Artist Biographies – Sorted by Last Name – A – C
A –
Richard E. Aaron – Notable album cover art examples – Peter Frampton – Frampton Comes Alive!; Kool & The Gang – Everybody’s Dancin’; Melba Moore – Dancin’ With Melba; Bee Gees – Tomorrow The World; Ray Charles – In Concert With The Edmonton Symphony; Scorpions – Gold; John McLaughlin – The Essential John McLaughlin; Southside Johnny – 1978 Live in Boston
(b. April, 1949; d. December, 2016 in Los Angeles, CA) In a career that spanned over three decades, Richard E. Aaron has shot still photography for a wide variety of media, ranging from feature films, television and video to corporate public relations, entertainment publicity and album covers. Honored by Modern Photography Magazine as one of the “10 Best Rock Photographers” in the world, he has more than 50 album covers to his credit including FRAMPTON COMES ALIVE, still the biggest-selling double live LP. He shot the first photographic rock ‘n’ roll cover for Time magazine – Paul McCartney/Wings Over America. All told, his work has appeared in more than 6,000 magazines, newspapers and books worldwide.
His extensive work in music photography (4,000 groups photographed) led to his first tour assignment, “Fleetwood: The Visitor in Africa” (RCA Records), a tour shot on location in Ghana West Africa. Similar projects for many top rock & roll groups around the world followed. He traveled through the People’s Republic of China for several months in 1986, where he documented the first Western rock group to record an album and tour.
Later on in his career, Richard worked with a variety of feature films, unit still and gallery photographer and as director cameraman producing videos on “Behind The Scenes/The Making Of” for feature film companies. He also continued to shoot for clients in the music business, contributing to music videos, CD jackets and other publicity.
A native of New York, Mr. Aaron and his photo agency have been located in Los Angeles since 1980. He was a graduate of the School of Visual Arts (NYC) and of Brooks Institute of Photography (Santa Barbara, California). You still purchase prints of many of Richard’s best known images via the website of his estate’s print publisher
Richard passed away in December, 2016 at the age of 67.
Cey Adams – notable album cover credits include – Notorious BIG – Ready To Die; Beastie Boys – Intergalactic, Hello Nasty, The Negotiation Limerick File and Body Movin’; Geto Boys – The Resurrection; Mary J. Blige – What’s The 411?; 3rd Bass – Cactus Revisited; Slick Rick – The Ruler’s Back; Public Enemy – There’s A Poison Goin’ On; Maroon 5 – Songs About Jane; LL Cool J – All World 2 and Authentic
As a working artist in NYC’s East Village underground art scene in the early 1980s – with his works included in exhibitions along with Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring – Cey sought to expand his already-impressive talents by enrolling in painting classes at the School of Visual Arts. He was soon introduced to music impresario Russell Simmons and joined the team at Rush Artist Management, working on designs for clients including the Beastie Boys, De La Soul, LL Cool J and Run DMC.
In 1984, Adams accepted a design position at Def Jam Records and, after joining forces with Steve Carr, built an in-house design group for the label that was dubbed “The Drawing Board” where he served as the Creative Director, taking on projects for artists both on the label’s roster and works-for-hire for other industry clients including Bad Boy, BMG, MCA, Universal and Warner Brothers Records. Cey and his team are credited for building successful visual identities for artists including Mary J Bilge, Notorious B.I.G, Faith Evans, Ice Cube, R Kelly and, most-notably, Sean “Puff Daddy” Combs. For Combs, the Drawing Board team brought their talents to visuals for his chain of Justin’s Restaurants and designs for his popular Sean John clothing line.
In 1999, Cey moved on to a string of projects for clients on both coasts of the U.S. Included in this work were campaigns for Coca-Cola, HBO, Ervin “Magic” Johnson and Nike, NY-area radio stations Hot 97 and WBLS and, working with curators and designers at the Experience Music Project/Museum in Seattle, Adams brought meaningful designs to the hip-hop-centric displays there. Since that time, he’s produced logos for Dave Chapelle’s popular The Chapelle Show, more album covers, stage designs, tour merchandise and more for a wide range of clients including Adidas, Burton Snowboards, Comedy Central, Eminem, Foo Fighters, Don Henley, Moet & Chandon, Stevie Nicks and Roca Wear.
In 2008, Harper Collins Design published a book authored by Adams (along with Bill Adler, Def Jam’s former Director of Publicity) titled DEFINITION: The Art & Design of Hip-Hop that presented a comprehensive look at “hip-hop as a visual phenomenon. In 2011, Adams and Adler paired again, this time for Rizzoli, to produce Def Jam Recordings: The First 25 Years of the Last Great Record Label, a retrospective of Def Jam’s design output over the label’s first 25 years.
More information on this artist is available on his website at http://ceyadams.com/
Andie Airfix – Notable album cover credits include – Led Zeppelin – Early Days/Later Days, BBC Sessions and DVD; Robert Plant – Dreamland; Def Leppard – Hysteria, Pryromania and Adrenalize; Metallica – Load, Re-Load, Garage Inc and S&M; The Thompson Twins – Close To The Bone and In To The Gap; Paul McCartney – The McCartney Years
(b. August, 1946; d. October, 2018) Originally from Culcheth, just outside of Liverpool, this U.K.-based designer was the principal at SATORI Graphic, and during his 40+ year career, he produced a wide range of memorable designs for clients in the music business, collaborating with top-tier musical acts including Black Sabbath, Def Leppard, Led Zeppelin, Paul McCartney, Metallica and the Rolling Stones.
In addition to his album cover art portfolio, in 2010 Airfix was commissioned to create a mural of guitarist Jimi Hendrix for a custom-decorated suite at Guoman’s The Cumberland Hotel in London, Hendrix’s last known address prior to his death in September, 1970.
For more information on this artist, please visit his website at http://www.andieairfix.com/
Alan Aldridge – notable album cover credits include – Cream – Goodbye; Elton John – Captain Fantastic & The Brown Dirt Cowboy; George Harrison – Wonderwall Music; The Who – A Quick One (Happy Jack); Various Artists – Sweet Emotion: The Songs of Aerosmith, House of Blues: Songs of Janis Joplin and several This Ain’t No Tribute Series releases ; Agent Sparks – Not So Merry; Gordon Giltrap – Peacock Party; Tears for Fears – Everybody Loves A Happy Ending; Incubus – Light Grenades; Ed Kowalczyk – Alive
(Born July, 1938 in London, UK; died February, 2017 in Los Angeles, CA) Alan Aldridge’s first design job was as an illustrator for The Sunday Times Magazine. In early 1965, he was hired by Penguin Book’s editor Tony Godwin to become their art director and, for the next two years, he designed a number of well-received book covers, with a focus on science fiction titles. In 1968, he launched his own graphic design firm (called INK) and, going forward, his unique, psychedelic illustrative style was applied to a wide range of projects, most-notably for The Beatles’ Apple Corps.
In 1969, Aldridge authored The Beatles Illustrated Lyrics, a book that presents the lyrics to 200 songs by the band, illustrated by Aldridge and other leading-edge artists of the era, including David Hockney, Peter Max, Ralph Steadman and many others. According to Aldridge, he attempted to present a book [that] is as entertaining to the eye and the imagination as a Beatles album is to the ear.” In a similar vein, in 1973 Aldridge provided the illustrations for the critically-acclaimed children’s book titled The Butterfly Ball & The Grasshopper Feast, with verses written by South African poet/novelist William Plomer. The book went on to win that year’s prestigious Whitbread Children’s Book Award and, the following year, an animated short (with music by former Deep Purple bassist Roger Glover) based on the book’s illustrations was released (Glover then produced a full-length rock opera built on the story, with Aldridge producing the album cover for the 1975 soundtrack album). Sequels to The Butterfly Ball were also published, including The Peacock Party in 1979 and The Lion’s Cavalcade in 1980, with verses by George E. Ryder and Ted Walker and additional illustrations by Harry Wilcock.
In 1971, Alan co-authored (with George Perry) and provided illustrations for The Penguin Book of Comics, a history of British and American comic art and the artists that created it. Over the years, Aldridge is credited with creating memorable designs/illustrations for clients including Falcon Motorcycles, Heineken, Lucky Brand, MAC cosmetics, Samson, Paul Smith, Virgin Atlantic and many others. He was also responsible for the well-known logos made for both the House of Blues and the Hard Rock Cafes.
Other books featuring Aldridge’s illustrations include Ann In The Moon by Frances D. Francis (1970), The Ship’s Cat by Richard Adams (1977), Phantasia: Of Docklands, Rocklands and Dodos (co-illustrated with Harry Wilcock, 1981) and The Gnole, released in 1999 with Steve Boyett and Maxine Miller. The Man with Kaleidoscope Eyes was published by Thames & Hudson in 2008 and also published under the title The Man with Kaleidoscope Eyes: The Art of Alan Aldridge by Abrams Books in 2009. The Design Museum in London staged an extensive exhibition of his works in late 2008 titled Alan Aldridge – the Man with the Kaleidoscope Eyes .
Twice divorced and with eight children (including son Miles, who is a noted fashion photographer), Alridge lived in the Los Angeles, CA area up until his death in February, 2017 at the age of 73.
More information on this artist is available at http://www.alanaldridge.net
David Alexander – notable album cover credits include – Eagles – Hotel California; James Taylor – JT; Rod Stewart – Footloose & Fancy Free; Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers – You’re Gonna Get It!; Bonnie Raitt – The Glow; Lynyrd Skynyrd – Street Survivors; Marshall Tucker Band – Running Like The Wind; Carole Bayer Sager – Carole Bayer Sager; The Blues Brothers – Briefcase Full of Blues; The Lowest of the Low – Nothing Short of a Bullet; Doobie Brothers – Minute By Minute; Donna Summer – Donna Summer; Lionel Richie – Lionel Richie; Ry Cooder – Bop Till You Drop; Foreigner – Head Games; Sea Level – Cats on the Coast
David has worked for years as a commercial photographer and owner of a renowned photography and digital services laboratory in the Los Angeles area. Combining that experience with his education (degrees from UC Berkeley and the University of Chicago’s School of Law) ultimately provided him with the qualifications to launch new businesses including X-DAM (a digital asset management software/services company) and “social storytelling and communication” application/service provider Booxie.
While we work on a more complete bio for this artist, you can visit his bio on the X-DAM website to learn more
Robert Alford – Notable album cover credits include – ZZ Top – El Loco, Eliminator, Original Album Series and Complete Studio Albums 1970-1990; Ted Nugent – Full Frontal Nugity; Point Blank – American Exce$$/On A Roll; Carl Perkins – Friends, Family & Legends; Bridge – Blownaway; Send More Cops – Send More Cops
(b. 1954 in Denver, CO) – After his family moved from Denver to the suburbs of Detroit, MI, Bob got his first camera at the tender age of seven. In his early teens, he spent a lot of time at the local drag strip photographing these events, but it was his shooting of a concert by Sly & The Family Stone when he was 16 that introduced him to the rock photography genre and, by the time he was 20 (in 1974), not only was he contributing photos to Creem Magazine, he soon after became their sole staff photographer. The relationships he built during his time at Creem allowed him to take on photo gigs with a number of top musical acts, expanding his portfolio into album covers and videos as well.
Alford says that he’s photographed more than 700 bands in his career, with his archive (that he currently maintains at www.rockphotoarchive.com) containing more than 125,000 images. When not on assignment for Creem (where he remained as a contributor until the publication went out of business in the 1990s), he would photograph many of the touring bands that would come through Detroit in the 1970s and 1980s, adding to his collection and, ultimately, licensing those images to book publishers, with credits including AC/DC: High Voltage Rock and Roll by Phil Sutcliffe, Whole Lotta Led Zeppelin by Jon Bream and Rock Style by Tommy Hilfiger, among others. In 2012, his work was featured in an exhibition at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame & Museum Cleveland, OH titled Just Can’t Get Enough: The Photography of Robert Alford.
He currently lives and works in the Detroit, MI area.
