Designers
Great an d
Grids
Elaine Lustig Cohen
Elaine Lustig Cohen was an ambitious young artist who was encouraged by her parents at a very young age to be creative, so she attended art school where she learned to draw from cast. At age 15 she happened upon Peggy Guggenheim’s art of the century gallery which ignited Elaine’s lifelong deep passion for modern art (Heller). During those days women were less likely to study art as a career so Elaine proceeded with plans of being an art teacher. She studied at the Newcomb College of Tulane University (New Orleans, Louisiana) and art education at the University of Southern California (Los Angeles, California), where she completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts (D’ Onofrio).
In the beginning of Elaine’s short-lived marriage to the famous designer Alvin Lustig, she worked as an art teacher in public schools, then later as an assistant in her husband’s graphic studio. Although she was not encouraged to create her own designs, Elaine was able to become fluent in design processing by observing Lustig’s graphic design techniques over the years. Elaine recalls being an assistant that she referred to as an “office slave”, methodically executing concepts and designs for her husband, even throughout his failing health (Belen and D’ Onofrio). Alvin Lustig, would succumb to his diabetic disease in 1955, and soon after Elaine was contacted by Philip Johnson to be hired to continue the previously
commissioned jobs to her husband, designing the Seagram Building signage. As the opportunities began to knock, Elaine just went with it. She knew she could design, so she put one foot in front of the other and put all she had learned into fulfilling the demands that came her way. Alvin’s best friend, Arthur Cohen insisted Elaine design the Meridian books new line of paperbacks. Elaine would go on to design lobby signs and catalogs for the Jewish Museum General Motors, the Museum of Primitive Art, the Federal Aviation Administration, Rio de Janeiro’s Museum of Modern Art and the 1964 World’s Fair, and the 1964 New York World’s Fair, creating graphic design for the architectural firm Harrison & Abramovitz. In addition, Johnson would hire her to design signs for two Yale buildings (Heller). Elaine was not a conceptual modernist but she preferred clarity and modesty, and used decisive typography with irregularity as a guiding principle, stepping outside of the box of tamed geometry. She relied heavily on her knowledge of the unpopular 20th-century avant-garde typography respectfully without impersonating it within her designs. Elaine had found her design comfort zone by developing her own palette, type preferences and personal glyphs with more organic typographic designs, that were less restrictive, yet still modern (Heller). As she designed book-covers, she followed in Mr. Lustig’s footsteps eventually establishing
2 her own, free-form style (Gates). Based in New York, Cohen had the status of a highly renowned graphic designer, artist, and rare book dealer throughout her fifty-year career. Her basic standard design language included the use of solid colors and abstract geometric shapes, her paintings referred to the design
culture of contemporary influences that would rejected barriers between painting and objecthood (Akers). Elain Cohen’s first solo exhibitions in New York were held at John Bernard Meyers Gallery during the years 1970 -73, in 1979 she was the first woman to have a solo
“She emerged among a male driven industry into an exemplary typographer and graphic designer “
exhibition. Although she may have had humble beginnings beings in her husband’s shadow, yet she emerged among a male driven industry into an exemplary typographer and graphic designer.
Inspired by Elaine Cohen Lustig
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Elaine Cohen Lustig origingal
“My gender
may have been an issue for other designers, but not my clients� Elaine Lustig Cohen
Inspired by Alvin Lustig
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Alvin Lustig original
“I make solutions nobody wants to problems that don’t exits”
Alvin Lustig
Inspired by Wassily Kandinsky
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Wassily Kandinsky original
“A parrallel between color
and music can only be relative - just as a violin can give warm shades of tone, so yellow has shades, which can be expressed by various instruments.� Wassily Kandinsky
Inspired by El Lissitsky
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El Lissitsky original “We believe that the elements in the
chemicsl formula of our creative work, problem, invention,and art, correspond to the challenges of our age.� El Lissitsky
By LeNell Sims