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Audio Description

In this issue we pay to homage to influential designer duet, Alvin Lustig & Elaine Lustig Cohen. Alvin was sadly struggling with blindness in the final years of his life, due to the deteriorating nature of his diabetes, which would unfortunately take his life in 1955.

Whilst most designers would put down their pens and call it a day, for the last year of his life, Alvin kept designing through an obsessive amount of detailed dictation to his wife Elaine, who would make his design come to life. According to Elaine ‘He would tell us go down a pica and over three picas, and how high the type should be, and what the colour should be,” He would reference his previous work as well as the work of other greats to make their work come to life. In one especially poetic example, he depicted the shade of yellow he wanted to use as “the dominant yellow of Van Gogh’s sunflower.”

Thanks to Elaine’s skill, Alvin managed to design until his final days, whilst Elaine went onto become the designer she always wanted to be in her own right through success in painting and designing.