Here’s a link to a 2012 video interview with Alford about photographing ZZ Top singer/guitarist Billy Gibbons during a trip to Mexico – http://rockhall.com/video/8939/
For more information on this artist, please visit his web site at http://robertalfordphotography.com/
Richard Amsel – Notable album cover work examples – Bette Midler – Divine Miss M and Songs For The New Depression; Soundtracks – Hello Dolly and The Sting
(b. December 1947 – d. November, 1985) was born in Philadelphia, PA and studied art at the Philadelphia College of Art. While still a student, his submission for a poster for the film version of the Streisand musical Hello Dolly was selected by the studio, launching his career at the tender age of 22. Moving to New York, his career grew quickly and his works were seen by a young Barry Manilow, who introduced Richard to the singer he was working with on the NYC club/cabaret scene – Bette Midler. He was soon hired to produce the cover illustration for her debut album (The Divine Miss M), which led to more work in the music/entertainment business (including ads for Oleg Cassini).
His career soon expanded to include covers for magazines (Time, TV Guide) and he became one of the “go to guys” for film studios looking to promote their films. Beginning in 1972, he created over 40 cover images for TV Guide, including portraits of a wide variety of celebrities, including Ingrid Bergman, Johnny Carson, Clark Cable (with Vivien Leigh, for the TV premiere of Gone With The Wind), Princess Grace, Katherine Hepburn, Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra and many others. The portrait he produced of Lily Tomlin that was featured on the cover of Time Magazine was added to the Smithsonian’s permanent collection, and the portrait he did of Lucille Ball in 1974 so impressed the actress that the artwork was included in the opening credits of CBS’s tribute honoring her (then) 25 years on television.
The posters he created for films including Chinatown, The Last Picture Show, Murder on the Orient Express, Nashville, Papillon and The Sting became instant classics and kept him busy during the 1970s, but with the movie studios choosing to use photo-based illustrations for their film posters beginning in the 1980s, the opportunities for “old-style” poster artists came less frequently. Still, studios looking for “the Amsel signature style” would commission him to create illustrations for their highest-profile projects, as exemplified in his work for Flash Gordon, The Dark Crystal and, memorably, the original release of Raiders of the Lost Ark (and its re-release the following year). The original artwork for these films now grace the collections of Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. His final film poster was for the third installment of the Mad Max series, titled Beyond Thunderdome.
His final completed illustration was for TV Guide in an issue that featured Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings and Dan Rather. Amsel died a few weeks later from complications from AIDS. Amsel was honored many times during his career, winning awards from peers (both the New York and Los Angeles Society of Illustrators and the Philadelphia Art Director’s Club), a Grammy Award for his work for Ms. Midler and a Golden Key Award from The Hollywood Reporter. Amsel was honored by his school posthumously in 2009, awarding him the University of the Art’s Silver Star award for Outstanding Alumni.
His work has been exhibited at the Museum of Television and Radio in Beverly Hills (commemorating TV Guide’s fortieth anniversary) and at a large retrospective titled “The Art & Artistry of Richard Amsel” staged in 2009 at the Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery at The University of The Arts in Philadelphia (who houses over 500 of his works in the Richard Amsel Collection).
More information on this artist (and a new film about his life) can be found at this tribute site – www.richardamsel.info and also at www.richardamselmovie.com
Ian Anderson – notable album cover credits include – Cabaret Voltaire – The Original Sound of Sheffield ’83/’87 and Conform To Deform ’82/’90; Sound Tribe Sector 9 – Artifact; Autechre – Tri Repetae, Garbage, Anvil Vapre #2 and Confield; Jarvis Cocker – Jarvis and Don’t Let Him Waste Your Time; LFO – Frequencies; Supergrass – Supergrass, Sun Hits The Sky Part 1 and Caught By The Fuzz; Locust – Weathered Well; Biosphere – Patashnik; Age of Chance – Don’t Get Mad…Get Even!; Pop Will Eat Itself – This Is The Day..This Is The Hour..This Is This!; Fluke – Risotto
Founder/Designer at The Designers Republic (U.K.)
Other notable clients both in and outside of the entertainment industry have included Adidas, Aphex Twin, Cartoon Network, Coca-Cola, Detroit Underground, Electraglide, Gatecrasher, Hasbro, JVC, Lynx, MPC, MTV, Nickelodeon, Nokia, Orange, The Orb, Polygram, Pringles, Psygnosis, Reebok, Rockstar Games, Sony, Swatch, VH-1 and Warp Records.
Exhibitions featuring examples of Designer’s Republic work include – The Art of Selling Songs at The V&A Museum, London (1991); The Designers Republic: New & Used at the Mappin Art Gallery, Sheffield (1993); Graphic Design in Great Britain at La Maison Du Livre de l’Image et du Son, Villeurbanne/Lyon, France (1993); Ikon Touring Exhibition in Birmingham, England (1998); Brain Aided Design – Barcelona, Spain (2002), Philadelphia, PA, USA (2003), Maribor, Slovenia (2004) and Sheffield, UK (2005) and many more.
Since 1995, Anderson has given lectures and master classes at many locations and conferences throughout the U.K. , Europe , South American and the United States.
An updated biography about this artist will be posted soon.
More information on this artist is available via his web sites at http://www.pho-ku.com/ and http://www.thedesignersrepublic.com/
Martin Andersen – notable album cover credits include – Robin Saville – Public Flowers; Roger O’Donnell – The Truth In Me; Queenadreena – Pretty Like Drugs and Drink Me; Dark Star – I Am The Sun; Magnetophone – I Guess Sometimes I Need To Be Reminded Of How Much You Love Me and Oh Darlin’; Various Artists – Late Night Tales; Roger Eno – The Familiar; Piano Magic – Son de Mar, Disaffected and Incurable; July Skies – English Cold and The Weather Clock; Modern English – Life In The Gladhouse; Cocteau Twins – Stars & Topsoil
(b. 1975, U.K.) Raised in a home where both of his parents were part-time musicians, Martin was exposed from a young age to many different forms of music. Even after they divorced, they both re-married other musicians and played in local bands, so music became (and continues to be) and integral part of his make-up, with Martin taking up first the drums and then switching to guitar, starting his first band at the age of twelve (playing “power trio” covers) and, later on, joining both his parents in gigs with their own bands.
Graduating with honors in 1996 with a BA in Visual Communication Design from London’s Ravensbourne College of Design & Communication, Andersen continued with his education at the prestigious Royal College of Art, earning his Master of Arts in Graphic Design there in 1998. After graduating, he joined forces with Vaughan Oliver and Chris Biggs at V23, a design group responsible for an impressive portfolio of album packaging/design projects, remaining there until 2000, when he left to pursue opportunities as both an educator – becoming an Associate Lecturer at Central Saint Martin’s College of Art & Design, School of Fashion and a Senior Lecturer in Graphic Design at The University of Brighton, U.K. – and ultimately starting his own design practice (Andersen M Studio) with his sister Line Andersen, herself an MA in Graphic Design.
The pair and their team have built an impressive list of clients both in and out of the music business, where they excel in projects for clients (according to their site) “in the areas of art direction, graphic design, photography, animation, film and music”, where their “priority is to produce original creative communication” and to “produce work which has personality, originality and integrity for a variety of industries”. Their clients include Accenture, American Express, Cartier, Channel 4, Colenso BBDO, DDB, Discovery, Magnum, More 4, Nationwide, New Zealand Book Council, Nokia, Publicis, Southbank Centre, Star Alliance and Thames & Hudson, among others. Martin’s work has been featured in a vast array of books and featured in articles in a variety of top design publications, including Creative Review, Icon, Computer Arts Project and Blueprint, to name a few.
There have been many exhibitions of Andersen’s work over the years, beginning early on with one at the White Board, the coffee bar at the Royal College of Art in May 1998, followed by shows at galleries and museums in Paris, Barcelona, Madrid, London, Monterrey (Mexico), Zhuantang (China), Breda (Holland) Miami and others. Along the way, Andersen M Studio has been honored for their work, winning both Cannes Lion and Clio Gold awards in 2010, Gold for “Best Illustration” at the Best Awards (from the UK’s Marketing Agencies Association) in 2012 and Gold at Promax in 2013 (PromaxBDA is an international association for entertainment marketers, promoters and designers. There are 10,000 individual members represented in 70 countries).
More information on this artist is available on his web site at http://www.andersenm.com/
Susan Archie – notable album packaging credits include – Various artists – The Rise & Fall Of Paramount Records, Volume One (1917-27); Richard Bishop – Salvador Kali: The Sun City Girls Solo Editions; Charlie Feathers – Get With It; Chuck Leavell – Back Into The Woods; Peg Simone – Secrets From The Storm; Deerhunter – Cryptograms; Icewater Scandal – No Handle; John Cale – Inside The Dream Syndicate Vols 2-3; Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band – Grow Fins: Rarities; Rhys Chatham – Chatham: An Angel Moves Too Fast To See
(b. 1959 in West Palm Beach, FL, USA) Although Susan was born in West Palm Beach, Florida, she grew up in Boynton Beach, about 20 minutes south of West Palm. “My parents moved there from the New York metropolitan area in 1954. I was lucky to have a full-fledged humanities-based primary school education, where I was in band, orchestra and art. I went to college at Florida State University in Tallahassee, where I studied Photography, Art History, Film Theory and History and Mass Communications, and also spent six months in Florence, Italy on a foreign study program for Italian Art History and Film Study (Italian Neo-Realism, French New Wave, and Soviet Structuralism). We were really fortunate to have a professor from NYU, who gave us a copy of Walter Benjamin’s 1936 essay ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,’ which changed my outlook and understanding of society and art.”
She would also take a lot of side trips to Atlanta, where she was able to be on hand for the rapid rise of the local punk and New Wave music scene, watching shows by local bands such as R.E.M. and The B-52s and touring acts including Elvis Costello and Talking Heads when they came through.
After graduating with a B.A. in Visual Arts in 1981 and, wanting to integrate herself into the music and art scene there, Susan moved back to Manhattan and got work helping Fortune 500 companies integrate PC-based desktop publishing into their day-to-day promotion and other information/graphics-related needs. In 1986, she took all the experience she’d gained in early computer graphics and joined a boutique design firm to manage their transition from mechanical to digital production. After moving back South to Atlanta in 1989, in 1994, after a friend’s introduction, she began a multi-year creative relationship with an Atlanta-based art and music enthusiast named Jeff Hunt who, the previous year, had launched an independent “art music” record label called “Table of the Elements” after which, in 1996, she expanded her client list to create package graphics for John Fahey and Dean Blackwood’s Austin, TX-based label, Revenant Records.
Since then, Susan has been involved in a steady stream of music industry-related projects with one, Screamin’ and Hollerin’ The Blues: The Worlds of Charley Patton on Revenant, winning her first Grammy packaging award in the “Best Boxed or Limited Edition Special Package” category in 2003, making her the first woman to win an award in the category. Three more Grammy nominations would follow in 2005, 2006 and 2007, with winning trophies coming her way again in 2015 for The Rise & Fall Of Paramount Records, Volume One (1917-27) and in 2016 for The Rise & Fall Of Paramount Records, Volume Two (1928-32) adding to her already-impressive list of honors and awards. Other clients include Tompkins Square, Long Gone Sounds (Chris King), Dust-to-Digital (2003-2012), The Woody Guthrie Archives (2007), keyboardist Chuck Leavell (2012) and jazz bassist Dave Holland.
Her work has been featured in Stephen Heller and Lita Talarico’s 2011 book about the best in visual communications/graphic design called Typography Sketchbooks and was featured in a 2010 exhibition on album art (over 400 covers were on display) called “Run For Cover” in the gallery at the Spruill Center for the Arts in Dunwoody, GA.
To see and read more about Susan and her work, please visit her web site at http://www.worldofanarchie.com/
Brian Aris – notable album cover credits include – Joan Jett – Glorious Results of a Misspent Youth; Slade – Rogues Gallery; Debbie Harry/Blondie – Once More Into The Bleach; Bob Geldorf/Boomtown Rats – Deep In The Heart of Nowhere and Great Songs of Indifference; George Michael – Ladies & Gentlemen: The Best of George Michael; Ultravox – Vienna and Quartet; Rosie Vela – Zazu; Judie Tzuke – Road Noise: The Official Bootleg and Ritmo; Michael Schenker Group – Built To Destroy; Eurythmics – Touch and Boxed;
British photographer/photojournalist with broad portfolios of celebrity and music/fashion industry clients. Official photographer of the Band Aid recording session in 1984 and the subsequent Live Aid and Live8 fundraising concert events. Celebrity wedding photos have been a specialty, with Aris brought on to record the memories at the 1992 wedding of Sting to Trudy Styler in Dorset, U.K.; David Bowie’s wedding to supermodel Iman in a cathedral in Florence in April, 1992; Liza Minelli and David Gest tying the knot (for a short while) in New York in 2002; Joan Collins to husband #5 Percy Gibson in London in 2002 and the wedding of football/music superstars David and Victoria Beckham in an Irish castle in 1999. The British Royal Family is also quite fond of Mr. Aris, having commissioned him to photograph a number of high profile family milestones (including the Queen’s 70th birthday and, later, the Golden Wedding Anniversary of her marriage to The Duke of Edinburgh; portraits of the Duke and Duchess of York and the weddings of late Princess Margaret’s son David Linley (to Serena Stanhope) and Princess Anne’s son Peter Phillips to Autumn Kelly.
