Charles T. Coiner

Charles Toucey Coiner (January 1, 1898, Santa Barbara, California – August 13, 1989, Mechanicsville, Bucks County, Pennsylvania ) was an American painter and advertising art director.

Biography Born into a California farming family, Coiner attended the Chicago Academy of Fine Art and the Art Institute of Chicago, while also working at an advertising agency.

He went to work for the Philadelphia-based N. W. Ayer & Son advertising agency, starting as a layout designer in 1924 and rising to vice president in charge of art in 1936. For example, for one of his early advertising campaigns ("Great Ideas of Western Man" for the Container Corporation of America), he incorporated works by such artists as Pablo Picasso, and Salvador Dalí. He also conceived the Red Feather emblem of the Community Chest. During World War II, he designed war and civil defense posters; an offset lithograph of one with the slogan "Give It Your Best!" (1942) for the Office of Emergency Management is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art. Another of his works is the Boys Clubs of America commemorative stamp issued in 1960.

After he retired from Ayer in 1964, he became the first American given the Art Director's Award of Distinction, and was inducted into the Art Director's Hall of Fame in 1973 and the Philadelphia Advertising Hall of Fame in 1988.

Coiner died on August 13, 1989, at the age of 91. He was survived by his wife, E. May Coiner (née Howe). A collection of his papers is held by the Syracuse University Library.