 Hello. Welcome to in print and on view designing for E. McKnight Calfer at Cooper Hewitt, the latest in Cooper Hewitt's behind the design series. This program is a discussion series for curators conservators educators and designers to offer behind the scenes glimpse of what we do at Cooper Hewitt. My name is Caitlin Cundell, and I'm the associate curator and head of drawings prints and graphic design at Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum. I am joined by my colleague Emily Orr, assistant curator of modern contemporary American design, to host this program today that will explore the process of designing our book and exhibition about the work of commercial art pioneer, E. McKnight Calfer. Renowned in his lifetime as the poster king, Calfer's career encompassed all media as he relentlessly pursued innovation in the commercial art. At the height of his career in the 1920s and 1930s, Calfer an American was among the most influential artists in England. In 1940, he moved to New York, joining the influx of European designers who brought dynamism to American advertising. His remarkable output includes eye catching posters for the London Underground, illustrations for celebrated works of literature, and iconic graphics for major corporations such as shell mechs and American Airlines. Cooper Hewitt holds one of the most extensive collections of Calfer's designs in the world. We are honored to welcome our recent collaborators, Lucinda Hitchcock and Lucy Roberts. I am a book designer, a typographer, a full time professor, and until recently, the graphic design department head at Rhode Island School of Design. Lucinda designed the publication E. McKnight Calfer, the artist in advertising, which was co published by Rizzoli Electa and Cooper Hewitt in fall 2022. Lucy is founder of design studio Lucy and Roberts plus and co founder of the advocacy initiative graphic design and a research and practice characterized by her abiding interest in the definitions of ethical design. Lucy oversaw the 2D design for the exhibition underground modernist E. McKnight Calfer currently on view with the museum through April 10, 2022. We are grateful to both of them for sharing their insights with us today. Our program will begin with Lucinda and Lucy each sharing a presentation. Then we will open it up for questions from the audience. We encourage you all to post your questions in the Q&A box at any point during the course of the session. Before we start, we would like to take a moment to say a special thank you to our supporters. Underground modernist E. McKnight Calfer is made possible with support from the Barbara and Morton Mandela Design Gallery Endowment Fund, and the Esme Eusten exhibition Endowment Fund. And E. McKnight Calfer, the artist in advertising is made possible in part by furthermore, a program of the J. M. Kaplan fund. We would also like to thank our colleague Phoebe Moore for her assistance in the planning of today's program. Today's program is just one of the many wonderful upcoming events hosted by Cooper Hewitt, and we encourage you to visit the museum's website to find out more about our virtual programs coming up in October for National Design Month. I'll now turn it over to Lucinda Hitchcock to start us off. Hi everybody, thank you so much for coming. It's just delightful to have you here. I will quickly share my screen. And we can get started. Let me know in the chat if anybody has trouble hearing or if there's any issues. Although I don't know if I can see the chat at this point. Okay, so this is the story of very quickly of me designing this book. E. McKnight Calfer the artist in advertising. And when this book. When this book arrived on my on my desk as a possibility through the grace of Pamela Horn who also works at the Cooper Hewitt in production and sort of upper level connectivity. I wasn't sure I wanted to take this book on. We were very embroiled at the time in our department at RISD in activities around accessibility around community around social equity. And I wasn't thinking that it made a lot of sense in that moment to do a book of such complexity about somebody who existed so long ago. I was completely wrong. I was so delighted to dive into this work and discover Calfer I knew of him but I didn't know anything near like what I know now from having read the incredible words of many of the writers. So one of the things I really wanted to do when I got this book was to make it big and floppy and paperback and sort of think about the abdominal nature of the work that he did posters and advertisements and things that didn't necessarily last. And so the book needed to be sturdy or solely was a partner they care about the durability and the longevity of these books so it is a hardback book but what one thing that lasted was this ability to wrap a poster around the book as a jacket. It was so fun to be able to work on this advertisement for motorcycles that Calfer designed and be able to apply my own typography and have it serve as a cover. It's a fantastic glimpse of the book thanks to Lucienne Roberts for this big quick video but it shows you the variety of the work very quickly I hope it doesn't make you too dizzy and shows you a bit of how much color was involved in the design of that book. Another very special thing that happened in the design of this book was the generosity of the curators to let me make detailed crops of some of the work as we enter the book. You can even get to the title page you see these sort of glimpses of the work to sort of act as enticement to draw you in. The book starts out looking relatively conventional and then you might notice something a little