a quick catch-up 🗞

It’s been more than a year since my first and the last issue, although I always wanted to write the new ones. In the meanwhile I’ve worked on several products, watched a lot of sunsets 🌆 (sometimes sunrises too) and now I feel ready for a new marathon of a newsletter.

🧘🏻What I’ve been thinking about the concept is briefly “a weekly journal of my ideas and journey 🥤”. Every Saturday, I’m planning to send out an exclusive email with the things that I found, explored, thought and experienced that week. It’ll be kind of my idea / journey journal. 🍿It might include books, movies, designs, products, articles, new hacks/tricks, tutorials, podcasts, videos, news, trends and all sorts of interesting stuff I got into. 🌍 Feeling really energized for the upcoming journey! 🙌🏻

So, let me briefly summarize what I’ve done since the last post (the major projects) and later on I also want to create in detail case studies for the works that I’ve worked on. (for both my portfolio and people who are interested in them.) 🧘🏻

- housing app 🏡

Last year I’ve been working in a holding which is focused on digital products. My first task was designing some screens for the ongoing app project for their housing company. 🏡 It’s one of the largest home finder digital product in Turkey and the working structure for the project was well organized with multiple teams (business, product, design, dev teams). It was kind of an onboarding project for me and I mainly worked on the map listing screens, icons, favorite lists, profile screens and several other screens. It was fun to learn about the sector and the niche design tricks about the topic.

- credit comparison app 💵

Same holding, different app. This time I’ve worked on a credit comparison app project. 💳 It was again a big digital company and the project was creating the app designs for the product. We’ve again worked as product, design and business teams together. I’ve entered the project when it’s almost at some point. I mainly worked on the query, listing, detail, comparison, application, promotion and signup/login screens. It was a fun project to learn again niche tricks.

- insurtech 🚗

Same holding, different project. This is one of the biggest project that I’ve worked on. The firm is the largest insurance firm in Turkey with around 3-4m visitors / month. The new CEO had a vision of a brand new, modern, user-centric refreshment in his vision and the project was a complete update on the branding and the web ui. There was a big team behind the project and I was in the design team from the beginning. I mainly worked on the landing page, icons, checkout page, form page and the ui elements such as new ui colors, buttons, styles etc. I learned a lot from the project both design and product wise - also about the insurances haha. The redesign also had a big marketing campaign afterwards, here’s a vid from one of the ad campaigns.

- meme coin 🐶

This was a strange one haha. I came across a youtube video where he said he founded a meme coin for joke purposes. I joined the community owned telegram group of the coin and created memes, posters and branding stuff for fun. Than things got a bit serious (it had millions of dollars of mcap) when the coin got a ton of attraction and we formed a community-based (dao kinda) team. I was asked to build a website for the coin. I made some simple branding and built a website via webflow. Webflow was super fun to use tbh, I also grasped the basic concepts of css. We discontinued the main website but you can preview from the link.

Preview the website

- cool nfts 🦄

After my fun web3 experience, with my girlfriend (who is also a designer) we created an nft project called “cool unicorns”. It was also a fun journey to build a community from the scratch.

- making volunteering cool again ✨

This one is one of the longest project that I’ve been working on. We’re creating a digital product where volunteers can find volunteer events to join, donate on the donation campaigns and earn rewards with their efforts. It’s a NYC based startup with a small yet a very talented team. I’ve been mainly designing web app, landing page, mobile app and branding in this project.

- media 📰

Again, one of the longest project that I’ve been working on. It’s a media digital product which provides digital magazines and newspapers to the users. I’ve been mainly designing web app, landing page and mobile app in this project.

- frens app 🍿

Until this app, in the projects that I’ve mentioned I was the product designer. Frens app is an app which I built with one of my friend, I’ve been designing and coding the app. It’s an app where you can send text messages to your friends as widgets. It was a really fun project, I really love swiftui and building a product in general. I will explain frens app more detailed in my next posts. With my friend, we’re working on new apps and web products as well. Now we’re working on a translation app.

Here’s a quick journey.

emre @emrecandesign

this was a super fun module to design and build 👀

Here you can download the app:

Download the Frens iOS App

what I’ve read 📚

- The Brain: The Story of You

Some parts are repetitive with his old works but overall it’s David Eagleman and it’s a thought provoking, well-written, fun to read and learn a lot of stuff book. I’ll make this book a spotlight topic of an another issue because it really had several great information to discuss.

5/5

what I’m reading 📚

- Educated

It’s almost finished, I’ll write a review next week.

what I’ve watched 📚

I’ll make this movies a spotlight topic of an another issue in the feature with in dept thoughts and analysis, but for now I’ll just quickly go over.

**Might include spoilers.

- Solar Opposites

I love science fiction movies and series. Science follows philosophy and science fiction is a form of philosophy. For me Solar Opposites was a creative imagination of what would we look like in the feature with lots of clever jokes and funny mood.

9/10

- Cars

I’ve never had a chance to watch the Cars movie. (I’ve watched when I was a kid but couldn’t remember it) It was a great, classic Pixar movie. Amazing, timeless cinematography with a cleverly written storyline.

9/10

- Star Wars: A New Hope

I’ve never watched the Star Wars except my film classes. Since it had the perfect hero’s journey plotline, it was a textbook movie in my movie classes. Finally I had a chance and wanted to watch while I had a deep interest in science fiction lately. It was a masterpiece, a timeless classic. A perfect storyline.

9/10

- Minions: The Rise of Gru

I went this movie with my girlfriend in a cinema. I’ve watched most of the minion-saga movies before but this one was really fun to watch, one of the best. The voice actors were amazing and the tempo of the movie is just balanced to make you wanna watch the entire movie without getting bored.

8/10

- The Great Gatsby

A really interesting movie. The cinematography in this movie is just weird. I feel Wes Anderson vibes in some editing sequences but it had many weird editing decisions. Overall, the mise-en-scène and the art director in my opinion made a perfect job. The shots were nice as well but the transitions were too active and too in motion that after a while it made you disturbed while watching it. Moreover, the music selections… Oh, art direction created a near perfect immersive 1920s and suddenly you hear kanye, drake and lana del rey.. The storyline was also good, it was creating curiosity and not moving linearly but the ending felt so pale. Overall a great movie to watch although it had some flaws.

7/10

- Christopher Robin

A lovely and an underrated movie.. As a kid Winnie the Pooh was one of my favorite shows. Christopher Robin made a really bold choice about its cinematographic mood. It’s not the cartoon that we know but it feels like an adult movie with a moody UK atmosphere. But after watching for a while, you put your prejudice and enjoy the movie. It had some splendid long shots, some clever scenes with wise quotes and a fun to watch storyline which gives you a message but not showing it to you directly from the beginning, instead it’s a journey.

9/10

- Ad Astra

As I’ve said in Solar Opposites and Star Wars, lately science fiction charms me. Ad Astra was an amazing movie if you like space. What I like most about this movie is, it portrays an amazingly realistic space. A vast, dark, cold place where we feel as strangers. It’s really hard to shoot a film which has limited characters and limited places but the director did a great job creating a journey. It felt similar to the journey of Odyssey (story wise) or 2001 a Space Odyssey (story and cinematography wise).

8/10

this week’s songs 🎧

Louise - The Velvet Underground (spotify)

The Bounce - Jayz, Kayne (spotify)

Primetime - Jayz, Kayne (spotify)

thank you for reading and wish you an amazing week 🙌🏻

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