Filmmaker Valentina Canavesio has been working on a documentary film about the late Roger Cook (1930–2021), half of the design duo Cook & Shanosky Associates. In 1974, they were primarily responsible for the design of the standard Department of Transportation sign symbols. With primary filming complete, she has launched a Kickstarter that will cover costs to finalize the editing.
Perhaps owing to the fact that these symbols are so common as to be taken for granted, Cook is barely known today by designers and is virtually sidelined in most graphic design history texts. Canavesio’s film will therefore be a welcome hagiography for the overall field.
While digging through biographical material, Canavesio also uncovered a fact that changed the course of her film: Roger Cook’s real given name is Rajie, and his parents were Christian immigrants from Palestine. He learned about his roots later in life, and as he matured, his work transformed, too. Because he grew up in the 1930s and ’40s, “his immigrant mindset was that of assimilation,” she told me. This changed after visiting the West Bank, and he entered a new life stage. Cook produced his own art, mostly as a social testament to peace and the critique of the Palestinian’s veritable apartheid status as a non-state. The film is about the intersection of family, politics and art. Rajie’s experiences are told in assemblage-boxes incorporating found objects, most inspired by his own heritage and by what he saw on his many trips to the Middle East.
I became interested in his earlier paradigmatic no-frills graphic design, but even more by his unknown (to me) personal art addressing Israeli occupation of Palestine. In this interview Canavesio and I discuss how the film took shape, how his unique story should now be told and how she sees this as a piece in a greater design historical saga.
What prompted this film?
I came across Rajie’s story in December 2023 via a short Instagram video. I work with a lot of designers, and the story of these symbols caught my attention. And in a context where the mainstream media was only talking about Palestinians as statistics and casualties, it was refreshing to come across a story about a Palestinian-American man who had made a mark in this world through his creative endeavors. This also came at a time when, like many others, I was witnessing the horrors unfolding in Gaza and feeling utterly powerless to do anything about it. I started reading about Rajie and exploring his artwork, and it felt like there was a lot more to his story to tell and share. Getting this film off the ground allowed me to channel my energy into sharing an important immigrant story—one that would join others—in humanizing a people whose humanity was too often ignored in the West. Rajie’s story is a Palestinian story, a human story, and also an immigrant story.
I never knew that Cook was originally Palestinian. What role does his heritage play in the film?
Rajie spent most of his life as Roger Cook. This was the name assigned to him by his third grade teacher in New Jersey, where he grew up. The family’s last name had already been anglicized at the time when Palestine was under British control. …
And so Rajie became Roger—that’s how everyone, even his family, called him. That, and the fact that he was Christian, made it easy to fit in and probably removed some obstacles he might have faced otherwise as a second-generation immigrant. It’s not so much that he was trying to hide his origins, but they were not his defying trait until much later in life, when he reconnected with his roots after his first trip to Palestine. …
Another layer we want to explore is the role this identity plays over multiple generations and how it evolved in the context of his family. We have audio recordings of his father’s journey from Ramallah to the US, and we also interviewed Rajie’s daughters and grandchildren.
Did his accomplishment designing the sign symbols shape your interest in the film?
The DoT symbols, which Rajie designed with his partner Don Shanosky, were the initial hook for me. But it was his personal history, identity and the evolution of his artwork that made me feel there was a much deeper story worth exploring.
My hope is that the film resonates with audiences coming to it for different reasons. Some may be drawn in by the design history angle: discovering the origins of these ubiquitous symbols and their lasting impact through conversations with Ellen Lupton, Tom Geismar and yourself. Others may connect more deeply to Rajie’s journey as a Palestinian-American artist, or to the body of work he created later in life—work that speaks to injustice and the enduring struggle of his people, themes that remain profoundly relevant today.
His later art is of particular note.
I got a sense that Rajie, having grown up “all-American,” spent a lot of time later in life trying to catch up and reconnect with his roots by investing himself so fully in the Palestinian cause, through his art. He spoke about seeing his father, who became blind when Rajie was young, spend his days by the radio, waiting to hear news about peace in the Middle East that never came. It was only after his father passed away that Rajie made his first trip to Palestine, in part to honor his father’s memory.
What conclusions have you drawn from your research into his life and art?
Rajie had a successful career as a designer but it was his art later in life which really seemed to fulfill him and give him purpose. He wasn’t getting all the accolades he was accustomed to, but he was speaking for his people, albeit late in life. I think his heartbreak though was that his art was not reaching people on a scale that he’d hoped. The irony is that his art, some of it over decades old, is now resonating with people in a way it did not in his lifetime. We filmed at Pratt—his alma mater—last year, where art and design students had an exhibit of their work in conversation with Rajie’s. It was inspiring to see a new generation of artists picking up the baton and using their voice and craft as a form of resistance.
What do you want the audience to take away from the final film?
I hope they appreciate that a Palestinian-American guides their way daily, whether it’s to the bathroom, the elevator, their plane or train. But that’s only the entry point into the much bigger story we want to tell. We still need to go through over 50 hours of material (interviews, vérité, archives, home videos and more) and the real work of shaping the film is ahead of us (that’s what we are raising funds for!). So it’s still too early to share what the final film will become, but I hope we do right by Rajie and make a film that resonates with people who love design, art and justice—all things that drove him throughout his life.
(Note: A trailer and introductory video can be viewed here.)
Forbidden Colors: “Addresses artistic suppression of Palestinian artists, particularly the former Israeli ban on the use of red, green, black, and white”. Rajie Cook.