strange when you get to the first essay, the typography is designed to deliberately be somewhat ill fitting in the box of the sort of opening language of the first essay. So those these two typefaces circular and sang blow designed by Swiss typefaces on the right sang blow and circular was designed by line to because of their their well with circular the sort of geometric nature of the typeface nods to Winston and to Gill and to some of those early fonts of the early 20th century. Sang blow nods to badoni and ddo but has this fantastic sort of crisp thin and thick strokes, which really lends itself to the kind of elegance of his work. This sort of misfitting of typography anybody who's here who's a student of typography knows that you try to avoid word spaces, loose word spaces. As much as possible and the fact that I forced it like this and really made it seem ill fitting was sort of a nod to the misfit character that I sort of started to understand how for to be not in a negative way but in the sense that he did so much work that was outside of, you know, one particular purview you know he was a he was a set designer and a costume designer and a book designer and a letterer. Obviously a poster designer. So throughout the book I sort of have type and footnotes and images playing together in a dynamic way but also kind of uncomfortable and I wanted that sense to come through elegantly but sort of metaphorically as part of the narrative. And so these are just some examples to show you the interior I don't know how many of you have actually held the book in your hands, but I wanted you to see how we arrayed the typography and how we read the images and how we use the colors. This was the very first spread that I designed even when we were in sketching stage I completely fell in love with this Fortnum and Mason image. I noticed that the typography is stretched out and that the spaces between the words are are quite large, and this was the sort of moment that I was truly inspired to do the typography this way. Again just showing you some of my favorite openings, even the chronology the back matter and some of the other incidental typography I've treated in this way to sort of fit with the spirit of the book. So I think you can even tell from these pictures this paper is not coded. It's an uncoated stock which is pretty unconventional and most museum books there's usually a lot of varnish a lot of glare, but it was absolutely essential to me to that we nod to the time period in which I was working, and that the paper had the sort of spirit of urgency it was made immediately it didn't have time to be fancy. How for you know he was he was living through this unbelievable time where art and design were affected by by Cubism by the avant garde very much so you know the tail end of art deco. And the stuff that really drew me in was this almost futuristic way that he worked with typography and form. Which is why I think this is sort of timeless you know and students who are experimenting with typography in my classes today are looking at pure form and abstraction and the way that letters and marks can work together to make a surface dynamic. So these are some of my favorites. The best part of this, the beginning of this project was coming to the Cooper Hewitt, where I was allowed to go into the drew Heinz study center. And thank you to Carolina Connell and Christina Parsons for incredible amount of work they did on this book and on curing a lot of the, the artwork that you see in there. But what was so great about going here was also getting a chance to see some of his writing and some of the sort of ephemeral elements of cow for he was just so alive. And everything in the collection shows this kind of in process liveliness in some cases you can see a sketch of the original. A bunch of us were really obsessed with his hands he had all kinds of motifs that he carried throughout his work and for a little while we thought maybe there was some way we could pull this into the book design. And here you see the sort of whimsical way that he plays clouds and stars and trees and he's honestly very funny like these crazy darts coming out of the statues eyes heading up to that star for this ad for evening classes of course for the underground. But this is the object that I love the most of all of the strange things I was on the train going down to Cooper Hewitt sort of quickly researching this guy before I had a meeting with these curious at that time. I didn't know it all and now I can actually call friends I think. And this F just blew my mind and that's this was the moment I knew I absolutely had to do this book I really hope they would hire me I think at this point they were still debating between me and some other people, but the sort of nature of this cover. I can't remember the exact date of this one was just so experimental and so funny that I absolutely fell in the look out for that moment and you'll see here to any of you who study typography or look at it. Can see how really experimental this is all these different faces coming together in this kind of clustered form on the right hand side with the guy and his strange his strange legs what a fantastic, fantastic image and I'm going quickly now because I'm supposed to keep it short. Again some favorites that just show the breadth and depth of his approach to lettering to typography to color. You can also see the colors that I had to work with. At first I thought I had to be restrained and sensible and only use a few colors like most people do in a book design. And then I realized actually know I needed to use a lot of colors and I needed to be careful about them