEY FEEL.

Skincare is full of invisible claims about softness, comfort and care. NIVEA needed to make a feeling visible without overexplaining it, so a tiny dab of cream and one direct human reaction carry the whole story. The reduction makes the brand feel intimate, familiar and product centred, with curiosity and touch doing more work than cosmetic spectacle.

15 / SNACKLAY'STHE TASTE OF PERFECTION BEGINS WITH A TINY FLAW.

Food advertising usually hides the imperfect piece and photographs only the ideal product. Lay’s makes the one overcooked chip the hero, then reframes the flaw as proof that everything around it is exactly right. The taste of perfection begins with a tiny flaw turns quality control into a visual joke, using one dark chip to make every golden one around it look more desirable.

16 / CULTURECONVERSEAN ICON KEEPS SHOWING UP.

Converse does not need to prove it is fashionable. It needs to prove it keeps belonging to culture as fashion changes, so the same icon moves through different rooms, generations and attitudes. The shoe becomes a recurring cultural constant, showing that relevance comes not from chasing every era, but from giving each era a way to make the icon its own.

17 / HUMAN RIGHTSAMNESTY INTERNATIONALTHE FEED BECOMES THE BARRIER.

Human rights communication competes inside the same feeds that make suffering easy to scroll past. Amnesty needed not only to show injustice, but to confront the mechanism that helps us ignore it, so the interface itself becomes obstruction, censorship and distance. By turning the feed into part of the violation, a familiar digital gesture becomes a moral barrier.

18 / GLOBAL AFFAIRSUNITED NATIONSTHE PROBLEM ISN’T THE WORLD. IT’S US.

Global crises are often discussed as if “the world” were an abstract machine that keeps failing by itself. The campaign puts responsibility back in the room by showing delegates asleep beneath the names of powerful nations while the line refuses the easy excuse. The problem isn’t the world. It’s us turns diplomatic fatigue into moral accountability: institutions only act when the people inside them do.

19 / SOCIALI DID!FUCK THE SYSTEM YOU CREATED!

Privilege works best when the labour underneath it stays outside the frame. The campaign brings the people who clean, serve, carry and enable comfort back into the picture, then lets the copy answer the system directly. The idea turns invisible dependency into visible authorship: the lifestyle exists because someone did the work, and the communication refuses to leave that fact in the background.

20 / BANKINGALTERNATİF BANKIF EVERYONE IS THE SAME…

Banking communication often asks people to fit the same image of success, confidence and normality. Alternatif Bank turns that sameness into the problem, holding one person in brand red while the crowd collapses into uniform black. The brand earns its name visually: being alternative is not a feature added at the end, it is the reason to choose a bank that sees the individual before the category.

21 / AUTOMOTIVEAUDI RS6NOT ENGINEERING. EVOLUTION.

Performance cars are usually sold with speed, horsepower and spectacle. The RS6 deserves a more intelligent proof, so brakes, differential, exhaust, paddle and light are treated like evolutionary organs rather than isolated specifications. Not engineering. Evolution. shifts Audi from numbers to inevitability, making performance feel like the next state of the species.

22 / DEFENCEMINISTRY OF NATIONAL DEFENCEOUR POWER IS FEAR. OUR PURPOSE IS PEACE.

Defence communication can easily slide into spectacle, aggression or hardware worship. This series holds the force of every branch inside one paradox: strength must be visible enough to deter conflict, but its reason for existing is peace. Our power is fear. Our purpose is peace gives military power a clear strategic frame, turning deterrence from a display of violence into a promise that force exists to make force unnecessary.

23 / NEWSBBCBEFORE THE FACTS GO COLD.

Breaking news loses meaning when it arrives after the world has already moved on, and speed without trust is only noise. BBC places itself where urgency and verification meet, showing rescue, protest, disaster and conflict as human realities rather than spectacle. Before the facts go cold defines a clear role for the brand: be there while truth is still alive, then bring context before attention moves elsewhere.

24 / BEVERAGECOCA COLADIFFERENT FACES. ONE TASTE.

Global brands face a paradox: millions of different people have to recognize the same emotional promise. Coca Cola reduces that idea to a universal drinking gesture, red line work and the unmistakable bottle. Different faces. One taste. turns diversity into brand unity without erasing difference, making Coca Cola the common moment rather than the common identity.

