Eren Kibele Yarman

Kibele is a strong supporter of subtlety and long walks in the park… especially on the day we met; a freezing, rainy “spring” day in New York. Nevertheless, we did not care about the weather. She talked and I listened. She believes in working to create beauty while building a new layer of meaning for the audience. Also, she is in love with all of her clients and believes in love marriages. We’ll get into her story more…

Let’s get back to the beginning. When did you first become interested in design and how did you become aware of it?
I think it started as I realised that I liked the forms of the letters as much as the things they were saying. Like everyone else who gets excited about everything visual, I was interested in drawing and making art for classes a little more than answering the comprehension questions in grade school. And once in 9th grade, after long and boring hours in religion class a friend of mine and I, we made up an alphabet and passed notes using that alphabet. I only discovered that this could be a profession on my second year in college. I am still discovering.

You have studied in School of Visual Arts, which is one of the higher ranked art and design schools in United States. What are the advantages of this education, regarding your career?
It’s a little early to talk about the advantages of an education that I’ve completed last year on May. But for now, I can say that the most important intellectual benefit has been the open mindedness I believe I have gotten as a result of falling into many perspectives that I wan’t accustomed to before coming to New York. Hearing a lot voices have grown me mentally, in the ways I could never imagine before. But most important of all, is the luck to work with extraordinarily talented friends/colleagues from all over the globe.

What are some advantages of living in New York for your work?
It’s a beautiful luxury to look at pretty things in a gallery, dream and doodle when things get overwhelming. Also to be like I want to be, or to say is a very good freedom to have. It’s a good opportunity, to be able to knock on designers’ doors, designers that I respect, and show my work. And another pro is the exposure that New York brings comparing to the rest of the world. Is it as so because everything is better here, that’s a topic for another discussion.

If you were to summarise your philosophy on design, how would you put it?
I will begin by saying that I have been thinking this way only recently, to feel less awful later on when my mind changes: There are no rules.

Can you talk about some of your future plans?
There are a few projects that I want to pursue. Let me talk about one: Mârr. Mârr is a digital publication that features 5 people that talks about their food memoirs on each issue. For its first issue I have talked to a remarkable group of people from designers that grew up in the Eastern Mediterranean to award winning chefs who cook Eastern Mediterranean food who remember their past around the things that they ate and drunk here in New York.

Can you talk about a self initiated project that you have been working on recently?
I’m working on a typographic illustration series, The Universe of Anticlimax. It’s an atlas of the past that I make by first recording all the words that matter and all the ones that don’t and then drawing them as constellations. I’m looking forward to completing the whole sky. Hopefully I will, soon…