but every time another image required a color behind it to highlight it. I wanted to have that freedom to choose the appropriate color so it's a very, very colorful book preliminary sketches just for a quick glimpse there's some it's kind of hilarious whenever you go back and see what you thought you might do. These were early ideas for the cover this was another possible poster design that we could do on the left that could have folded around the book. Here I was again starting to think about what colors to use to highlight the works and some of them had a white background you needed to really highlight them. I was always interested in this constellation of images sort of cluster and I wanted to create this kind of structure that could float and they could sort of have integrity, no matter where they landed on the page. We thought for a while about having these large chronological part title dividing pages but decided that was unnecessary. So in the end you see here now on the left. The one of the title walls that Lucy and Roberts designed for the exhibition and on the right my book and I was really happy once I saw the show that our both of us were channeling copper in such an incredible way that I think that the two projects really ended up aligning very nicely and that if he were here today he'd be sitting down and raising his glass to us and very pleased. My last favorite shot and then I just wanted to thank you very much. I hope that wasn't too fast or too slow. Now I will turn it back to Lucy and Roberts. Hi. So that was fantastic. Thank you very much. Okay, so I'm going to talk about the 2D 3D of the show. Hope everyone can see that. So just before I start I have to say I didn't do all this on my own. I have to thank John McGill most particularly my colleague and studio and also of course Sorry. And also Dave and Universal Design Studio we were with on the show. So just starting off now. This is a very personal show really in that it's very much relates to my dad who you see on the left there. And who was very influenced by Kalfa himself my dad was a diviner and so I was sort of brought up knowing who Kalfa was. And it's also very much about place for us our studio was near to Russell Square which is the tube station you see on the right hand side. And we are so we're based in London. So clearly London place. People, Kalfa and my dad play a large part in this story for us. And so when this landed on our desk as a possibility to tender for it we really wanted to do it. So, um, sorry, I think you're having a bit of a problem here. I am going to start again. Sorry, just one second. Sorry. This is also very much about I think this project about connections and events and chance and serendipity and all the sort of randomness and peculiarities of life really. And on the left hand side is a map of London that I found in my dad's collection of maps which I thought was very pertinent because there's a large white area here that says approximate approximate area destroyed by any action 1940 to 41. This is the area of London where I'm sitting in now. This is the Barbican. But of course it's also 1940 the date when Kalfa left. And it struck me right from the beginning when we learned more about Kalfa actually and his, his love of London and the circumstances in which he left that we were very, you know, we're all very formed by experiences beyond our control and this was something that we thought was a very powerful part of his story really in all our stories. And so it was kind of in our mind that we wanted to foreground this in some way in terms of our design. In terms of serendipity, I also have to say that we were incredibly fortunate, but Caitlin and Emily heard about us fire other museum colleagues at the BNA. And they heard of us partly because we've done show also about graphic science or graphic design save your life which is shown on the right hand side. And so what makes this project unusual as an exhibition project is that we were commissioned first not the 3D so it was a very 2D led project in all respects. So in terms of our tender, as I say, there were two things that really struck us one was about place and time and the other was about connections. And when we found out more about Kalfa as we put our tender together, we thought about the period in which he lived that he witnessed the first and second World War that he was an emigrate, therefore a displaced person in some to some degree. And that journey, this journey from the US to Europe, and Europe and then to the UK and then back to the States were hugely significant in his life and work. And we were also very impressed and say by how he was connected so to so many other aspects of the arts and more broadly really. And every, every time we read the brief you know more names pop top Virginia Wolf TS Eliot all these people that we thought it was hugely important and he knew this seat this was a very exciting thing to us. So in terms of our initial proposal we wanted to foreground this idea of time place journeys and connections. And so we proposed a design that was really built around the idea of viewers and viewing distances and apertures and journeys passing through space. And how we could foreground that you might see one thing as you move into a different area and then glimpse something else. And we were also very struck by his use of color and abstract form. So that was what our tender proposal was mainly about. And we got the job really, really excited. It really made our day and year and you know it was a really wonderful thing. So our research in earnest starts with the DNA. We went to look at many examples of campus work, just a