Emrah Yücel

Emrah Yücel is a seasoned entrepreneur and creative director based in Los Angeles, specializing in branding and graphic design. His main focuses are entertainment marketing, traditional advertising, and city or country branding.

In 2001, he launched Iconisus in Los Angeles, an agency providing visual design solutions for motion picture advertising campaigns. Under the banner of Iconisus, Mr. Yücel designed and supervised many prestigious entertainment campaigns for Hollywood studios and TV networks. These titles include Avatar, American Horror Story, Crimson Peak, Narnia, Fifty Shades Darker, The Girl on the Train, The Americans, The Bridge, Mr. Robot, Mirror Mirror, Frida, A Good Year…

In 2008, Mr. Yücel decided to expand his horizons and launched a new agency called I Mean It Creative, this time focusing on traditional advertising and location branding. He hit the ground running, winning tenders for projects from prominent clients such as Turkish Airlines, Kenya and Nigeria Free Zones, Turkish Tourism, FIBA World Basketball Championship, branding the city of Gaziantep, Hawaii, Izmir and several others.

After running Iconisus for 18 years, Mr. Yücel dissolved the company in 2018 and launched a new entity called Dreamogram. With two decades of design experience under his belt — specifically in Hollywood entertainment — he continues to work with HBO, Netflix, USA Network, Warner Brothers, and many others.

Mr. Yücel is the recipient of many Key Art Awards, PromaxBDA awards, a Webby Award, and a Sunset Billboard Award. In 2009, he was awarded the “Designer of the Year ” title by International Design Awards. Most recently, the United Nations World Tourism Organization has deemed his campaign for Turkish Tourism as the best ‘country advertising’ in Europe.

In his limited free time, Mr. Yücel likes to give back by delivering talks about his profession. Recently, the third annual City Nation Place Global conference in New York and also in London invited Mr. Yücel to share his fresh perspective on why and how to engage citizens in location branding strategy.

To honor “the World Intellectual Property Day”, Mr. Yücel gave a presentation at the United Nations Office in Geneva about “Innovation in Communications.” His talk was centered around the similarities of place branding and Hollywood movie marketing. The following day, he repeated the same speech at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne.

He lives in Santa Monica with his wife and two kids.