Full name; Alpay Er
Job title(s); Head of Industrial Design Department, and ICSID Regional Advisor
Organisation(s). Özyegin University, Istanbul TR
Professor Alpay Er is the Department Head of Industrial Design. He studied industrial design at the
Middle East Technical University (METU), and completed his PhD at the Manchester Metropolitan
University in the UK in 1994. He worked in the Department of Industrial Product Design at Istanbul
Technical Universitesi (ITU), where he served as the chairperson between 2006 and 2013.
Alpay initiated and has implemented the “Industrial Design for SMEs” project, the first ever design
support and education program directed towards small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Turkey, in
cooperation with Istanbul Chamber of Industry (ISO). He has acted as a consultant to various
institutions and companies in Istanbul on design management and industrial design. He has also
been active in the Industrial Designers’ Society of Turkey (ETMK) and served as the chairman of the
ETMK Istanbul Branch (2004-2006).
In addition, he has served in several national and international design awards such as Red Dot, İF,
Red Star China and Design Turkey.
Alpay’s academic work has appeared in international journals such as Design Issues and the Journal
of Design History. His research interests include design management and strategy, design policy,
history and education in emerging countries.
He is a member of Design Research Society (DRS), and was conferred with “Fellowship of DRS” in
2006. He also served as a member of the Executive Board (2011-2013) in the International Council of
Societies of Industrial Design (Icsid) and is currently a Regional Advisor to Icsid.