Ethem Cem — Designer

Ethem Cem is a director and designer based in London, with a background running through Istanbul, and his specialty is 3D title design that behaves like set-building. His main-title and look-development credits include Netflix's All The Light We Cannot See, where he built a model-city, light-reveal concept, along with Apple TV+'s Murderbot Diaries and FX's American Horror Stories. He has freelanced as an art director at The Mill in London and as a designer at Tactile in New York, and his "Alef" main titles were featured on Stash.

His toolkit is broad, After Effects and Photoshop through Substance 3D Designer and Painter, and the results read as crafted objects rather than motion presets. That materials-first approach is why his titles feel physical: you believe the surfaces because the light and texture agree with each other frame to frame.

We feature Cem because his work is a clinic in hiding the toolchain. Three renderers can live in one sequence and you cannot tell where one ends and the next begins, which is the mark of a mature pipeline serving a single vision. His Behance, at nearly 8,000 followers, and his portfolio at ethemcem.com hold the full run of title sequences and commercials, and they reward anyone studying how to make disparate 3D parts read as one coherent surface.