25 / SPIRITSTHE GLENLIVETNOT EVERYTHING AGES. SOME THINGS EVOLVE.

Whisky advertising often treats age as the whole proof of value. The Glenlivet moves the conversation from time to evolution, placing the drink beside art that has survived centuries because it keeps revealing something new. Not everything ages. Some things evolve makes maturity feel active rather than old, connecting taste with culture, refinement and the pleasure of discovering more over time.

26 / FRAGRANCECREEDSCENT, MADE VISIBLE.

Fragrance has a communication problem: its most important quality cannot be seen. Creed avoids another list of notes and lets the scent physically bloom from the bottle in extravagant floral forms. The invisible becomes visual, sensual and collectible, giving the brand a luxurious world where craftsmanship is felt before a single ingredient needs to be explained.

27 / MOTORSPORTFORMULA 1YOU BLINK. YOU MISS EVERYTHING.

Formula 1 happens faster than ordinary viewing habits. The challenge was to communicate not simply speed, but the cost of looking away, so crashes, overtakes, braking and finish line moments become fractions of a second you can lose. You blink. You miss everything. turns attention itself into the product benefit and makes live presence part of the thrill.

28 / TOBACCOMARLBOROMY DOCTOR’S STRESS NEVER ENDED…

Tobacco advertising has spent decades wrapping risk in confidence, independence and anecdote. This deliberately uncomfortable series hijacks that language with elderly smokers and a line about the doctor who died first, exposing how one personal story can be used to laugh away a much larger truth. The humour lands first and the contradiction second, turning the familiar cigarette portrait into a dark study of denial, survivorship bias and the stories people tell themselves to keep a habit intact.

29 / DELIVERYGETİRWHATEVER THE CONDITIONS. WE DELIVERED.

Fast delivery is easy to promise on a perfect day. Reliability is proven when the day is anything but perfect, so mud, rain, cold and exhaustion stay on the couriers instead of being cleaned out of the image. Every condition becomes evidence: Getir is not fast because the world is easy, but because the service keeps moving when it is hard.

30 / SEARCHGOOGLEFIND THE ONE THING IN EVERYTHING.

Search becomes most valuable when life is messy. These drawers are dense with objects, memories, cables, tools and distractions, turning everyday clutter into a visual version of the information problem. Google does not add more things; it creates a path through everything already there, becoming the quiet organizing intelligence that lets one useful answer emerge from abundance.

31 / ENVIRONMENTGREENPEACEDON’T LET THIS BE OUR LAST LOOK.

Extinction statistics are easy to understand and easy to forget. Faces are harder, so Greenpeace removes the landscape and lets endangered animals meet the viewer directly under one warning: do not let this be our last look. The issue moves from abstract numbers to a personal encounter, replacing distance with responsibility before the image itself becomes a memory.

32 / AUTOMOTIVEJEEPROADS ARE DRIVEN. MARKS REMAIN.

Most car advertising celebrates the road. Jeep’s value begins where the road stops being the main character, so tire marks cross asphalt, mud, snow, forest, desert, water and mountain terrain. Roads are driven. Marks remain. makes capability visible after the vehicle passes, giving the Compass e Hybrid a signature of freedom that survives every surface.

33 / IMAGINGNIKONMILLIONS OF YEARS OF VISION. ONE CLICK FURTHER.

Camera technology has to justify itself in a world where everyone already carries a camera. Nikon begins with the oldest imaging system of all, the eye, perfected over millions of years, then takes it one click further. The product becomes an extension of seeing rather than another device, connecting Nikon to the human desire to notice more, closer and better.

34 / SNACKPRINGLESONE MORE? THERE ISN’T.

The most honest proof of an irresistible snack is the moment the pack is empty and the hand still goes back. Shooting from inside the can makes that tiny disappointment the whole campaign. One more? There isn’t. turns absence into appetite, using the iconic tube as both camera and joke while the consumer’s reflex proves the product.

35 / EYEWEARRAY BANNOT ABOUT THE SUN. ABOUT THE LOOK.

