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WORK TITLE: A Vision for My Father
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S): Cook, Roger
BIRTHDATE: 1930
WEBSITE: http://www.rajie.org/
CITY: Bucks County
STATE: PA
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born 1930, in NJ; wife’s name Peggy; children: two daughters.
EDUCATION:Graduated from Pratt Institute, 1953.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Graphic designer, photographer, artist, and author. Co-founder and president, Cook and Shanosky Associates, Inc. 1967–.
MEMBER:American Institute of Graphic Arts.
AWARDS:Alumni of the Year award, Pratt Institute, 1967; Presidential Award for Design Excellence, 1984.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Rajie Cook (who is also known by the name Roger Cook) is a partner in the design firm Cook and Shanosky Associates, which is best known as the design firm that created the icons used on highway and traffic signage under the auspices of the United States Department of Transportation. He is also the son of Palestinian-American immigrant parents. “Many of the ‘Boxes’ that he has created,” wrote the contributor of a biographical blurb to the author and artist’s home page, the Rajie Cook website, “are an expression of the artist’s deeply felt concern for human rights and for the tragic conditions in the Middle East.” Cook writes about his father and his family, as well as his own work as a graphic designer and artist, in the memoir A Vision for My Father: The Life and Work of the Palestinian-American Artist and Designer Rajie Cook.
A Vision for My Father tells the story of Najeeb Cook, who came to the United States in the early 20th century from Ramallah in Palestine. His son was born in New Jersey in 1930. Najeeb Cook lost his sight soon after to cataracts and thus was unable to see and appreciate his son’s later success in the graphic arts. Rajie Cook went on to graduate from the prestigious Pratt Institute and in 1967 co-founded the design firm Cook and Shanosky. “The focus of the book, however,” declared a Publishers Weekly reviewer, “is his transformation from commercial graphic designer to political artist.” Rajie Cook traveled to his parents’ native land in the 1980s, and the suffering he witnessed there helped reshape the purpose of his artwork.
Critics found Cook’s memoir a touching tribute to the artist’s parents. “To me,” stated Delinda C. Hanley in the Washington Report on Middle Eastern Affairs, “Cook’s book is a deeply personal tribute to America and the immigrants who, like his father, Najeeb Esa Cook, leave all that they know and love to come here.” “The tale … illustrated with touching personal photos and images of cherished mementos,” Hanley concluded, “is guaranteed to make readers slip his memoir off their coffee table or library shelf and retreat to their favorite reading nook.” “Beautifully and profusely illustrated throughout,” said John Burroughs, writing in Reviewer’s Bookwatch,“A Vision for My Father is a blending of memoir and political commentary that is impressively informative, expressly candid, and inherently engaging from cover to cover. An extraordinary and ultimately inspiring read, A Vision for My Father is … especially and unreservedly recommended.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Publishers Weekly, May 21, 2018, review of A Vision for My Father: The Life and Work of Palestinian-American Artist and Designer Rajie Cook, p. 66.
Reviewer’s Bookwatch, April, 2018, John Burroughs, “A Vision for My Father Rajie Cook.”
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, June-July, 2018, Delinda C. Hanley, review of A Vision for My Father, p. 68.
ONLINE
Rajie Cook website, http://www.rajie.org (October 17, 2018), author profile.
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.
A Vision for My Father Rajie Cook
John Burroughs
Reviewer's Bookwatch. (Apr. 2018):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 Midwest Book Review
http://www.midwestbookreview.com
Full Text:
A Vision for My Father
Rajie Cook
Interlink Publishing Group
46 Crosby Street, Northampton, MA 01060-1804
www.interlinkbooks.com
9781566560320, $35.00, HC, 326pp, www.amazon.com
Synopsis: Rajie Cook is an internationally recognized graphic designer, artist, and activist--and the son of Najeeb and Jaleela Cook from Ramallah, Palestine. In 1967, he co-founded Cook and Shanosky Associates, Inc., a design firm, in New York City.