A more-complete bio of this artist will be published soon. In the meantime, you can find more information on this artist on his web site at http://www.brianaris.com/ and see a full list of his music industry album cover credits at https://www.discogs.com/artist/2169398-Brian-Aris
Clive Arrowsmith – notable album package credits include – Paul McCartney & Wings – Band on the Run and Wings at the Speed of Sound; Paul McCartney – Off The Ground; Def Leppard – Now ; Boz Scaggs – Original Album Classics ; Gong – Angel’s Egg and Shamal ; Murray Head – Between Us ; Jeff Beck Group – Rough & Ready; Canned Heat – Historical Figures & Ancient Heads ; Mick Ronson – Play Don’t Worry; Marianne Faithfull – Dangerous Acquaintances ; George Harrison & Ravi Shankar – Collaborations
(b. 1949 in North Wales, UK) – After completing his studies at art school in Flintshire, North Wales (with a focus on painting and design) and earning a degree from the Kingston College of Art outside of London, Clive spent several years painting before taking on a role as a graphic designer for the producers of the long-running UK music TV show Ready Steady Go! (Rediffusion TV) and shifting his attention to photography. With his focus now on photography, Clive then sought work with the top fashion publications, taking his first cover for Vogue in 1970 (working with the legendary fashion editor Grace Coddington) before receiving commissions from magazines including British Vogue, Esquire, French Vogue, F.T., Harpers, Nova, The Sunday Times, Vanity Fair and many others. Top talent and other publications noticed his work and, since then, he’s expanded his portfolio to include celebrity portraiture, advertising and editorial shots of celebs in the music, film, TV and other areas, including actor Michael Caine, conductor Daniel Barenboim, Britain’s Prince (now King) Charles, the Dalai Lama, artist Damien Hirst and musicians Jeff Beck, Art Garfunkel, George Harrison, Mick Jagger, Sir Paul McCartney (and Wings), soprano Anna Netrebko and many others.
Now based in London, Clive Arrowsmith is the only photographer to have photographed the Pirelli Calendar for two years in a row, with other advertising clients such as Caroline Castigliano, Coca Cola, De Beers, Gallo, Hassleblad, Lexus and YSL tapping him for photo shoots and Heinz, Revlon and Hamlet Cigars asking him to direct commercials on their behalf. He’s enjoyed a long-standing collaboration with apanese design legend Kansai Yamamoto (the clothing designer for David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust personna) and together released a series of fine art photo portraits in 2013-14 available through the Paris-based fashion hub Maison Sensey. He’s a fellow of The Royal Photographic Society and his work is also included in several books including the limited-edition book VOGUE: Voice of The Century (Genesis Publications), 50 Years of Pirelli (Taschen) and his own book Arrowsmith: Fashion, Beauty and Portraits (ACC Publishing), which was launched at the prestigious Fashion Museum, London, where Clive shared the details of his numerous high profile shoots.
More information on this artist can be found on his website at https://clivearrowsmith.com/
Neal Ashby – notable album cover credits include – Thievery Corporation – Abductions & Reconstructions, The Mirror Conspiracy, The Outernational Sound, Babylon Rebound, The Cosmic Game, Radio Retaliation, Versions and Saudade; The Kennedys – Evolver; Audio Adrenaline – Lift; Chris Joss – You’ve Been Spiked and Teraphonic Overdubs; The Rat Pack – Boys Night Out; dc Talk – Free At Last; Kurt Elling – 1619 Broadway: The Brill Building Project
(b. 196__ in Dillsburg, PA, USA) Inspired to pursue a career in the arts at a very early age, Neal began his efforts towards this goal by enrolling in classes at the University of Maryland, graduating in 1989 with a degree in advertising design. With a love of music as his inspiration, Ashby worked his way up the ladder in the field of music-related design, spending ten years at the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and ultimately serving as the group’s Vice President and Creative Director.
Leaving to hang out his own shingle in 2002, he opened his own design practice in Alexandria, VA called Ashby Design and, since then, he’s applied his talents to a host of projects for music/entertainment industry and corporate clients including Capitol Records, Dick Clark Productions, Don Cornelius Productions, EMI Music, MTV Networks, National Geographic, Virgin Entertainment and Warner Bros. Records, among others. His design for the Lydia Mendoza stamp (2013) was his first project for the U.S. Postal Service’s “Music Icons” series, followed the next year by his work on the Ray Charles stamp.
His work has been featured in numerous industry publications, with features in Communication Arts, Graphis, HOW, I.D., Graphis and Print magazines and was included in exhibitions at the Experience Music Project (EMP) in Seattle, WA and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, OH. Throughout his career, Neal has been honored with a host of awards has won awards from professional organizations in the U.S. and U.K., including the AIGA, the American Center for Design in Chicago, IL, the Art Directors’ Clubs in New York and Washington, DC, NY’s Society of Publication Designers, the Type Directors Club in NYC and the Designers and Art Directors Association of the United Kingdom (D&AD). In addition, he’s received three Grammy Award nominations – in 2006 for Thievery Corporation – The Cosmic Game; 2007 – Thievery Corporation – Versions (with Matthew Curry) and 2009 – Thievery Corporation – Radio Retalliation (with Matthew Curry and Patrick Donohue).
He also serves as an associate professor at the Corcoran College of Art + Design in Washington, D.C.
An updated biography will be posted soon – in the meantime, if you’d like to learn more about this artist, please visit his web site at www.ashbydesign.com
Peter Ashworth – notable album cover credits include – Visage – Visage, Hearts & Knives and Orchestral; Phil Collins – No Jacket Required; Tina Turner – Private Dancer; MGMT – LateNightTales; Franz Ferdinand – LateNight Tales; Adam & The Ants – Kings of the Wild Frontier; Soft Cell – Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret and The Art of Falling Apart; Eurythmics – In The Garden and Touch; Tears For Fears – The Hurting; Bananarama – Bananarama; Jimmy Page – Outrider; Robert Palmer – Addicted To Love
A product of the Eastbourne (UK) grammar school system, where he excelled in both the arts and sciences, Peter graduated in 1979 from the London College of Printing with a diploma in Creative Photography and has since made a name for himself in several different areas within the field of commercial photography, with projects for clients in the segments of fashion, advertising and, of course, music. Peter is himself a musician, playing in bands including Marc & The Mambas and The The in the early 1980s.
For a period of 20 years, between 1980 – 2000, Ashworth specialized in music industry-related photograph and produced album cover/package imagery, promo materials and music videos for an impressive range of musical acts including Eurythmics, Phil Collins, Soft Cell, Visage and many others. Since then, he’s shifted his focus to fashion, editorial, portrait and advertising work, with his photos appearing in publications including i-D, The Face, Flux, Arena and others; in ads for Heineken and Perrier-Jouét and for fashion houses such as Basso & Brooke, Stephen Jones and Adel Rootstein, among others.
His works have been featured in a number of museum and gallery shows, including several at the V&A Museum in London and the Kunsthalle in Vienna.
More information on this artist is available on his web site at http://www.ashworth-photos.com/
Martyn Atkins – Notable album cover credits include – Joy Division – Closer; Echo & The Bunnymen – Heaven Up Here, Porcupine and Ocean Rain; Depeche Mode – A Broken Frame, Catching Up With Depeche Mode and Music For The Masses; Bee Gees – E.S.P. and One; Jeff Lynne – Armchair Theatre and Long Wave; Tom Petty – Wildflowers and A Higher Place; Johnny Cash – American Recordings and Unchained
(b. 1959) – A former top designer at the Manchester, U.K.-based label Factory Records, Martyn now works in Los Angeles as an art and video director and photographer. A more complete list of his record packaging credits can be found at https://www.discogs.com/artist/482104-Martyn-Atkins
Richard Avedon – Notable album cover work examples – Joan Baez – Farewell, Angelina; Barbra Streisand – Je M’appelle Barbra; Simon & Garfunkel – Bookends; Johnny Winter – Second Winter; The Band – Cahoots; Al Kooper – NY City
(b. 1923 – d.2004) Avedon was born in New York City and, as a boy, he showed a love for photography and poetry. Avedon joined the armed forces in 1942 during World War II, serving as Photographer’s Mate 2nd Class in the Merchant Marine where he used his Rolleiflex camera to shoot ID portraits of his shipmates. After two years of service he left the Merchant Marine to work as a photographer, studying with art director Alexey Brodovitch at the Design Laboratory of the New School for Social Research.
In 1945, Avedon set up his own studio and worked as a freelance photographer for various magazines and began a long-standing relationship with Harper’s Bazaar, rising quickly to the top ranks of fashion photographers. His unique approach to portraiture featured his models posed in uncommon locations and full of expressive life, and those compelling photos were snapped up for display in the top photojournalism-focused publications of the time – Life, Look, Theater Arts, Harper’s Bazaar and, later The New Yorker and the French magazine Egoiste.
In the mid 60s, Avedon brought his talents to the coverage of many cultural and political issues, including the civil rights movement in the U.S., the Vietnam War and the growing gap between the elite and working classes. In 1985, he published his best-known work, titled In the American West. In this book, he used a large-format camera to portray a broad range of working-class subjects. He published many books during his career and his first museum show, in 1962 at the Smithsonian Institute, was followed by many others, including exhibitions in Minneapolis and New York’s Whitney and Metropolitan museums and the International Center for Photography. More information is available at – www.richardavedon.com
Stephen (“Steve”) Averill – notable album cover credits include – U2 – Boy, October, War, Under A Blood Red Sky, The Unforgettable Fire, The Joshua Tree, Achtung Baby, All That You Can’t Leave Behind and 1977 – 1984 (Box Set); Hothouse Flowers – People; The Mavericks – In Time; Depeche Mode – Live In Berlin; Elvis Costello – All This Useless Beauty, Cruel Smile, The Juliet Letters and When I Was Cruel; The Radiators – Cockles & Mussels; Clannad – Past Present; The Script – Science & Faith and #3
Vocalist for Irish punk band The Radiators From Space (AKA – “Steve Rapid”); Designer/Art Director; Past Partner at Four5One Creative; Current Senior Art Director for AMP Visual
A more-complete biography about this artist will be posted soon.
More information on this artist is available via his web site at https://www.stephenaverill.com/
Lawrence Azerrad – notable album cover credits include – Rod Stewart – When We Were The New Boys; Wilco – Summerteeth, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Sky Blue Sky, Wilco (The Album) and The Whole Love; Red Hot Chili Peppers – Californication; Various Artists – Ocean’s Eleven Soundtrack; k.d.lang – Live By Request; Story of the Year – Page Avenue; Jay-Z/Linkin Park – Collision Course; The Wallflowers – Rebel, Sweetheart; Foo Fighters – Skin & Bones; Herbie Hancock – The Imagine Project; The Beach Boys – That’s Why God Made The Radio; Benmont Tench – You Should Be So Lucky
(b. 1973 in Los Angeles, CA, USA) After watching a presentation by David Carson, former art director of the influential music/lifestyle magazine Ray Gun, Lawrence Azerrad decided to change his major at the California College of the Arts from illustration to graphic design and work towards becoming a designer working within the music business. Listening to Carson speak, Lawrence realized that album cover design would allow him the opportunity to appeal to peoples’ deepest emotions and create long-lasting memories for them through his work.
After graduating with a BFA in Graphic Design in 1995, he’d soon get the opportunity to create that link between fan and musician when he accepted a position as an art director at Warner Bros/Reprise Records, taking on assignments for artists including Elvis Costello, Miles Davis, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Rod Stewart and a new band from Chicago named Wilco, doing the cover for the group’s initial release on the WB label in 1999 titled Summerteeth (and, since then, nearly all of their critically-acclaimed releases). In 2001, he left to open his own design firm – LAD Design – in Los Angeles, adding new clients looking to take advantage of his skills in the design, film and digital media areas in both in the music industry (Foo Fighters, Johnny Lang, Billy Talent, Jay-Z, others) and in other areas of commercial design such as The Clinton Foundation, the Heal The Bay environmental group, surfer Laird Hamilton, Red Bull, the Renaissance Hollywood Hotel and the UCLA Live theater center, among many others.