photograph something to see here. The things that I suppose stayed with us were his use of perspective is use of abstract form to emphasize certain elements. His use of graduated color and strong color. The physical aspects of the work how to have the teams of textile and paint and texture rather than paint and so on. All of these things we wanted to convey in some way in our design and we refer back to them a lot. So I came to keep you to present three concepts at the beginning of last year. And the one that was selected was concept three and we called it time frame. And it was loosely taking Kalfa's idea of what he called a space frame, which is the form that you see in the middle as a device to emphasize different elements. We were very interested by the nature of the shapes, the abstract nature of them, but also the use of angles to imply distance and bring dynamism. So our proposal was a bit like this, which was that you arrived in space and you look through a tunnel like aperture and you see other apertures stretching out in front of you, implying the idea of a journey. And here's the axo, so the axonometric so you can see again more clearly this I did the journey through what is quite a long, thin gallery space. And of course when you're working on designs, especially with architects as we were, that you're always thinking about the flow through space and we as 2D designers are there partly to help the visitor find their way through the space. So this was what the idea that was chosen. And this, interestingly, are some shots of how it is how it's ended up so you can see that many of our initial ideas were being retained. You see these apertures for example shown here. Caitlin and Emily did present us with a bit of a problem, which was the number of objects. And here's our, here's a picture of the plan of the gallery surrounded by all the objects. And we were rather overwhelmed by these initially, I have to say, and went through gradual processes of editing to get to where we are now. The 3D elements that came were sort of in our initial designs really and have stayed were these display walls which are sort of folded forms and often are used employing apertures of also different angles, the space frame, and then quite brightly coloured showcases. And here's the access sort of pretty near to the build, actually, so how the design ended up and you can see again strong use of colour folded walls, and these space frames which I'll talk about a bit more in a moment, which were three dimensional space frame so taking the 2D idea and turning into something three dimensional to give emphasis to certain parts of the story. And here are some of the space frames. Again, looking the other direction. And here are some of the angled walls. So you can see that there's a sort of play on the perspective, very similar to the way Calphor did himself, but again we've turned it back into a three dimensional form. And here's one of our visuals. And here's how it ended up so fairly close really, and another view. So something here from a 2D perspective is on the left hand side is this wall. We really wanted to do something to reinforce and play with this idea of connections around Calphor. And we presented this visual to Caitlin and Emily and said could we do all a bit like this so we have no idea what the content might be at this point but we said can we do something where he is at the centre and there are all sorts of things coming extending out from him. So we have all connections between people and we show who knew who and how they influenced each other and so on. It seemed like a really exciting idea and they were very positive about this. Curators because they themselves had already developed their own version of the network map, which was this and this what we had this was what we were presented with to work from quite a dense piece as you can see. So we looked at how we could pull that apart and what stories we might tell these are some of our experiments. And this is how the wall ended up and you can see a series of clusters built around different subjects like literature and theatre and publishing and so on. Now on to just how we made the exhibition really. I'm really, really keen having been at the V&A that we employed some methods that were akin to methods of Calphor's time really that would really make the most of colour, use pure colour that we would avoid plastic or things that would do shiny as Lucinda's already mentioned in relation to her piece to work. And of course in terms of colour we wanted to use a colour palette that referenced Calphor's work here's our initial palette. It was reduced down to these core colours in the end because we had gone a bit overboard initially I think. But we were also interested in materials that had texture to them, these are experiments with staining wood, for example, and you can see all these tests that we did in the studio lined up there against the wall. In terms of texture and how things were made, and you can probably just about see that the all our labels for example are on stiff cardboard and that has a texture to it. We were also interested in seeing some of our experiments on the left hand side in relation to that, and we were again interested in how we made the larger graphics and we're really, really keen that it was paint directly onto the wall wherever possible. And of course in terms of typography, we debated between two typefaces but in the end we went with Johnson's fans which is typeface on the left, designed for the London Underground Network, and still used to this day. And we developed quite some extensive label system, these are things labels of