"A Vision for My Father: The Life and Work of Palestinian-American Artist and Designer Rajie Cook" is memoir in a tribute to his parents, but also evolves into a narrative of how their son made his mark on the international stage of graphic design. For Rajie, art is an organic expression of what moves him, his art activism is his gift to the world.
Sight, what we see and what we think we see, is a major theme in this narrative. On one level, Rajie gives sight back to his father who was blinded in the early 1930's by the ravages of cataract. Najeeb could not share in the excitement of Rajie's starting a graphic design firm that was acclaimed for its excellence. Najeeb could not see the symbols Rajie and his partner created which the world relies upon to navigate transportation symbols and public places. He died before seeing his talented son shake the hand of an American president.
Perhaps Najeeb's greatest legacy was his love for Palestine. Rajie has shared his father's love for the Palestinian people, and began to travel to the Middle East.
Now, using his art as his voice, his camera as a partner, in the pages of "A Vision for My Father" Rajie has lifted the veil of what people see or think they see with regard to the Palestinian people. Some of his photographs are disturbing, his experiences equally unsettling because Rajie narrates the truth as he sees it. The pain of the Palestinian people cries out though Rajie's art and activism the--horror of the Occupation, the brutality of life that Palestinian children experience every day. Rajie wants the world to see what he has seen, and like his father before him, yearns for peace to come to this troubled and tortured region. The image of Najeeb sitting by his radio is replaced by the image of Roger working in his studio, both men wishing for a peace that seems forever elusive.
His assemblages, posters, and artwork have been featured in art shows throughout the United States and internationally. Provocative yet truthful, Rajie's vision is recorded in his art. In his own words, My art will be my voice long after I have gone. It will never be silenced
Critique: Beautifully and profusely illustrated throughout, "A Vision for My Father" is a blending of memoir and political commentary that is impressively informative, expressly candid, and inherently engaging from cover to cover. An extraordinary and ultimately inspiring read, "A Vision for My Father" is an especially and unreservedly recommended addition to both community and academic library Contemporary Biography collections in general, as well as the personal reading lists of non-specialist general readers with an interest in the life and work of Rajie Cook and the Palestinian struggle.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Burroughs, John. "A Vision for My Father Rajie Cook." Reviewer's Bookwatch, Apr. 2018. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A539772241/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=423b3f34. Accessed 30 Sept. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A539772241
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Print Marked Items
A Vision For My Father: The Life and
Work of the Palestinian-American Artist
and Designer Rajie Cook
Delinda C. Hanley
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.
37.4 (June-July 2018): p68.
COPYRIGHT 2018 American Educational Trust
http://www.washington-report.org
Full Text:
A Vision For My Father: The Life and Work of the Palestinian-American Artist and Designer Rajie Cook
By Rajie Cook, Interlink Publishing Group,
Inc, 2018, hardcover, 327 pp. MEB: $25.
A Vision for My Father is more than an extravagant coffee-table book--although superb photos of Rajie
Cook's iconic graphic art and striking sculptural assemblages are guaranteed to be a conversation starter in
any living room. It's also a book that, if discovered on a public or university library shelf, could inspire a
student to study art or graphic design.
To me, Cook's book is a deeply personal tribute to America and the immigrants who, like his father, Najeeb
Esa Cook, leave all that they know and love to come here. That odyssey undertaken by a 20-year-old
Palestinian and his subsequent life story "is the exact reason for who I am today," the artist tells us. The tale
Rajie Cook narrates, illustrated with touching personal photos and images of cherished mementos, is
guaranteed to make readers slip his memoir off their coffee table or library shelf and retreat to their favorite
reading nook.
Get prepared to be utterly engrossed as you read about the author's father, a hard-working, educated
immigrant who travels around the United States, wherever "there was work to be had, no matter how
menial." Najeeb saves up money to return to Ramallah to marry Jaleelie Totah in 1920, but it takes seven
more lonely years to earn enough to have his bride join him in America.
