Elaine Lustig Cohen

Pioneering graphic designer, artist and archivist, Elaine Lustig Cohen is recognized for her body of design work integrating European avant-garde and modernist influences into a distinctly American, mid-century manner of typographic communication.

In April 2012, Elaine Lustig Cohen was awarded the 2011 AIGA Medal, the most distinguished honor offered by the AIGA, the American professional organization for design. The celebratory event and ceremony, which took place in New York City, highlighted her exemplary design work and career, citing her as a “pioneering graphic designer, artist and archivist”. 

Elaine Lustig Cohen on the late Alvin Lustig and the art, and archiving, of the book jacket. Interview from May, 2013.

During the 1950s and 60s a small group of graphic designers sought to integrate ideas from European modernism into the context of American printed media. Among these pioneering modernists was Elaine Lustig Cohen (b. 1927), whose work is a little-known episode in the history of graphic design.