So that he can share his passion for design with those looking at developing their talents in the area, Lawrence also find time to work as an instructor at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena and the UCLA Extension school. He has also taught at The Academy of Art University Graduate School of Graphic Design in San Francisco and has served on the Graphic Design Thesis review committee at CCA.
More information on this artist can be found at his web site – http://laddesign.net/
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David P. Bailey – notable album cover credits include – The Rolling Stones – The Rolling Stones, 12 X 5, The Rolling Stones, Now!, Out Of Our Heads, Aftermath, Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out! and Goats Head Soup; Marianne Faithful – Marianne Faithful; Procol Harum – Home; Cat Stevens – Teaser & The Firecat; Barbra Streisand – The Way We Were; Elton John – Victim of Love; Squeeze – Argybargy and Sweets From A Stranger; David Axelrod – The Big Country; Big Country – Brighton Rock; Pink Floyd – Shine On; Colin Hay – Looking For Jack
(b. January 1938 in Leytonstone, London, England) The son of a tailor’s cutter (his father) and a machinist (his mother), David Bailey began absorbing graphic imagery at an early age as his family visited the local cinema house nearly every night during the winter (to help keep warm!). The family home fell victim to enemy bombing and, after moving out of the city, young David would divide his time between their new home in suburban East Ham and various bomb shelters.
While developmental disorders made schooling a chore, a love of natural history brought him to photography and, after dropping out of school and cycling through several unsatisfying jobs, in 1956 David enlisted in the Royal Air Force, serving in Singapore in 1957 and, to launch his new hobby, he purchased a Rolleiflex camera and, after leaving the Service in 1958 and adding a Canon camera to his collection, set out to learn what he’d need to know to build a career as a professional photographer. With his poor school record, he was denied admission to the London College of Printing and, instead, found work as an assistant to David Ollins, a prominent London photographer. The next year, he found work as a photo assistant with John French, moving on in mid-1960 to join the photo staff at fashion photographer John Cole’s studio, leaving at the end of the year for a job with British Vogue magazine and a slate of freelance assignments.
The timing of Bailey’s entry into the photographic arena couldn’t have been better. London was one of the world hubs of “Swinging 60s” style and culture and, along with photograpers Terence Donovan and Brian Duffy, Bailey was on hand to document the time (and join in on the fun, as well, with David’s love life and affairs with top models well-documented). In 1964, he released a now-coveted edition of posters featuring the most-famous celebrities of the era (titled Box Of Pin-Ups), and his life served as the inspiration for the character of Thomas in Antonini’s 1966 Academy Award-winning film Blow Up (which featured a club scene featuring performance by then-Yardbirds members Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page), which added to the young photographer’s mystique and popularity (years later, in 2012, the BBC broadcast showed the film We’ll Take Manhattan, the story of his relationship with 60s supermodel Jean Shrimpton, cementing his place in the annals of British pop culture).
His time with Vogue was an amazingly prolific one – during one year alone, he produced over 800 pages of covers and editorial imagery. In the mid-60s, he also expanded his artistic endeavors to include film-making and the production of television and advertising imagery and commercials. In the early 1970s, he began to accept assignments for album cover photography for many of the biggest names in the music business, including the Rolling Stones, Cat Stevens and Alice Cooper, with music industry photography remaining an important part of his portfolio moving forward (for example, he was on hand to shoot the goings on at 1985’s Live Aid super concerts).
In the 1990s, Bailey worked on a broad range of projects, including documentaries for the BBC and a series of art exhibitions on a variety of subjects and he continues to work to this day, shooting portraits and editorial imager for publications including Harper’s Bazaar, American and Italian Vogue, The London Times and Talk magazine, among others. Since the publication of Box Of Pin-Ups, he’s either published – or his work has been featured in – many books, including his first career retrospective titled Goodbye Baby & Amen (1969, Conde Nast Books), Lady Is A Tramp (with Fay Weldon, 1995, Thames & Hudson), Rock & Roll Heroes (with Neil Spencer, 1997, Bullfinch Press), Archive One: 1957 – 1969 (with Martin Harrison, 1999, Thames & Hudson), Bailey’s Democracy (with Desmond Morris, 2005, Steidl Photography) and David Bailey: 8 Minutes: Hirst & Bailey (with artist Damien Hirst, 2009, Steidl). Working with author James Fox, in 2020 Bailey’s memoir titled Look Again was published by Macmillan Books.
During his career, David’s work has been included in a number of museum/gallery shows, beginning in 1971 with a show at London’s National Portrait Gallery, followed in 1984 with a retrospective of his work at Manhattan’s International Center of Photography. In 1999, his work was on display during the show titled “The Birth of the Cool,” at London’s Barbican Centre and, in 2014, a show titled “Stardust” put 250 of his photos on display again at the National Portrait Gallery in London. Although he’s never won a major industry award for his photographic work (??), in 2001, “for services to art”, David was appointed a Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE) and, in 2005, the Royal Photographic Society awarded him their Centenary Medal and Honorary Fellowship. That same year, GQ hired him to photograph more than a dozen prominent British musicians for an historical article about their country’s importance in the development of the rock music industry. In 2016, Bailey received a “Lifetime Achievement Award” at the prestigious Infinity Awards held at the ICP in NYC.
Today, Bailey lives with his fourth wife, model Catherine Dyer, near Glastonbury in picturesque Somerset, U.K..For more information on this artist, please visit his page on the U.K.’s National Portrait Gallery web site at https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/person/mp05044/david-bailey
Julian Balme – notable album package credits include – Big Country – The Crossing; The Korgis – The Korgis; New Musik – From A To B (Straight Lines); The Teardrop Explodes – The Greatest Hit; Pete Townshend – Scoop 3 (Box Set); The Clash – London Calling, Combat Rock, Sandanista!, Cut The Crap, The Singles (Box Set), Sound System and Live At Shea; The Psychedelic Furs – Talk, Talk, Talk; Adam & The Ants – Prince Charming and Kings Of The Wild Frontier; Imelda May – Love Tattoo and No Turning Back; Madness – One Step Beyond; Graham Parker – Stiffs & Demons: A Collection (1980 – 93);
While his first full-time music industry job (after a three-day stint at Hipgnosis!) in the late 1970s was working alongside graphic artist Barney Bubbles designing products for the British indie punk/new wave record label Stiff Records, after a year he decided to open up his own shop as a freelancer (using the moniker Vegas Design) and, since then, he’s designed scores of graphics packages for clients in the entertainment, publishing and automotive editorial business.
According to Balme’s web site bio, his true love is for classic cars and, “in his ‘hobby career’ as a journalist, his words are often read in the classic car press. He has been involved in historic motorsport for over 30 years competing all around the world with predominantly American cars”.
More information on this artist is available via his web site at http://vegasdesign.co.uk/Music.html
David James Bandit AKA Ghostshrimp – notable album package credits include – The Returners – Break Up Your Make Up ; NehruvianDoom – NehruvianDoom (Sound of the Sun) ; Factor (2) – Woke Up Alone ; Daedelus – Drown Out ; Kay The Aquanaut – Nickelodeon Ethics and Waterloo ; Mine + US & DJ Hoppa – Day By Day ; Brad Breek – Gravity Falls soundtrack; Old Growth Soul Journer – The Immortal Realm ; Uncle Tairy – Nitrous and Sun Blew Out ; Factor Chandelier – Factoria
(b. August, 1980 in Shutesbury, MA) Born in Massachusetts and raised near the New Hampshire coast, Daniel James Bandit (born Daniel Rogers James) and now better known as Ghostshrimp received his art training at the Pratt Institute in New York and the set out his shingle as a freelance graphic artist (and illustrator and animator). In 2008, he signed on to the team at Cartoon Network to work on their series The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack and Adventure Time, staying there for several seasons (and moving out to California to be closer to the work) before leaving to restart his career as a freelancer.
Since then, his illustrations and artwork have appeared in print publications including Entertainment Weekly, Found Magazine, The New Yorker, The New York Times, the Oxford American, Reader’s Digest U.K. (and others) and the artwork he did for Disney’s Gravity Falls vinyl soundtrack LP (released on iam8bit Records) which won the “Best In Show” and “Best Record Art” awards at the 2023 Making Vinyl Packaging Awards.
According to his Wikipedia bio, “Ghostshrimp had taken the job at Cartoon Network in order to save up enough money to buy a tract of land in Northern New England to build the Bandit family homestead and start a training camp for aspiring visual artists. His plan eventually worked, and he left Adventure Time during production of the show’s fourth season and moved into the forest of the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. The inaugural session of Ghostscout Training Camp lasted from August 1 to September 1, 2012, and Ghostshrimp continues to host the 30-day training camp every August.” He’s also running a 10-week online training course for artists looking to prep themselves for work as commercial designers/illustrators, “designed to help aspiring artists transform their drawing hobby into a career, and established artist direct their career in a more personally rewarding direction” – https://www.ghostshrimpglobal.com/workshops
More information on this artist is available on his website at https://www.ghostshrimpglobal.com/
Jonathan Barnbrook – notable album cover credits include – David Bowie – Heathen, Reality and The Next Day; Cranes – Forever; John Foxx & The Maths – Rhapsody; Tuxedo Moon – Unearthed and Vapour Trail
(b. 1966 in Luton, Bedfordshire, UK) Recounting that record cover artwork served as an early design influence (and, perhaps, the application that first beguiled him to explore graphic design), Jonathan Barnbrook graduated with distinction with a degree in graphic design from Saint Martin’s School of Art and the Royal College of Art (both in London) and then founded his design studio, Barnbrook Design, in 1990. In 1997, he established his own font company – VirusFonts – releasing now-well-known fonts such as ‘Bastard’, ‘Exocet’, ‘Infidel’, Shock & Awe and ‘Tourette’. He also began a multi-year collaboration with artist Damien Hirst – first, on his award-winning book titled I Want To Spend the Rest of My Life Everywhere, with Everyone, One to One, Always, Forever, Now., first published in 1997 (and included in MOMA’s collection of “Books of the 20th Century”), then with designs for the Pharmacy Restaurant in London and again, in 2001, on the book titled Damien Hirst: Pictures From The Saatchi Gallery:28 Tablets (published by Booth-Clibborn).
He participated in the First Things First 2000 manifesto published in 1999. This was a document, signed by graphic designers, students and photographers, that pledged that those who signed would “put their skills to worthwhile use….to address the unprecedented environmental, social and cultural crises” first, which was viewed as a reversal of priorities in the commercial graphic design world. To help draw attention to the manifesto, Jonathan designed a billboard that was targeted at the attendees of an AIGA conference in Las Vegas that was based on a quote (“Designers, stay away from corporations that want you to lie for them”) by designer Tibor Kalman.
In 2008 he was given an honorary doctorate by Staffordshire University for services to typography. Just prior to the 2008 Olympic Games in China, Barnbrook teamed with designer Pedro Inoue to launch an organization called Remember Tibet, asking that “designers, animators, directors, artists, anybody to contribute copyright free artwork, animations, posters & t-shirt designs. We believe the creative arts will always have an active role in raising awareness and forcing an issue onto the mainstream political agenda”. With all of the world’s attention at the time focused on the hype surrounding the games, Jonathan hoped that his effort would remind us about the struggles of a country looking to gain its independence from China’s non-democratic form of government.
Design clients include Biennale of Sydney, Blain|Southern, Booth-Clibborn Editions, British Heart Foundation, Damien Hirst, David Bowie, Dignity, Fiell Publications, Love Music Love Food, Mori Arts Center (Tokyo, Japan), the Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles), Radio Scotland, Roppongi Hills, Saatchi Gallery, Shiseido and Tuxedomoon, among many others.
Awards he’s received during his career thus far include a Gold Prize in 1998 from the Art Directors Club of New York; The Tokyo Type Directors Club Non-Members Grand Prize; and Best In Show in 1998 from the New York Type Directors Club. He has been honored with two D&AD Awards (and is included in their list of “Top 50 Award-Winning Design Agencies”), and the Epica Grand Prix, an honor given by an international organization of marketing and communications journalists for works of exceptional creativity in a number of categories..
