Rajie Cook
Rajie / Roger Cook, (b 1930) an internationally known graphic designer, photographer and artist.
He has been the President of Cook and Shanosky Associates, Inc., a graphic design firm he founded in 1967. The firm produced all forms of corporate communications including: Corporate Identity, Advertising, Signage, Annual Reports and Brochures.
His graphic design and photography have been used by IBM, Container Corporation of America, Montgomery Ward, Squibb Corporation, Black & Decker, Volvo, Subaru, AT&T, New York Times, Bell Atlantic, BASF, Lenox, and a number of other major international corporations.
He received the Presidential Award for Design Excellence from President Reagan and Elizabeth Dole on January 30,1984 in the Indian Treaty Room of the Old Executive Office Building in Washington, DC. Juries under the auspices of the National Endowments chose the thirteen winners of the Federal Design Achievement Awards for the Arts.
In 2003, “Symbols Signs” a project designed by his firm for the US Department of Transportation was accepted by the Acquisitions Committee to the collections of Cooper Hewitt, National Design Museum, and The Smithsonian Institution.
In 1949 after graduating Bloomfield High School in NJ, Cook attended Pratt Institute and graduated in 1953. In 1967 he was selected as an Alumni of the year, and he has also served on the Pratt Institute Advisory Board. He has been a member of the American Institute of Graphic Arts.
Many of the “Boxes” that he has created are an expression of the artist’s deeply felt concern for human rights and for the tragic conditions in the Middle East. They were created to articulate the circumstances and experiences he encountered during the ten years he has served on the Task Force for the Middle East, a group sponsored by the Presbyterian Church, USA. With this group he has traveled on fact-finding trips to Israel, Jordan, the West Bank, and Gaza.