ABOVE, LEFT: 2006 | GOOD MAGAZINE, DESIGNED AT OPEN, DESIGN DIRECTION BY SCOTT STOWELL, CLIENT: GOOD MAGAZINE; RIGHT: 2005 | MEST RAKI (TRADITIONAL TURKISH LIQUOR); DESIGNED AT RAFINERI, ISTAN­BUL | CLIENT: MEY ICKI SANAYI VE TIC. A.S.

For his thesis at the School of Visual Arts (SVA) MFA Design pro­gram, Serifcan Ozcan created Biyografik, an online archive for Turk­ish graphic design. The project was a natural choice for this Turkish native now living in New York, who finds the tension between East­ern and Western cultural influences a source of inspiration in his work. “I do have an appeal to grids and structure,” he explains, “However, Turkish culture is very ornamental and noisy—basically it is everything but grid and structure. I enjoy this dilemma.”

The cross-cultural dynamic feeds into another passion of Ozcan’s: language. “I am very interested in language,” he declares, “especially coming from a different country and a different language. I love to discover the obscure [connections] between word and image.”

Discover the obscure? “Serifcan comes from the strangely shaped moon that orbits the planet Surrealus,” explains Alice Twemlow, chair of SVA’s MFA in Design Criticism. “His humor­ous response to a brief always goes way beyond and slightly to the left of what you would expect. And yet when the occasion demands it, he can also provide a solution that’s hard-hitting and profound. Spending time with Serifcan’s work allows you to see the world through his eyes, which for some may be an unnerving experience. Personally, I can’t get enough!”

An accomplished designer, illustrator and author, Ozcan currently works for the independent design studio Open, where his work to date has included projects for Wieden + Kennedy, GOOD magazine, The New York Times, EarthAction, Jazz at Lincoln Cen­ter and AIGA. His 20/20 entry at the recent AIGA conference in Denver, a collaboration with girlfriend of seven years Naz Sahin, drew rave reviews, including this one by Randy J. Hunt for AIGA NY Chapter’s DESIGNY online magazine: “[Their] promotional video for Next pill was one of the more sophisticated of the 20, yet still managed to crack smiles and stir laughter with references to pets, food, Paul Rand and Ladislav Sutnar.”

His work might speak for itself—but hearing Ozcan talk about it is half the fun. “Back in Istanbul a couple of years ago, I used to pick up rocks from one part of the city—larger ones, about a square foot—put [them] in the trunk of my car and drop [them in] another random part of the city,” he offers when asked about the motivations behind his work. “My purpose was simply to create an action in the universe. I think that every single thing we do in our lives creates an action and deserves a reaction. In my work I always try to misplace/replace things in a way that the audience would notice that there is a certain movement.”

www.obumu.com | www.biyografik.com