course from a visitor perspective we don't want people to notice them in a way we want them to read them. But from our point of view it's quite a complicated system to ensure that we develop a scheme that has unity and clarity, but signals the right things in the right order. And then of course our title, which is on the left hand side and which Lucinda has already shown, which of course plays most most clearly with some of the ideas in capital's work around perspective, really dynamic use of angles. And of course with him right at the centre. And then the main introductory panel is shown on the right hand side, which again echoes some of the devices that Calfer used in his own work. So this is what it's like when you arrive, you're greeted by the title on the left, and then as you enter the first section, you can see the main introductory panel on the left hand side. And you get a visitor, you get a view all the way down the gallery. So you see the network wall right at the back. So thank you very much for listening. Me in the archives, I have to say I had a wonderful time with curators going through all sorts of material and still feel will always feel very proud to be nice to work on this project. Thank you. Thank you both so much for these marvelous presentation there's quite a lot of love and appreciation happening in the chat. Can't see it. We're going to open it up for discussion and Emily and I are going to share questions from the audience. Please feel free to type your questions into the Q&A box now. And Lucinda, I want to kick it off with a question. You are both graphic designers commissioned by a design museum to work on a project about a graphic designer. Has that ever happened to you before, and what was unique about working with Cooper Hewitt on this project? I'll answer quickly that no there's never been a lineup of so many sort of marvelous connections to my own field before. I designed a lot of books for museums that are very often collections, you know I did a book for the Met not too long ago called Delirious Art at the Limits of Reason 1950 to 1980 and you know that's a typical sort of book I might do that will span many, many, many different artists to be a monograph of one person whose work you know kind of blossomed as I learned more, read more and worked with you guys more was really such a privilege and such a surprising joy. And I was laughing when Lucienne was talking about trying to put so many objects in the collection because we also tried to put a whole lot of objects in the book but I want to take the second to just shout out to to Caitlin and Emily especially. And to Pam Horn whose title I got wrong she's the director of cross platform publishing and strategic partnerships. And I know so many others who helped pull it together but but to be able to work with people who really respected the design, the design process. And thought of us as experts it's bizarre how often I work with clients who sort of come to the problem having already decided for themselves how it's going to go. I'm not really sure, you know why they've hired somebody like me who comes with an opinion, and to have you guys actually want my opinion was such a joy. And I know that sounds kind of cynical but it is, it is true that it's tricky sometimes with clients. So really, you know, yay curators. Thank you. Well, we've, we had worked on two other shows that are about graphic design, as you know, but not about a graphic designer. And one of them was at the Design Museum in London. But I think what was interesting is actually it's interesting comparison the Design Museum in London on the whole doesn't exhibit graphics like a lot of, you know, product design and architecture and so on. Whereas I think I think you really came with with the sensibility about graphics, which made us very, you know, really excited because because it's quite unusual from our experience. And it's very unusual to have exhibitions that are 2D led. As I was saying at the beginning that we were the ones who chose Universal rather than the other way around normally architects choose the graphic designers and that's a very clear hierarchy, whereas it was the other way around. So that was probably the one. So yeah, great. Thank you so much Lucy and Lucinda. It was a pleasure working with you as well, of course. You both touched on this in your presentations but we wanted to ask if you had to identify kind of one aspect of Cal FERS work and career that resonated with you. What would it be and I might add to that. What were the challenges and opportunities of working on a monographic project. I think. Oh, sorry. You should go first. That's the order isn't it going. Well, I mean just I can I can answer relatively simply although it's, it is tricky to answer I think the typography was what struck me. And the lettering. I am a complete fanatic for for strange and wonderful typographic moments you know a truck drove past my window today that was a demolition truck and the typography on the side almost maybe run outside with my camera. When I saw how weird Cal FERS was that was when I knew I wanted in. There and let this answer the other part. Well, I think we did speak quite a lot even at the beginning about Cal FERS personally, and I have to say I was very kind of quite disturbed actually by his process of leaving the UK for example, and what that might must have done to him. I mean that you know he he hadn't become a British citizen. So he had to leave really, and there was something very tragic about it. And then having come to the archive and read some of the letters that he wrote when he was on the ship coming back, you know, it's