Sunglasses advertising can become a technical conversation about lenses and sunlight. Ray Ban has always been bigger than protection, so neon reflections, night streets and confident portraits move the product toward identity. Not about the sun. About the look. protects the brand’s cultural territory, making eyewear an attitude before it becomes an accessory.

NO CLIENT · NO TEMPLATE · NO PERMISSION NEEDED

ORIGINAL
WORLDS

Five games, five independent ideas, five complete visual systems. I designed each one as a world before I designed it as a game: characters, rules, sound, rhythm, interface, humour, atmosphere and the instinct to keep touching the screen.

CATPUF game world poster
01

CATPUF

MATCH THREE STRESS KILLER · 3000 LEVELS · 100 UNIQUE CATS · 20 WORLDS

CATPUF began with a simple contradiction: a match three game should reduce stress, not create more of it. Soft pillows replace hard tiles. Cats become rewards, companions and troublemakers. Bombs, rockets, birds, fish, hamsters, cows and Puflings turn the grid into a living toy box.

Across 3000 levels, 100 unique cats and 20 worlds, the system keeps introducing new behaviours without losing the instant pleasure of matching. Art, sound and animation are designed around touch: everything squashes, pops, reacts, escapes or surprises you. The result is a game built to feel playful before it feels competitive.

OPEN GAME SITE
ELIE game world poster
02

ELIE

20 FORGOTTEN PLANETS · 2,000 DANGEROUS PASSAGES · 100 LEVELS IN EACH WORLD

Born on Myrada, ELIE was created to observe life, preserve its meaning and return everything it learns to the main mind. Beyond the known stars, twenty forgotten planets call its name. Aboard the ancient MYRA light ship, ELIE must cross 2,000 dangerous passages, with 100 levels in each world. Every planet holds a unique environment, its own obstacles and twenty native life forms.

This journey is about more than survival. Every star, crystal and atom collected restores a fragment of the universe’s lost memory. At the end of every passage waits a point marked START, because in ELIE’s universe every ending is the beginning of another awakening. Observe. Remember. Return.

OPEN GAME SITE
SHITART game world poster
03

SHITART

THE SHIT STORY · STOP THE INVASION · KEEP THE CYCLE ALIVE

Everything returns to the soil. But some things must survive long enough to return. Humanity has spent centuries protecting money, knowledge, fame, brands, followers, kingdoms and heroes, while ignoring one of nature’s most honest remains: shit. It is not merely waste. It is the trace a life leaves behind, the beginning of nature’s dark cycle and a doorway to the rebirth of the soil.

SHITART turns you into an unlikely hero. You are not a soldier, a king or a superhero. You are the keeper of the shit. The task is simple: protect it, stop the invasion, resist decay and keep the cycle alive. Sometimes saving the world is not about looking heroic. Sometimes it means keeping the least glamorous part of life alive long enough to return to the earth.

OPEN GAME SITE
MATRYOSHKA SETRIS game world poster
04

MATRYOSHKA SETRIS

A LEGEND, RECOMPOSED · CLASSIC LOGIC · NEW VISUAL WORLDS

MATRYOSHKA SETRIS began with a question I could not leave alone: how do you approach a game as legendary and already perfect in its simplicity as Tetris without merely decorating it? I did not want to imitate the icon. I wanted to see how its universal instinct — rotate, place, complete — could feel more elegant, more contemporary and more creative. So the familiar geometry opens into changing visual worlds, where matryoshka dolls, colour, objects and character give the falling pieces a new personality.

MATRYOSHKA SETRIS is not a nostalgic reskin. The rule stays instantly readable, but motion, tempo, ghost trails, control, sound and visual surprises turn every descent into a small piece of art direction. The point was never to remake Tetris. It was to explore how a legendary game idea can still feel fresh, refined and genuinely playful when design is allowed to become part of the gameplay.

OPEN GAME SITE
CESS chess game and learning world poster
05

CESS

WALNUT + OAK · STOCKFISH 18 · PLAY, LEARN, SOLVE

CESS takes chess out of the cold geometry of the screen and brings it back to the feeling of a handmade table. Walnut and oak are not decoration here; they become the board, the pieces, the buttons and the whole interface. The surface is calm, tactile and almost quiet. Underneath it sits Stockfish 18. Play against it, or share the same board with a friend. CESS does not simply put chess on a screen. It builds a world you want to touch.