As a fine artist, his work has been exhibited in museums and galleries throughout the world, including shows at The Gagosian Gallery in NYC, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the Museum of Revolution in Maribor, Slovenia and the Saatchi and White Cube Galleries in London. In 2007, the Design Museum in London organized a retrospective of his work titled “Friendly Fire”, the same year that he was selected to exhibit in the 10th Istanbul Biennale. During 2009, the exhibition ‘Collateral Damage’ put on display a retrospective of Barnbrook’s more-political designs and travelled to other countries including France, Slovenia and Croatia. In 2010, Jonathan was a featured artist at the 17th Biennale of Sydney, Australia’s largest contemporary arts exhibition and, that same year, his best-known typeface (‘Mason’, released by Emigre) became one of the first digital acquisitions of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Barnbrook has also contributed to Adbusters magazine, art-directing two issues in 2009 and 2011. There have been a number of books published that feature Jonathan’s work, including Paul Felton’s The Ten Commandments of Typography (published in 2006 by Merrell Publishers); the Barnbrook Bible, published in 2007 by Rizzoli; Newspeak: British Art Now (with Patricia Ellis, 2010, by Booth-Clibborn) and Fashion & Art Collusion (with Edward Booth-Clibborn, 2012, also by Booth-Clibborn). For clients in rock and roll circles, Jonathan’s designed Thames & Hudson: The Rolling Stones 50 (the officially-authorized book celebrating The Rolling Stones 50th anniversary) and he was also commissioned to provide the design of the exhibition catalog for the immensely-popular “David Bowie Is” exhibition staged by the Victoria & Albert Museum in London in 2013.
Barnbrook lives and works in London, UK. More information on this artist is available on his website at http://www.barnbrook.net/
Sherry Rayn Barnett – notable album package credits include – Nina Simone – Let It Be Me; Mary McCaslin – A Life & Time; Marlena Shaw – Is It Love; Thom Rotella – Platinum Melodies; Gladys Knight & The Pips – Live At The Roxy; Tom Paxton – Best of the Vanguard Years; Harry Chapin – The Essentials; John Denver – The Essential John Denver; B.B. King – Back In The Alley; Carole King & James Taylor – Live At The Troubadour; Vince Gill – All-American Country
(b. 19___ in Forest Hills, Queens, NY) Sherry began taking pictures as soon as she was able to hold her first pint-size Kodak Brownie box camera (OK, not a true “Brownie” – it was turquoise blue). She began to focus on the things around her that caught her eye … beginning with her B&W cat, her friends and anything in her small, but great outdoors.
Growing up in a creative & musical suburban Forest Hills (NYC) household, she simultaneously began a love affair with music. Fortunately, she quickly moved on from an early obsession with the accordion to a lifelong love of the guitar. She attended The High School of Performing Arts as a classical guitar major and began photographing the music – and the musicians around her. While still in high school she had her first magazine cover published by a national dance magazine and became the photo editor for the Performing Arts yearbook. She alternately began photographing concerts and then escaping the city to seek out anything that appeared to be non-urban and connected to nature.
As part of the New York “underground press” of the late 60’s & early 70’s that developed, she began to be photograph the culture and the musicians that provided the soundtrack for it. Relocating to Southern California (L.A.) in the mid 70’s provided a new landscape of musical inspiration that Sherry continues to draw on.
Today, she’s still focused on photography that includes musicians, cats, and nature – as well as anything eccentric, from roadside attractions to people and pets of extraordinary personality. Her extensive music photography archive now spans 3 decades, during which she has captured 100’s of live performances of artists ranging from Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix to Sting and David Bowie. She continues to add to the subject list by shooting both newer and classic folk, rock, jazz and acoustic music artists.
Most recently, she has continued to photograph both eclectic and iconic performers, licensing her work for books, magazines, television & electronic media. She’s been inspired by the “instant gratification” of digital photography, although she continues to shoot on assignment in both B&W and color in 35mm and 2 1/4″ formats also. Her work can often be seen in music publications including ACOUSTIC GUITAR MAGAZINE, GOLDMINE, GUITAR PLAYER, COUNTRY MUSIC MAGAZINE, and GUITAR WORLD ACOUSTIC. In 2022, she released a book that chronicles a very productive 20-year period in her life as a rock photographer called Eye of the Music, The Photography of Sherry Rayn Barnett, New York to LA, 1969-1989.
For more information and to see an overview of her work, please visit her web site at – www.sherrybarnettphotography.com.
Nick Bax – notable album cover credits include – LFO – Frequencies; Locust – Weathered Well; Autechre – Tri Repetae and Confield; Supergrass – Sun Hits The Sky, Pt. 1 and Caught By The Fuzz; Cabaret Voltaire – The Original Sound of Sheffield ’83 – ’87 and Conform To Deform ’82 – ’90; Jarvis Cocker – Jarvis and Don’t Let Him Waste Your Time; Sound Tribe Sector 9 – Artifact
(b. 1970 in Huddersfield, England) After completing courses in Art and Design at South Yorkshire’s Rotherham College of Arts & Technology and in graphic design at the Colchester Institute at the North Essex School of Art in 1990, Nick joined the team at The Designer’s Republic agency (TDR) who, at the time, focused their considerable talents on projects for clients in the music industry. They helped U.K. indie electronic music label Warp Records establish its visual style, creating memorable sleeves for artists including Forgemasters, LFO and Nightmares on Wax, and produced other designs for The Orb and Pop Will Eat Itself.
Leaving briefly in 1992 for a stint at London’s Mainartery (where he designed for clients at Arista, EMI, Phonogram and Sony), he returned to TDR in 1993 and jumped into design projects for acts such as Aphex Twin, Pulp and Supergrass and additional work for the React and Warp Records labels. Expanding his portfolio to include commercial clients in other industries, Nick and his crew worked on projects in the video game, product design and packaging and brand identification for TV networks such as Nickelodeon and MTV’s now-defunct Italian network QOOB. While at TDR, Bax curated exhibits of agency-related work at museums and galleries in the U.S., Europe and Japan, including shows at the Barbican Centre in London and Barcelona’s Museum of Contemporary Art.
In 2007, Bax left to start his own multi-disciplinary (design, animation, video) firm in Sheffield, U.K. called Humanstudio and, since that time, Nick and his team have worked on projects for a wide range of clients including the Arts Council, Channel 4, Deep Dish Records, MTV, Roewe, Seaborn, Supergrass, TIGI, the University of Sheffield, Urban Splash, Virgin EMI, Warner Music and many others (from 2009 – 2012, Bax served as the art consultant for the Saville Row London-based bespoke tailor Kilgour, succeeding fellow designer Peter Saville in that role). Human also stages live multi-media performances in venues worldwide in a series called the HCI, or “Human-Computer Interaction” events. In 2014, Bax was hired to serve as the creative director for the reunion of Washington DC house duo Deep Dish, creating designs and video accompaniments for the group’s subsequent performances at festivals and venues across the world. That same year, Nick co-founded a music label called Computer Club which, as you might figure, has very impressive packaging and merchandise!
Eager to share his knowledge with others, Bax serves as a visiting lecturer at numerous schools and universities on the subjects of design & visual communications and is a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts. In addition, he works as an advisor on cultural engagement for the University of Sheffield and serves as a Director of the charity Recovery Enterprises which, according to their site, works with people who live with a variety of mental health conditions to “support the development of enterprising ideas, enabling them to flourish into businesses that benefit wellbeing”.
To learn more about this artist, please visit his web site at http://www.humanstudio.com/
Roberta Bayley – notable album cover credits include – The Ramones – The Ramones; Elvis Costello – Rock And Roll Music; Mary Weiss – Dangerous Game; Johnny Thunders & The Heartbreakers – Live At Mothers, L.A.M.F. and L.A.M.F.: The Lost ’77 Mixes; The Real Kids – The Real Kids; Richard Hell – Blank Generation and Destiny Street
(b. 1950, Pasadena, CA) Roberta Bayley was born in Southern California and grew up in the San Francisco Bay area, attending San Francisco State University from 1968 until she dropped out in 1971 and moved to London, where she found employment in Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood’s notorious clothing boutique and dated musician Ian Dury. From there – looking for “the next thing” – she was drawn back to the U.S. and the grittiness of New York City, moving there in 1974.
Diving headfirst into the emerging arts and music scene, in early 1975 she took a job working the door at CBGB, a position she kept for the next few years. Later that year, she bought a Pentax Spotmatic camera and began photographing the bands that were playing the club. With her easy access to the venue and relationships with the acts that played there, she was soon contributing photos for articles and photo-novels to the popular local magazine Punk and took on photo assignments for some of the acts she knew including The Ramones, The Heartbreakers, Iggy Pop, The Clash, The New York Dolls, Richard Hell and Blondie. When the Sex Pistols came to tour the U.S., they brought Roberta along for the ride, where she photographed what ended up being the band’s farewell appearances. However, by 1980, she became disenchanted with the demands of her career (as she puts it, “I’d pretty much photographed everyone I had ever wanted to photograph”) and hung up her camera, retreating back to the NYC area, where she still lives today.
Since then, she’s provided her photographs to a wide range of publications, including magazines such as Punk, Spin and Aquatulle and books including 12 Days On the Road: The Sex Pistols and America (1990), England’s Dreaming: Anarchy, Sex Pistols, Punk Rock and Beyond (1991), Please Kill Me (1996), Blank Generation Revisited (1997) and Punk: The Book (2013). She’s been exhibiting her work since 1978, with numerous shows featuring her work – both group and solo – staged in the NYC area, Washington, DC, Mexico City, Amsterdam, Australia, France and elsewhere. Most recently, in 2012, she had a solo exhibition at the Space Gallery in Pomona, CA and there were a number of her photos used in the 2013 exhibition titled Punk: Chaos to Couture curated at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Roberta’s photos are also found in a number of prestigious collections, including those of The Hard Rock Cafe, fashion designer Anna Sui, influential French artist Rebecca Bournigault, music manager/Stiff Records owner Jake Riviera and musician Henry Rollins.
For more information on this artist, please visit her web site at http://www.robertabayley.com/
Michael Bays – notable album cover credits include – Quicksand – Slip; Michelle Shocked – Michelle Shocked and Arkansas Traveller; Gear Daddies – Billy’s Live Bait; Chickasaw Mudd Puppies – Do You Remember?; Mother Love Bone – Stardog Champion; Eric Clapton – Crossroads; Blue Cheer – Good Times Are So Hard To Find; James Brown – Star Time; Allman Brothers Band – Dreams; Various Artists – Stairway To Heaven/Highway To Hell
Past Art Director and V.P. of Creative Services for Polygram/Polydor and Mercury Records. Active 1985 – 1995, with over 100 album cover design/art direction credits. No web site available.
Lou Beach – notable album cover credits include – Martini Ranch – Holy Cow; Yellowjackets – Samurai Samba; David Sanborn – Backstreet; Blink 182 – Dude Ranch; X – Burning House of Love; Ray Manzarek – Carmina Burana; The Carpenters – Passage; Neville Brothers – Fiyo on the Bayou; Weather Report – Heavy Weather; Madonna – Everybody; Weird Al Yankovic – Dare to be Stupid
(Born March, 1947 in Gottingen, Germany) Lou Beach was born in Germany to Polish parents (“who’d been guests of the Third Reich”) and who, after the war, migrated to the U.S. – Rochester, NY – when he was four years old. His name is taken from the phonetic pronunciation of his family’s last name, Lubicz (pronounced “lou-beech”).
Based now in southern California, the illustrator began his career in the entertainment industry in the 1970s and grew his client base (in the music, film and print publishing arenas) to include satisfied customers such as Blink 182, The Carpenters, the Flying Burrito Brothers, Houghton-Mifflin, McGraw-Hill, the Neville Brothers, The New York Times, Random House, Rolling Stone Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, Weather Report, Wired Magazine, Weird Al Yankovic and many others.
In 2006, Lou published his book, Cut It Out (La Luz de Jesus Press) and a book of short stories titled 420 CHARACTERS was published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2011.
Married to photographer Issa Sharp, Lou and his family continue to enjoy their lives in California.
