Elaine Lustig Cohen

Franklin Flats, 1973

This is the first of a series of posts I will be making about graphic designers and art. I am curious about the relationship between creative work called design and creative work called art.

Elaine Lustig Cohen (1926–2016) is mostly known as a graphic designer, yet she was also an exhibited painter and collage artist. I met her while researching her former husband, Alvin Lustig, and slowly learned about her work, eventually becoming obsessed with her hard-edged geometric paintings from the 1960s and 70s. Her craftsmanship was meticulous and these paintings are crisp and flawless. Perhaps attention to craft is evidence of the influence of graphic design layout practices, which she excelled at.

Orange Julius, 1971