Behind The Cover
by Lalin Mercan & Can Yıldırım
Designing a cover for Centre Magazine felt like stepping into a labyrinth—one where the paths weren’t just visual but conceptual, emotional, and even musical. The greatest challenge in creating a cover lies in crafting a design that does justice to the content, the minds behind it, and the intentions guiding the creative process. A cover isn’t just about aesthetics; it’s an engineering of first impressions, a storyteller that builds a relationship with its audience.
To create a cover capable of embodying the multifaceted and diverse essence of Centre—a magazine that spans macro to micro issues, geographies, and disciplines, from business to politics, art to hidden urban beauties—we started with one key question: What does Centre aim to achieve? The answer, as we saw it, was to transform the world’s noise into a signal, turning chaos into meaning. From that moment on, we began to see Centre as a lens offering a fresh perspective—sharpening the focus on diverse voices and ideas—and as a conductor bringing together the vast vitality of the world into a harmonious composition.
For the inaugural issue, we turned to Europe for inspiration. Its complexities, tensions, contradictions, stories, and rhythms. Using everyday sounds shared on open-source platforms, we created an auditory portrait of the continent. The mechanical whir of the Eiffel Tower elevator, the delicate chime of wind bells in Ghent, the fervent chants of a Zurich protest, the ticking of Vienna’s timeless clocks, the cries of seagulls over Istanbul’s Bosphorus, and the echoes of a quarantine concert in Brussels all came together to form this composition.
For the inaugural issue, we turned to Europe for inspiration. Its complexities, tensions, contradictions, stories, and rhythms. Using everyday sounds shared on open-source platforms, we created an auditory portrait of the continent. The mechanical whir of the Eiffel Tower elevator, the delicate chime of wind bells in Ghent, the fervent chants of a Zurich protest, the ticking of Vienna’s timeless clocks, the cries of seagulls over Istanbul’s Bosphorus, and the echoes of a quarantine concert in Brussels all came together to form this composition.