More information on this artist is available at http://www.loubeach.com/album-art/
Robert Beatty – notable album covers credits include – Tame Impala – Currents; The Flaming Lips – Oczy Mlody; Burning Star Core – Challenger; Thee Oh Sees – A Weird Exists; Forma – The Physicalist; Oneohtrix Point Never — Commissions I; Kesha – Rainbow; Knife Knights – 1 Time Mirage; GUM – The Underdog; Ed Schrader’s Music Beat – Riddles; Ariel Pink – Dedicated To Bobby Jameson; Lord Raja – A Constant Moth; Chris Forsyth & Solar Motel Band — The Rarity of Experience Pts. I & II; Secret Circuit — Afterlife; Wooden Wand – Briarwood
A self-taught artist (who grew up on a farm in Nicholassville, Kentucky) who first pursued a career in the music business (among other jobs, including working on a show at the local college radio station) after graduating high school, Robert had always shown a great deal of drawing talent and had always been fascinated by album cover art, particularly the works of surrealists such as (according to his AIGA profile) Masakazu Kitayama’s (the cover for the Cornelius album Fantasma), “Polish animation by the likes of Piotr Kamler, 60s and 70s adverts, the work of artist Lillian Schwartz, and experimental films,” MTV Liquid Television animation contributor Mark Beyer and nearly every issue of the Graphis and IDEA design annuals he could find in the library at the nearby University of Kentucky.
Basing his design and music studio work in Lexington, Kentucky, Robert is active in both spaces, producing music with his band Hair Police and his solo project called Three Legged Race (where he plays his vintage Radio Shack/Realistic MG-1 synthesizer) and contributing his talents to violinist/experimental music composer C. Spencer Yeh’s Burning Star Core project. In 2017, Beatty published a 112-page, text-free book “ of unpublished artwork recalling the heyday of paperback science fiction, experimental animation, and outsider private-press psychedelic records” (released by Floating Word Comics) titled Floodgate Companion and has expanded his portfolio to include hand-crafted music videos, a number of which were featured in an Anthology Film Archives’ monthly Show & Tell program in 2017.
I found a very detailed 2019 interview with Robert on the Forge Art online magazine site – https://issuu.com/forgeartmag/docs/issuu21/100
To see more of Robert’s art and to learn about his most-recent activities, visit his website at https://robertbeattyart.com/About
Ian Beck – notable album cover credits include – Elton John – Goodbye Yellow Brick Road; Harvey Andrews – Friends of Mine; Focus – Live at The Rainbow; Various Artists – The Guitar Record (Polydor); Jonathan Kelly – Wait Until They Change The Backdrop
(Born in 1947, Hove, Sussex, England) After graduating from the Brighton College of Art in 1968, Beck moved to London to work as a freelance illustrator (and part-time toy seller at Harrod’s department store). Since then, he’s built up a broad-based clientele, doing work for music industry clients (besides Elton John, he’s created imagery for Ry Cooder, Focus, Richie Havens, James Taylor and others) and publications including Classical Music, Cosmopolitan, Cream, The Express, Good Housekeeping, Homes & Gardens, 19, Radio Times and The Sunday Telegraph. He’s also created a variety of products and designs for Conran’s Design Group.
In the early 1980s, Oxford University Press approached Beck with an offer to work on a children’s book project they were publishing, with the first book – Round and Round The Garden – released in 1982. He’s worked on many book projects since then, writing his own first novel for children – The Secret History of Tom Trueheart, Boy Adventurer, which was published in June, 2006 and is available now translated into more than 20 languages. Two “Tom Truehart” sequels have followed – Tom Trueheart & The Land of Dark Stories (2009) and Tom Trueheart & The Land of Myths and Legends (2011), and he’s written three other novels – Pastworld (2009), The Hidden Kingdom (2011), and The Haunting of Charity Delafield (2011).
More information about this artist is available on his web site – http://ianbeck.wordpress.com/
Janette Beckman – Notable album cover credits include – The Police – Outlandos D’Amour, Reggatta De Blanc, Zenyatta Mondatta and Every Breath You Take: The Singles; Squeeze – Six Of One; Arthur Russell – Another Thought; Gang Starr – No More Mr. Nice Guy; Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five – On The Strength; Salt-n-Pepa – A Salt With A Deadly Pepa and Push It
(b. London, U.K.) While attending the quite-progressive King Alfred School in Hampstead, Beckman found a passion within her for art so, at the age of 17, she enrolled herself in art-oriented programs, her first year at St. Martin’s School of Art in London, and then three years at the London College of Communication, with a focus on the study of photography.
Desiring to be a portrait artist, but not confident in her skills as an illustrator or painter, she used her camera to shoot portraits of local musicians and the emerging punk music scene at the local clubs. Her photos would appear in publications including The Face and Melody Maker and, learning more about the exciting new hip-hop scene in New York City, she moved there in 1982 to document the musical acts leading the charge there. Impressed by Janette’s artistic take on the New York music scene, a number of publications both in the U.S. and overseas (including, but not limited to Esquire, Glamour, Interview, The London Sunday Times, Mojo, Newsweek, The Observer, People and Rolling Stone) turned to her to supply them with photos for their editorials on the subject.
Since then, Janette’s work has been in demand, allowing her to develop a client list outside the music industry, creating images for brands such as Casio, Converse, Doc Marten, Jocks and Nerds, Kangol, Nickelodeon, SAGE, Schott, Vodafone and others.
Books featuring her music and street style imagery include: Made in the UK: The Music of Attitude, 1977-1982 (published by PowerHouse Books 2005 and featuring a foreword by the British designer Paul Smith and an essay by “Punk Professor” Vivien Goldman); The Breaks, Stylin and Profilin 1982-1990 (PowerHouse Books, 2007) and El Hoyo Maravilla, released in 2011 by Dashwood Books.
Her photographs have recently been exhibited at public venues, galleries and in museum exhibitions around the world, including the Paul Smith store in London, the Collette in Paris and the Isetan store in Tokyo, the Kong Gallery Shanghai, the Rockarchive and Proud Galleries in London, the Blender Gallery in Sydney and the Museum of the City of New York. An August, 2010 exhibition at the Arkitip’s Project Space in Los Angeles titled Archive of Attitude was accompanied by a limited-edition collector’s newspaper, and a joint exhibition with fellow British photographer David Corio (who was the photographer at the New Music Express (NME) magazine when Janette was working for Melody Maker) that was staged by the Morrison Hotel Gallery in New York proved to be so successful that the gallery hosted another show later that year during Art Basel Miami.
The popular arts publication Flavorwire named Janette Beckman one of “10 Rock Photographers You Should Know” in 2011, and in 2012, Janette turned educator, joining the faculty at the International Center of Photography in New York to teach a Summer course called “Youth Culture – Documentary and Portrait Photography”. She also provides fans with the back stories behind many of her photos on her blog titled “Archive Of Attitude”.
Some of Beckman’s photographs are also featured on a line of T-shirts sold by UK clothier Ben Sherman to help raise funds for the Teenage Cancer Trust.
To learn more about this artist, please visit her web site at – http://www.janettebeckman.com/
Chuck Beeson – notable album cover credits include – Rita Coolidge – The Lady’s Not For Sale; The Tubes – Remote Control; Squeeze – Cool For Cats; The Brothers Johnson – Winners, Blam!! and Light Up The Night; Carole King – Tapestry, Fantasy, Wrap Around Joy and Thoroughbred; Styx – Paradise Theater, Equinox, The Grand Illusion and Caught In The Act; Oingo Boingo – Only A Lad; Janet Jackson – Janet Jackson; .38 Special – Tour de Force; Y&T – In Rock We Trust, Open Fire and Down For The Count
Creative/Art Director at A&M Records from 1967 through his retirement in 1998. In his role, his team was responsible for all packaging and marketing materials for the label’s wide range of musical acts, including Herb Alpert, Burt Bacharach, The Carpenters, Joe Cocker, Rita Coolidge, Al Green, Janet Jackson, Quincy Jones, Carole King, Oingo Boingo, Styx, The Tubes, Barry White, Y&T and many others.
Samples of Chuck’s work have been included in many books on album cover art, including 1000 Record Covers by Michael Ochs (2002), Classic Rock Covers (also by Mr. Ochs, 2001) and This Ain’t No Disco: New Wave Album Covers (by Jennifer McKnight-Trontz, 2005). Beeson’s design for the 1980 debut release by Scottish band R.A.F. was selected for inclusion in the AIGA’s 1982 collection titled “The Cover Show” and is featured in their Design Archives.
Pedro Bell – notable album cover credits include – Parliament/Funkadelic /P-Funk All Stars – One Nation Under A Groove, Hardcore Jollies, Cosmic Slop, Standing On The Verge of Getting It On, Let’s Take It To The Stage, The Electric Spanking of War Babes, Uncle Jam Wants You, T.A.P.O.A.F.O.M and How Late Do U Have 2 B B 4 U R Absent ? ; Axiom Funk – Funkcronomicon
(b. 1950, Chicago, IL; d. August, 2019) Inspired by the music he heard on an underground radio station in his home town of Chicago, artist Pedro Bell began his career as an illustrator in the music business in the early 1970s after writing Parliament Funkadelic’s record company offering to provide art and liner notes for the band. After accepting his offer, the record label had Bell work on a variety of promotional materials – posters and handbills for concerts, press kits, etc. – and then, in 1973, asked him to create an album cover for their Cosmic Slop record. While his creative collaboration with George Clinton and the P-Funk “collective” provided him with an outlet for his talents, he continued to work at jobs with the Postal Service and as a security guard.
Bell is credited with using his skills as both a writer and artist to build the back story for P-Funk, developing their “superhero” personalities and their mission to fight society’s evils on Earth and throughout the Universe. He was working to give Black people another way to see themselves and their lives (and the band) connected to powers that would help lift them up together, regardless of the realities of their circumstances at the time. And while his art and text were often “problematic” for the record companies and retailers – his sexually-suggestive cover art for Funkadelic’s 1981 album The Electric Spanking of War Babies was originally rejected by Warner Bros. Records executives, with Bell re-doing the artwork to include a shapeless blob over the original design along with the words “Oh Look! The Cover That ‘They’ Were TOO-SCARED To Print!” – Bell work became synonymous with the band’s popular (multi-million-selling) messages of positive “funkativity” (“free your mind, and the rest will follow”).
Bell went on to design the artwork for nearly two dozen Clinton/Funkadelic records before splitting with the band in the late 1990s and, besides his inclusion in nearly every discussion about the ongoing influence of the band and it’s message – and being the subject of a number of exhibitions at galleries and museums in North America, including two gallery exhibitions in Canada in 2009-10 called “Funkaesthetics” and in former Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago) curator Dominic Molon’s traveling exhibit “Sympathy for the Devil: Art and Rock ‘n’ Roll since 1967”- Bell’s life and career since his P-Funk work was a sad tale. Nearly blind, he lived in near-poverty in the Hyde Park area of Chicago and, despite the efforts of his brother and fans who’ve learned of his condition to improve his situation (via sales of his works and other fund-raising efforts), he had hoped for a better life going forward. When he died in August, 2019 (no cause of death was given), Parliament/Funkadelic bassist Bootsy Collins wrote “We lost the Master Mind behind the Graphic’s & Artwork of Funkadelic…Thxs for yr service our brother”, while Funkadlic founder George Clinton posted an acknowledgement about his collaborator’s passing on Facebook, referencing Bell’s backward-spelled nickname: “RIP to Funkadelic album cover illustrator Pedro Bell. Rest easy, Sir Lleb!”
More on this artist via a page on the George Clinton web site – http://georgeclinton.com/family/pedro-bell/
Michael Benabib – notable album package credits include – Steady B – Going Steady; Kid Rock – Grits Sandwiches for Breakfast; DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince – Home Base ; Miles Davis – Doo-Bop; Fu-Schnickens – F.U. Don’t Take It Personal; Arrested Development – Unplugged ; Usher – Usher and My Way; Faith Evans – Soon As I Get Home ; Dr. Dre – The Aftermath; Puff Daddy & The Family – No Way Out ; India Arie – Acoustic Soul; Public Enemy – It Takes A Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back and Mary J. Blige – What’s The 411? Remix
(b. ____, _____) According to his bio on the UHHM.org site, “Michael started shooting photos at age 14, which resulted in his falling in ‘love with the camera itself.’ He committed to using the “magic box” to take photographs of things and people that resonated hard with him.” Their bio then presented what’s become part of his legend – “Benabib chose to walk from his home in Greenwich Village to his studio in SoHo in 1988. The day he chose to walk past 298 Elizabeth Street – the original location of Def Jam’s office – was the day the game changed. About this spot in Nolita, Michael told us, ‘Every day in front of the door, there was a scene. It was always full of B-Boys, MCs, and rappers. And I always had my camera. I photographed and got to know everyone. Kurious Jorge [Spanish Harlem-based MC with significant lyrical skills] showed my photos to Russell Simmons. I sent photos to Russell. And, I got a call the next day to photograph him for a promotion. That’s how it started.’