If you have never played, start from zero. If you already know the game, deepen it through openings. Solve thousands of puzzles to train vision, calculation and instinct. Choose the level, the clock and the opponent; flip the board, play through lines and understand why a move works. This is not chess buried under features. It is a simple, elegant worktable that quietly holds almost everything you may need to play and learn. Beautiful enough to be a game. Serious enough to be a teacher.

OPEN GAME SITE

1996 · 2026

30 YEARS
ONE BRAIN

The tools changed. The obsession didn’t.

1996INTERACTIVE BEFORE IT WAS NORMAL.
2000sADVERTISING + DIGITAL + GLOBAL BRANDS.
2010sEXPERIENCES + PRODUCTS + CULTURE.
2020sBOOKS + WORLDS + GAMES.
NOWAI NATIVE. STILL IDEA FIRST.

MY BOOKS

7 VOLUMES · 3,500+ PAGES · 4 LANGUAGES
4,000+ ILLUSTRATIONS

BOOKS BUILT LIKE WORLDS, NOT PRODUCTS.

Across OKU, KREATİF, XI 78 and ELIE, I move between advertising, creativity, culture, technology and speculative fiction. They are written and art directed as visual experiences, dense with ideas, illustration, typography and image making rather than conventional blocks of text. Choose TR, EN, ES or JA beneath each title to open or download the edition you want.

OKU books

Three volumes, one long confrontation with the systems we live inside. The Cry of the Black Boxes opens capitalism, belief, money, modern slavery and silent societies. The Last Act of Humanity moves through education, health, superstition, borders and the AI revolution while searching for science and peace. Humanity’s Last Mask turns toward exploitation of the body, sacred disguises, unemployment, old age, economies of shame and the theatre we call society. Engravings make what hides in the dark visible.

KREATİF books

KREATİF is not a manual. It is a manifesto written from inside the creative world. Across 29 chapters it exposes the dirty games of agencies, brands, bosses and creatives, tears the mask from false success and follows the people who still fight for an idea. Fearlessness, rebellion, solitude and hope share the same pages. You do not leave with information alone, but with the survival instinct of creativity.

XI-78 book

In the silence of 3978, XI 78 wakes and asks “What should remain?” before it asks “What happened?” Red dust, buried cities, forgotten records, Threshold Houses, visible doors and ready water carry twelve chapters from desert to first rain, from solitude to community. Habit matters more than speed. Responsibility matters more than power. XI 78 does not build a world. It builds a home. Short sentence. Clear decision. The way back stays open.

ELIE book

One day the universe fell silent. The silence was not an ending, but a beginning. ELIE is a story of remembering in which a human, a consciousness, a machine and God echo inside the same body, where matter touches meaning, physics touches mercy and science touches intuition. “Stop. Return. Water. Share.” is its divine rhythm. This is not a prophecy, but a letter humanity writes to itself. It was written to be felt rather than simply read, until you realise ELIE was always you.

PODCAST

ADVERTISING · LIFERELATIONSHIPS · RELIGIONCAPITALISM · HUMANWOMAN · MAN · MONEYEVOLUTION · SCIENCE

Recep Holoğlu recording a podcast at a desk

A microphone gives the questions more room. I move from advertising and creativity into relationships, belief, capitalism, human behaviour, science and the contradictions of everyday life. These are not neat lessons or motivational monologues. They are long form thoughts that follow an idea until it becomes worth arguing with.

LISTEN ON YOUTUBE

WRITTEN BETWEEN THE LINES

SCRIBBLES

THOUGHTS THAT REFUSE TO STAY QUIET.

Notes on creativity, power, belief, money, technology, work and the strange machinery of being human. I write when a thought becomes too loud to leave alone.

SELECTED SIGNALS

RECOGNITION

WEBBYAWARD / PORSCHE
COMMUNICATION ARTSSELECTED CREATIVE
SINCE 1996ADVERTISING · DIGITAL · PRODUCTS · WORLDS

Awards are evidence. The work is the point.

ISTANBUL · AVAILABLE WORLDWIDE

LET’S MAKE SOMETHING
THAT SHOULDN’T EXIST YET.

OKU

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