Graphic designer and cook Ko Sliggers died in early March in Italy at the age of 69.
Ko Sliggers (1952) is an illustrious designer in the Dutch landscape. In 1979, he graduated cum laude from the St. Joost Academy of Art in Breda, after which he immediately started working at Studio Dumbar. Sliggers worked on large corporate identity projects for the PTT and the ANWB, among others, and made posters and catalogues for the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Later, he worked as an independent designer and taught at various art academies. In the early nineties, he had enough of the design world and decided – temporarily – to do something else. He trained as a chef and worked in various restaurants in the Netherlands (Dudok, Loos), France and Italy. Yet after a few years, the designer’s blood began to itch again. Together with Anthon Beeke, he worked on various projects, including annual reports for KPN and the TNT Post Group and the Holland Festival ’97, and slowly made his way back into the design profession.
About 15 years ago, Ko Sliggers landed on the island of Lipari. There he started working as a cook and was named Giacomo. In 2014 he won the election of the Cookbook of the Year with his book ‘Cooking between volcanoes’. In addition to his practice as a designer/artist and cook, he taught at Abadir. Accademia di Design e Comunicazione Visiva in Sicily. The last few years he lived on Sicily again.
Sliggers’ design archive (1978 to 2007) was made available by Nago and is now housed in the Special Collections of the University of Amsterdam.
With thanks to Max Kisman
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