While Benabib began his career as a portrait photographer, he soon moved on to shooting album covers for some of the biggest names in music including Tupac Shakur, Sean “Puffy” Combs, Public Enemy, Will Smith/The Fresh Prince as well as David Bowie, The Rolling Stones and U2. His photographs have also been featured in many U.S. and international publications including ESPN, GQ, Newsweek, The New York Times, Rolling Stone, The Source, Vanity Fair, Vibe and others, as well as in books such as In Ya Grill: The Faces Of Hip-Hop. The hip-hop photography of Michael Benabib (Watson Guptill and Billboard Books, 2007) and the Smithsonian Anthology of Hip- Hop and Rap. He’s also published books the show the impressive breadth of his portfolio – Light & Shadow and The Art of Seeing.
More information on this artist can be found on his web site at https://michaelbenabib.com/
John Berg – notable album cover credits include – Barbra Streisand – Barbra Streisand Album; Bob Dylan – Greatest Hits and Blonde on Blonde; Chicago – V, VI, VII, VIII and X (14 in all); Bruce Springsteen – Greetings From Asbury Park and Born To Run; Jeff Beck – Blow By Blow
(b. Jan. 1932 in Brooklyn, NY; d. Oct. 2015 in East Hampton, NY) Beginning his career in the arts in the 1950s, designer John Berg worked first for the Atlanta Paper Company (designing, among other things, bottle carriers for Pepsi) before spending time at both Grey Advertising and the DDB agencies in New York. Leaving the ad world, he headed over to Esquire magazine, working there for three years in various promotion design roles before landing at Escapade magazine in 1959. There, he added his own sense of style to this early “girlie” magazine and was recognized for his work by the NY Art Directors Club.
Looking to restart his career in 1960, John brought his portfolio to Columbia Records where he met Bob Cato, who was so impressed with what he saw that he offered Berg a job on the spot. Working first with Cato and then as art director, creative director and, finally, Vice President (and following in the footsteps of such renowned album cover designers as Alex Steinweiss and S. Neil Fujita, who’d both worked at Columbia), John stayed at Columbia/CBS until 1985, during which time he lead the teams that created over 5000 album covers.
As Art Director for a prominent, NYC-based record label, John was able to work with a host of talented designers, illustrators and photographers, including in-house photo great Don Hunstein, photographers Jerry Schatzberg, Eric Meola and Richard Avedon and designers Milton Glaser, Seymour Chwast, Robert Crumb, Alvin Lustig and Nick Fasciano (and many, many others) and the results of these efforts were a whole host of AIGA, Art Director’s Club and Grammy Awards, the latter for which he was nominated 29 times and won four of.
In addition to his album cover work, Berg worked with designer Milton Glaser to create the now famous “psychedelic” Dylan poster, the first of its kind packaged inside Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits LP in 1967.
Until his death from complications from pneumonia in October, 2015, Berg lived on the East End of Long Island, NY, with his wife, the photographer and illustrator Durell Godfrey.
Books that include discussions on and details of John’s work include The Label: The Story of Columbia Records by Gary Marmorstein (2007 – Thunder’s Mouth Press) and 360 Sound: The Columbia Records Story by Sean Wilentz (2012 – Chronicle Books).
An exhibition on his work for CBS Records work was mounted in the AIGA New York gallery in the late ’70s and traveled to Paris and Ferrara, Italy (Berg also served on the AIGA board of directors at that time). In November, 2012 at the Museum in Guild Hall in East Hampton, NY, a career retrospective exhibition titled “John Berg” put nearly 100 of his works on display.
A 2007 interview with John was originally posted on the AIGA website, but now can be found on the writer/educator Paul Nini’s web site at https://pjn123.medium.com/across-the-graphic-universe-an-interview-with-john-berg-8b20d4d2c207
Joel Bernstein – notable album package credits include – Crosby Stills & Nash – Greatest Hits and Demos; Neil Young – After The Gold Rush, Harvest, Decade, North Country, Neil Young Archives Vol. 1 and Tonight’s The Night; David Crosby – Voyage and If I Could Only Remember My Name; Graham Nash – Song For Beginners, Reflections and Over The Years; Crosby Nash – Graham Nash/David Crosby and Wind on the Water; Crosby Stills Nash & Young – 4 Way Street and CSNY 1974; Rita Coolidge – Rita Coolidge; Bob Dylan – Hard Rain, Street Legal, Biograph and Bob Dylan at Budokan; Steven Stills – Stills and Carry On; Bruce Springsteen – The River and Live: 1975-85; Joni Mitchell – For The Roses and Hejira; Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers – The Best of Everything, An American Treasure, Greatest Hits and The Live Anthology; Crazy Horse – Crazy Horse; Todd Rundgren – Todd; Jackson Browne – Running on Empty
(b. ____, 1952 in _____, PA) While still a student at Cheltenham High School, located near Philadelphia, PA and serving as the photo editor for both the school’s yearbook and newspaper, young Joel was covering the performances of a musician named Joni Mitchell while she was playing at the nearby Second Fret coffeehouse/music venue. Ms. Mitchell was so pleased with his work that she asked him to serve as his personal photographer and, as they say, “the rest is history”. After graduating high school in 1970, he’d go on to study photography at the San Francisco Art Institute and, via both his talents as a photographer and a guitarist, he’d work with Joni and her close (but ever-expanding) circle of friends – Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (both collectively and in their various solo/group projects), Bob Dylan, Rita Coolidge and, beginning in the late 1970s, Bruce Springsteen.
He took the photo that would become his first album cover image at the age of 18 in 1970 when he contributed the photo you see on Neil Young’s After The Gold Rush LP, and he’d later earn a Grammy Award nomination in the Album Cover category for his work on Joni M’s Hejira. Bernstein’s photographs have been published in Mojo Magazine, The New York Times, Rolling Stone and Time Magazine, among other publications. It’s also been noted that Bernstein’s work was an inspiration for the overall visuals of film-maker/writer Cameron Crowe’s hit rock film Almost Famous (with many scenes being re-creations of some of Bernstein’s photographs),
He’s expanded his repertoire throughout his career to include gigs as a music and film/TV producer, performer and archivist, helping curate and contribute to box sets and retrospectives for his various clients. Later, he was co-producer of the Emmy Award-winning 2003 documentary on Ms. Mitchell directed by Susan Lacy titled Woman of Heart and Mind (named after a Mitchell song) that appeared PBS’ American Masters series, with other TV/film credits including segments for 60 Minutes and 60 Minutes II. Between 1990-2010, he served as Neil Young’s archivist, with projects including his historic multi-disc Archives Volume I, as well as on subsequent Archives releases. His bio on the Snap Gallery’s site notes that Joel “estimates that he has made at least 10,000 photographs of Young since 1970…and believes that he has spent ‘19 ½ years – and one day’ in archiving Neil Young’s recorded output.” Neil Young’s 2012 autobiography, Waging Heavy Peace, also features a number of Joel’s photographs.
In 2015, Bruce Springsteen chose 75 of Bernstein’s images to be included in the book, package and video documentary featured in the Columbia Records/Sony Music box set The River Collection–The Ties That Bind, the highly acclaimed expanded edition of his 1981 2-LP album The River.
There have been retrospective exhibits of his work in galleries in London, Los Angeles, New York City, and San Francisco and, in 2018, Bernstein was inducted into the International Photography Hall of Fame and Museum https://iphf.org/inductees/joel-bernstein/
More about this artist can be found on his website at http://www.joelbernstein.com/
Dave Bett – some personal favorites among his many album projects – Patti Smith – Banga and Twelve; Bruce Springsteen – The Rising; John Legend – Get Lifted and Bigger Love; The Avett Brothers – I and Love and You; Tori Amos – Scarlet’s Walk and The Beekeeper; Keb’ Mo’ – Keep It Simple and Peace…Back by Popular Demand; Wu-Tang Clan – Iron Flag; Eazy-E – It’s On (Dr. Dre) 187um Killa; Gorilla Biscuits – Start Again; Joe Satriani – Surfing with the Alien; Jorman Kaukonen – Blue Country Heart; Common – One Day It’ll All Make Sense; Big Pun – Yeeeah Baby; Aerosmith – Honkin’ on Bobo; Dan Wilson – Free Life
(b. 1956 in Shrewsbury, New Jersey, USA) Dave has enjoyed a creative spirit since childhood (voted “most artistic” in 8th grade), and has wanted nothing more than to make art ever since. He studied illustration, photography and design, graduating with a BFA degree from the University of Kansas. He moved to New York and fell into an ad agency job, learning the business of art, until taking a hiatus to earn an MFA in photography from Cornell University.
A friend’s recommendation turned into a job with an indie label, Relativity Records, where he headed a small art department designing for a variety of music: guitar heroes, heavy metal, NYC hardcore, indie rock, hip hop, gospel, and gangsta rap. Every project seemed an education in itself, a life experience. Relativity was bought by Sony Music, later merged with Loud Records, and eventually Dave was brought to Sony Music’s main creative group and became VP/Creative Director for Columbia Records, a position he holds today. There he has had the privilege of designing for its incredible roster of artists, working with a talented team of art directors (including a number of Grammy nominees and winners), world-class photographers, illustrators and fine artists.
In 2004, Dave and Sheri Lee were Grammy-nominated in 2003 for art direction on the limited edition package of Tori Amos’ Scarlet’s Walk. Dave and Michelle Holme won the 2012 Grammy for best boxed/special limited edition of Bruce Springsteen’s Darkness on the Edge of Town.
You can see more of the work that Dave and his team has done on the SME/Columbia Records web site – https://www.columbiarecords.com/
Dave Bhang – notable album cover credits include – Van Halen – Van Halen, Van Halen II and Van Halen Box: 1978 – 1984; Montrose – Montrose; Canned Heat – The New Age; Nicolette Larson – Nicolette; Ed Sanders – Sanders Truckstop; The Esso Trinidad Steel Band – Esso; Leon Ware – Leon Ware; Seals & Crofts – Summer Breeze; Bobby Womack – Understanding; Gram Parsons – Grievous Angel; Jimmy Cliff – Music Maker; Michael Nesmith – From a Radio Engine to the Photon Wing; Ry Cooder – Into The Purple Valley; Mason Williams – Hand Made
(b. September, 1939 in St. Louis, MO) Born into a family of ten brothers and sisters and with his parents working hard at their restaurant to support their household, this situation gave Dave the impetus to use his imagination and instincts to keep himself occupied After graduating from the famed Chouinard Art Institute (now Cal Arts) in Los Angeles in 1964 with a Bachelors of Fine Arts degree in Graphic Design, Dave Bhang’s career as a designer and illustrator for the music industry began at Warner Brothers Records, working in various capacities in-house (until leaving to start his own design firm – Dave Bhang Design – in 1970) and then designing album packages for scores of acts found on many L.A.-based record labels.
He’s perhaps best-known as the designer of the logo for rock megastars Van Halen, along with the covers of several of their early albums, beginning with their 1978 self-titled debut. His work on Mason Williams’ 1970 album titled Hand Made earned him (along with AD Ed Thrasher) a Grammy nomination in 1971 for “Best Recording Package”. He’s served as the design director for the Los Angeles Sunday Times’ Home magazine and contributed to a number of other publications including the Herald Examiner, New West and Playboy magazines and others. He’s also published three books – including an autobiography titled True Life Adventures of Davey! – and his work can be found in collections all over the world.
I wasn’t able to reach Dave’s website (in mid-2021) so, if you’d like to see more on his album art projects, I’d invite you to click on over to his Credits listing on the AllMusic.com site – https://www.allmusic.com/artist/dave-bhang-mn0001819020/credits
Chris Bigg – notable album cover credits include – The Cult – Love; Bauhaus – In The Flat Field and Mask; Belly – Star, Feed The Tree, King and Sweet Ride: The Best of Belly; Lush – Scar and Split; Frank Black – Frank Black; Pixies – Bossanova and Wave Of Mutilation: Best Of Pixies; Luxuria – Beast Box; Gus Gus – Standard Stuff For Drama and Polydistortion; The Fall – This Nation’s Saving Grace; Tanya Donelly – Beautysleep; David Sylvian – Manafon and Trophies 2; Michael Brook – Cobalt Blue; Dead Can Dance – Spiritchaser
Calligrapher, photographer, designer and art director. Past designer at v23 design firm; member of Graphic Design Staff (teaching graphic design and illustration) at the University of Brighton, UK and teacher/lecturer at Southampton School of Art, part of Solent University.