hard not to feel very moved by that. I suppose I was drawn partly to him, it not initially initially it was definitely because of what I need from my dad and my college and so on. But, but then talking to you, I became more and more interested in his psychology really. You know, and the, and the ups and downs that I, I felt, you know graphic design is kind of harder than what people think, you know, and that seemed to be played out through him. So, I found that really captivating and sad in some ways to, but positive also. As curators, it was important for Emily and I that the publication the exhibition be designed independently. We saw it as an opportunity to engage multiple perspectives on Cal FERS work for contemporary audience. And we're curious what was the experience like for each of you working concurrently, but separately on Cal FERS. Well, I remember the I mean, this is crazy to admit but when you're working on a book. It's, I mean this is probably true for when you're working on anything it's all consuming you know you completely get sort of myopic and and very close to the thing. But I remember the moment that I was talking to Pamela Horn and she said oh we saw some sketches from Lucy and Roberts and her studio, and I suddenly realized I was dying to know what it looked like and I you know had to sort of sit on my hands to prevent myself from just emailing them and saying like shouldn't we be working together and I, and I really followed your, I think some one of you guided me to just kind of let that be for a minute and let the book come out of its own, my own head and its own head. It's very often the case that they're separate but every now and then I have had to design a book so far in advance of the show that sometimes the typography will become the lock up for the wall text or something like that. So I was, I was very happy that that pressure was not on me and really eager to see what somebody as talented as the Lucy and Robert studio was going to do with this material so I just couldn't have been happy with how it all ended up. Yeah, I mean we were, it was, it's interesting because we're always a bit greedy so obviously we'd be like, we want to do the book. Why are we doing the book? But it's an amazing thing. I mean I was just thinking through it just now again. Wow, you know that the richness of that book is fantastic. And it foregrounds this work. I've never seen it foregrounded like that before. It's extraordinary. It's so lush, you know, and it's fantastic. So, so I think, clearly, it came about the right way. Thanks so much. So the COVID-19 pandemic hit at different moments over the course of the book and exhibition development. And we felt really lucky to be able to work with you both through that experience. It was a challenging but a special time for sure. And looking back we wanted to ask what challenges stick out in particular in your memories about the process of designing during the pandemic time. I was so lucky and I know that Lucy, you probably feel the same way that we really got there before everything shut down, you know, that we actually got to be there and to see the work. But the thing that I will never forget is trying to do a press check with Lauren at Rizzoli and Pam at Cooper Hewitt with our FaceTime on our phones. I'm literally like holding colors up against the window to see if they had gotten a yellow right with just our telephones, you know, so we couldn't meet to go over the stuff. That was the primary thing. There was also some back and forth about where the book was finally printed and that was also very much affected by by the pandemic. But mostly it was this strange thing of having to do it all something as tactile and sort of analog as Calphor is to do all of that via a glossy screen was pretty challenging. I was kind of surprised when we saw the book, you know, hey, that's actually the yellow we wanted, you know. I spoke well I suppose it was difficult because it was a momentum to an exhibition and, you know, we were building up to one date and then that changes and then you're not you don't know where to kind of just stop for a bit or do you know so that was tricky. And I think the other thing of course, I've never ever worked on a show that I haven't been there when the install has been happening before so you know we still haven't seen it. And that's very sad, you know, and and frustrating as well because you can't photographs it's interesting really that I think exhibitions are quite often quite hard to photograph actually because they are immersive experiences and you cannot you can't convey that beyond a certain point. You know photographs so although they look great. I still know it's not going to be the same as walking through that space, you know, so I think that's a that's a sadness and a frustration at the moment. But that might change this time to come. We certainly hope it will change and you'll get here eventually. I have two questions for each of you individually so I'll ask the first one, which is for Lucinda Hitchcock. The question says Hitchcock was captivated by Kalfa as a misfit and a wanderer designing the publication even make Kalfa the artist and advertising to reflect the contradiction and movement and the artist career. How did you use this approach in the past, a inspiration from lifestyle and life events. And is this approach different than an approach based on visual stimuli, and in what way. Well, the challenge of that question is I haven't done a monograph about one person and his life in quite this way. So I will say that that this was a pretty unique situation. I remember designing a book for the Decorate of a Museum