Najeeb's family quickly grows (Rajie is one of five children), and his childhood anecdotes document the
economic hardships faced by most Americans of a certain age who endured the Great Depression and the
outbreak of WWII. Rajie, "consumed by patriotism" and enamored of the uniform, joins the Cub Scouts and
collects tin cans, stockings, newspapers and phonograph records in his red wagon for the war effort.
Unlike most American children (we hope), his fourth grade teacher changes his identity, calling him Roger
because it was "much easier to say," Cook writes. "Did she know or care that my name meant 'Hope' in
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Arabic, a word which represented so much to my parents as residents of this country? ... That changed how
I introduced myself to my family, friends and the world afterward. From then on, I was known as Roger."
Sight is a major theme in A Vision for My Father, as Rajie watches his father's eyesight deteriorate until, in
1942, "Najeeb, my vital and vigorous father who fearlessly came to this country with no money, no job, and
no prospects, but with an indomitable spirit, was blind. As with all, he met the challenge, head on."
One challenge, faced by a growing number of other Arab-American families who hope their kids will study
medicine or law, is Najeeb's acceptance and support of his son's decision to attend art school and become a
graphic artist-whose stunning achievements he can never see.
Rajie's own journey after graduating from the Pratt Institute and marrying "the love of my life," Peggy,
continues as he learns the art of salesmanship, "an integral part of running a design business." Like his
father, he faces his own health challenge as he battles Hodgkin's lymphoma, and survives to make his mark
on the international stage of graphic design.
Rajie tells how his first visit, in 1981, to explore his roots and visit the biblical holy sites, transforms him
from "just an artist" to an advocate for justice in Palestine.
One sight that a reader can never unsee is the photo of his father, who died at the age of 94, "old and blind
and sitting by the radio saying he was waiting to hear something good on the radio about peace in the
Middle East." Today his talented first-born son Rajie, 88, isn't sitting, yearning and waiting for peace. He's
using his art, and this unforgettable memoir, to open eyes that may be blind to the injustice of the ongoing
Palestinian Nakba and ensure that those eyes never again turn away with indifference.
Delinda C. Hanley is news editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Hanley, Delinda C. "A Vision For My Father: The Life and Work of the Palestinian-American Artist and
Designer Rajie Cook." Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, June-July 2018, p. 68. General
OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A543900095/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=c79f0518. Accessed 30 Sept. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A543900095
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A Vision for My Father: The Life and
Work of Palestinian-American Artist and
Designer Rajie Cook
Publishers Weekly.
265.21 (May 21, 2018): p66.
COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
A Vision for My Father: The Life and Work of Palestinian-American Artist and Designer Rajie Cook
Rajie Cook. Interlink, $35 (326p) ISBN 978-156656-032-0
Graphic designer Cook traces the influence of his Palestinian heritage on his artistic career in this unwieldy
mix of activist memoir and artist's monograph. The son of Palestinian immigrants, Cook was born in
Newark, N.J., and rose to prominence in the design world in the late 1960s as one half of Cook and
Shanosky Associates, the design firm behind the universal pictograms adopted by the U.S. Department of
Transportation for use in signage in public spaces. Cook chronicles his childhood, early influences, and his
work in corporate design. The focus of the book, however, is his transformation from commercial graphic
designer to political artist, spawned by his first trip to Palestine in 1981, where he witnessed "the anguish
and wails of the Palestinian people." Cook's recollections ramble with unnecessary details, whether
discussing the home-service bakery that delivered cupcakes to his Sunday school growing up or providing a
play-by-play account of his travels. His art and design portfolio is easily the best part of the book,
particularly the 80 pages showcasing the shadow box assemblages highlighting the emotional toll of the
ongoing conflict in the Middle East on Palestinians. Cook's book will appeal most to graphic designers
interested in his career, but average readers will be disappointed in the narrative. (July)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"A Vision for My Father: The Life and Work of Palestinian-American Artist and Designer Rajie Cook."
Publishers Weekly, 21 May 2018, p. 66. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A541012661/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=1f665a4a.
Accessed 30 Sept. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A541012661