about a show called Walden revisited and it was, you know, 10 or 15 artists making work about the role about Walden pond about that relationship in New England between the sort of fiction and the reality. And in that case I did use the sort of motif of the cabin and the compass points on all of the maps that show us where Walden pond is in the 19th century. To sort of build a kind of a story that didn't exist because we just had the contemporary artwork, and that was it and so putting it together in a book that sort of brought the row himself into the story was something kind of interesting and challenging to answer sort of in a general way to say, it's always the job of the designer graphic designer to read all of the text that you get to try to immerse yourself into the time period, and its histories but also, you know, reflect on how it sits in the contemporary moment. And so yes, I think most graphic designers would do that, you know, they would try to figure out who what the core is of this narrative and see if there's some way that you can reflect, but also contain and present it not sort of overwhelm the work with your design but to really honor the content. Great, so I have a question that's come in directed at Lucy Roberts. Lucy, can you speak to one challenge that makes it especially difficult to display graphic design. That's interesting. I suppose, I suppose one of the things is that most graphic design on actually this isn't so true, but generally, you handle it, you hold it. And so clearly, obviously, Calvert did lots of posters a raw so they were, they are meant to be displayed on the wall. There's lots of books and so on that sort of it's always a bit tricky because you really want to pick it up and flip the pages because that's, that's a lot of what you think about when you design a book. And so, I think that's always difficult there's always a sense of, as you lost isn't there I'm sure you, you felt that really which is what they're like if I can't if I can only show one spread which ones are we not showing you know that kind of thing. And it is how to convey the tactile nature of a lot of graphic design I think that's hard because particularly when things have to be in cases and so on. So that's that I guess that's one of the one of the things I would say is quite tricky. This is a question for both of you, picking up on Lucy's mention regarding Calvert's letters, which the attendee says are truly heartbreaking, and his status as an American expat in the UK. So the question is, did his transatlantic influences and the very transatlantic nature and the creation of the exhibition itself affect the way you both approach the design of the exhibition and the book. Lucy and you should definitely take this one. And then I'll think about it. I mean it did. I mean it was hugely fast that was one of the most significant things really. And even the fact that we've been chosen when we were in London, and the curators were in New York was it was the embodiment of the whole thing I mean it was really. So for us it was absolutely core this idea of journeys and, and what you, you know, looking forwards and backwards really the passing of time, you know, so that was a lot of the idea behind those apertures and so on that you can show you can see what's ahead of you but you also turn around and look at what way you've been and that's not, that's not dissimilar to the life experience really. And that's very much what we wanted to convey, I think, was it's as much to do what you leave behind as, as where you're, where you're going. So I think that was, that was hugely significant for us. You know, it was, it was absolutely basic to the design. I think from my perspective I was constantly thinking about this fella who was spending all this time in England who was born in Wyoming I that that collision just was always so strange to me, and kind of mournful. And I think that exactly what you've said before Lucy about him having to sort of end up and in fact die in the US where he probably didn't really want to be. I'm not an expert so I'll leave that to you guys to say whether that was true or not. It's sort of hovered and as a book designer these things kind of hover and they don't necessarily scream in your ear it's more like you're you're working under this sort of umbrella of an idea of a person. I mean it's also interesting that he was, he went to mainland Europe and then came to the UK because he brought with him a lot of the creative ideas from mainland Europe and introduced them into commercial art, which made them much more accessible to the to the general public, you know, he took fine art and turned it into something that the average person would be seeing on the tube. I mean that's an extraordinary thing but again it's about the journeys. And of course he worked for the transport network so that too is about journey, you know it was, it's a wonderful story really. I can't believe it because the time has gone so fast, but we've reached the end of our program. I know there are a few questions that have been left unanswered in the chat we'll try to get back to them when we can. But I want to thank everyone who joined us today for the program and we'll watch it as the recording. And I particularly want to thank Lucinda Hitchcock and Lucy and Roberts, who did the most extraordinary design, I think how for would be honored to have both of you designing around his work and enhancing his legacy. Thank you to all of our partners at Cooper Hewitt you are too many to name, but we are incredibly grateful for you. And thank you to the many people who joined this talk who have helped us along in this process.