A more-complete biography about this artist will be posted soon.
More information on this artist is available via his web site at http://www.chrisbigg.com
Nick Bilardello – notable album cover credits include – Soundtrack packages for Tyler Perry’s Meet The Browns and Why Did I Get Married?, plus Notorious and For Colored Girls; Flo Rida – Only One Flo, Part 1 and Wild Ones; Bruno Mars – Do-Wops & Hooligans; Trey Songz – Inevitable and Chapter V; Cody Simpson – Paradise and Surfer’s Paradise; Jaheim – Appreciation Day; Musiq Soulchild – Musiqinthemagiq; Diggy – Unexpected Arrival; Jay-Z – The Blueprint 3
Nick began his career in 2002 as a freelance designer/art director, moving on after graduating from Marist College in 2005 with a BA in Digital Communications and Media/Multimedia to take on jobs first in the book publishing world (as an art director at Harper-Collins Publishers in 2006) and then (in 2006) as an art director for Atlantic Records. He completed his formal education with a certification in advertising design at New York University in 2007 before taking on the role of Creative Director at Crooked Engine – “a music-driven creative and digital agency…at the intersection where music, art and marketing meet” located in NYC’s Greenwich Village, working there from 2010 – 2017. Later, he moved on to a top creative role at the Zagat Guide before transitioning to the influential restaurant review/referral site The Infatuation, where he serves as Chief Brand Officer.
Also working under the name “Malvone”, Bilardello describes himself as “a creative director, designer, editor, film director and writer” who loves “New York City, hip hop, classic rock, running, anything vintage, sneakers, partying, The Knicks, chicken, hats, vodka, green tea, cats, bunnies, learning new words, red wine, allamonsta, and the Superbowl champion Giants…”
In addition to his impressive music industry portfolio, other design clients include: American Honda, Fisher-Price, 44x, Mastercard, and 7-Up and he’s created visuals for The Day Kennedy Was Shot, Bruno Mars’ It Will Rain and Wyclef Jean’s Purpose, among others.
More information on this artist is available via his profile on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-bilardello-3ab11763/
Maryanne Bilham – notable album cover work includes – The Go-Gos – God Bless The Go-Gos; John 5 – Vertigo; Brent Jones – Brent Jones & The TP Mob; Gregg Bissonette – Gregg Bissonette
Maryanne Bilham started her photography career at the University of Fine Arts in Auckland, New Zealand. While assisting one of Auckland’s leading photographers, she became involved with the start of the magazine Paper, a one-of-a-kind graphic and photography publication. Soon after this, she left to explore new opportunities in the bustling Asian arena of Hong Kong for 9 years, where she began work in the advertising community and at the Performing Arts Academy. Traveling most of South East Asia and China, Maryanne photographed some of their leading musicians and performers, as well as other religious iconography, ancient ruins and mythical sites.
Eventually feeling a growing desire to pursue her passion for the rock ‘n’ roll industry (believing, as she once said, that photography and music are both “creative media that constantly explore and project our intuitive abilities”), Maryanne decided to base herself in Los Angeles, which led her to assignment work with some of the music industry’s more visible companies and publications as well as artists such as U2, the Go-Go’s, Carlos Santana, Garbage, Skinny Puppy, Imogen Heap, Sheryl Crow, Courtney Love and John 5 (her image for his Songs for Sanity album features the guitarist levitating between his two guitars – an idea taken from early 20th-century photos of hypnotists levitating their subjects between two chairs. A 20-foot version of this can be seen outside of Guitar Center’s entrance on Sunset Blvd. in Los Angeles).
Maryanne and her partner – photographer Robert Knight – have curated photography installations on the outside of 200 Guitar Center stores throughout the U.S. as well as one in 2010 at the Hilton Hotel in Las Vegas and, in 2011, launched Visionaire Studio in Las Vegas, out of which they manage their numerous commercial assignments. Her client list includes such companies as Sony Music, Yamaha Corp., Karman Music Corp., Fender, Herb Alpert Presents, Rhino Entertainment, Hard Rock Hotel & Casinos and many record labels. In April, 2012, for the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas, she launched a series of limited-edition T-Shirts with designer Albert OH featuring her photography called Under A Different Sun.
Her personal projects include her Divine Eros exhibition. Inspired by the magnificent life stories of the female Saints and Mystics buried in the vaults of Christian Mysticism, these women’s voices spoke to her. “We always stand to learn from a comparison of our own forms of life with those we can reflect on from the past.” In 2005, Divine Eros was exhibited by The Trinity Episcopal Arts Commission in Portland, Oregon and the Farmani Gallery of Los Angeles and, in 2008, at the San Francisco Art Exchange. Bilham’s work was featured prominently in Rock Prophecies, a feature-length documentary based on photographer Robert Knight’s life.
Recently commissioned work includes a new web and ad campaign for the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas and a music video production for Bubbles and Cheesecake titled It’s a Woman Thang. In 2003, she received second place in the International Photography Awards – Underwater Section for her work “Christina the Astonishing.”
To see more of this artist’s work, please visit her website at http://www.maryannebilham.com/
Chris Bilheimer – notable album cover credits include – Green Day – Nimrod, International Superhits!, Shenanigans, American Idiot, Bullet In A Bible, 21st Century Breakdown and ¡Uno!, ¡Dos! and ¡Tré!. ; R.E.M. – Document, Reckoning, Green, Out Of Time, Automatic For The People, Monster, New Adventures in Hi-Fi, Up, The Great Beyond, Reveal, In Time: The Best of R.E.M., Collapse Into Now and Bang and Blame; Widespread Panic – Earth To America, Choice Cuts: The Capricorn Years, Free Somehow and Wood; Creeper Lagoon – Watering Ghost Garden; Buckcherry – Buckcherry; Foo Fighters – The Colour & The Shape; Barenaked Ladies – Hits From Yesterday & The Day Before; Neutral Milk Hotel – In The Aeroplane Over the Sea; Weezer – Weezer
(b. 1971?) Designer/Art Director Chris Bilheimer met a fellow by the name of Michael Stipe while the two were enrolled in the fine arts program at the University of Georgia in Athens, GA. After graduation, Stipe would go on to start a rock band called R.E.M and, in 1994, enlisted his former classmate Chris (who was still in school) to serve as the group’s art director. This fit Bilheimer’s plans for the future well, as he’d decided that the traditional “artist’s life” wasn’t going to be one he wanted to pursue.
Since that time, Chris has expanded his list of clients to include acts such as Green Day, Widespread Panic, Foo Fighters, Weezer, Nirvana, P.J. Harvey, Beck and many others. In addition to his designs for album packages, band posters and type styles (working with Michael Stipe and foundry TypeTrust to co-design three now-commercially-released fonts initially for use on the band’s artwork – REM Accelerate, REM Orange and REM Tourfont), Chris has ventured into the world of fashion design by joining the Austin, TX-based boot/leather accessories company HELM in 2013 as their graphic designer/art director.
His work has been recognized with three Grammy Award nominations: in 1995 (with Michael Stipe and Tom Recchion) for R.E.M.’s Monster; in 1997 (with Michael Stipe) for R.E.M’s New Adventures In Hi-Fi and in 2002 (with Michael Stipe) for R.E.M.’s Reveal. He’s also credited for “handclaps” on the song “Monkey Wrench” from the Grammy-nominated Foo Fighters record The Colour & The Shape.
A bit more information on this artist is available at his very-succinct web site – http://bilheimer.com/
Kareem Black – notable album cover credits include – NAS – The Lost Tapes; Ruben Stoddard – I Need An Angel ; Too Short – What’s My Favorite Word?; Disco D – A Night At The Booty Bar
(b. Philadelphia, PA, USA) Always a “visual person”, Kareem Black’s talents as a painter and comic book artist impressed his high school teacher, painter Philip Corey, who suggested that Black attend art school in New York and, after applying to several, he was awarded a scholarship to the School of Visual Arts there in 1996. Introduced to a new form of expression in photography, he spent endless nights in dark rooms developing his skills and got his first commission – shooting a cover image of musician KRS-One for On The Go magazine in 1999.
After graduating in 2000 with a BFA, he began his full-time career in music/celebrity/commercial photography full-time. Based in New York City, he has built a very impressive portfolio of work for clients in many areas, including Atlantic Records, AT&T, Blender, Budweiser, Burger King, Elle Girl, ESPN, Fader, FedEx, Fuse TV, GQ, Kool Aid, Inc Magazine (and Inked Magazine), Maxim, Men’s Health, McDonalds, MTV, People Magazine, Pepsi, Reebok, Samsung, Sony Music, Sports Illustrated, Steve Madden, VH1, Vibe, W Hotels and many others.
He was featured as one of Photo District News Magazine’s “30 Emerging Photographers” in 2005 and has since expanded his production talents into music video direction and, in addition to his commercial work, Black has built a new web site as a personal project called “Feels Good Let’s Go” which documents the city’s club scene and the people that keep it interesting. Other projects of a personal nature include his photo journals of the conditions in Haiti and he’s displayed and sold prints of the photos he’s taken of the places/people he’s seen, donating all proceeds to charity. Eager to share his knowledge and experience with up-and-coming artists, Kareem also maintains a busy schedule as a lecturer, having spoken at institutions and trade shows including the Photo Plus Expo, the Fashion Institute of Technology, New York University, Pratt Institute, the Rochester Institute of Technology and his alma mater, SVA.
More info on this artist is available at – http://www.kareemblack.com/frame.html or his ongoing photo-documentary site – http://feelsgoodletsgo.com/
Sir Peter Blake – notable album cover credits include – The Beatles – Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band; Pentangle – Pentangle and Sweet Child; The Who – Face Dances; Eric Clapton – 24 Nights; Band Aid – Do They Know It’s Christmas?; Oasis – Stop the Clocks
Sir Peter Thomas Blake, CBE, RDI, RA was born in June, 1932 in Dartford, Kent, England. After the War, he enrolled in Gravesend Technical College Junior Art School where he learned traditional drawing skills and was exposed, as a youth, to the fine arts and music of all styles. He continued his education at the Royal College of Art and showed early hints of what would develop into his signature style, combining pop culture imagery with samples of fine art into highly-creative collages. One of his first pieces – titled On The Balcony – was completed in the mid-1950s and placed images by Manet into the hands of a painted character. He held his first solo exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in 1960, and his works were featured along with those of other emerging British Pop Artists in the Young Contemporaries show in 1961 and in filmmaker Ken Russell’s BBC documentary on Pop Art titled Pop Goes the Easel in 1962.
In 1963, renowned gallerist/agent Robert Fraser brought Blake on as a client and introduced the young painter to many of the leading trend-setters in the fine arts, film and music in London (including The Beatles), where he also met and married fellow artist Jann Haworth. In 1967, Fraser and The Beatles brought in the husband and wife team – along with photographer Michael Cooper – to create the life-size collage that would become the cover of the band’s Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band, now considered one of the most-iconic album cover designs in history.
In 1969, Blake left London to live near Bath where, influenced by the idyllic countryside, his work would change direction to include scenes based on characters from English folklore and from Shakespeare. In the early 1970s, he made was hired to produce a series of watercolor paintings to illustrate an edition of Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass. In 1975, he and Jann moved to a town called Wellow, where they converted an old train station into a house and, along with a small group of similarly-minded artists, was a founder of the Brotherhood of Ruralists. After his divorce from Haworth in 1979, Blake moved back to London where the style of his works once again focused on references to Pop Culture.
Since that time, Blake was bestowed the titles of Royal Academician (from the Royal Academy of Arts in London) in 1981 and CBE (Commander of the British Empire) in 1983 and was knighted in 2002 for his services to art. He also served as Associate Artist at the National Gallery from 1994-96. In 2008, he released an updated version of his Sgt. Pepper’s cover featuring notables from the Liverpool area and produced another version in 2012 using more modern cultural references.
Sir Peter has been published regularly throughout his career, including a scrapbook in 1991 titled 24 Nights by Eric Clapton (Genesis Publications), a set of 12 limited edition prints titled That Lucky Old Sun by Brian Wilson (Genesis Publications, 2009) and a biography was released in 2009 by Marco Livingstone titled Peter Blake: One Man Show (Lund Humphries).
A major retrospective of his work was held at the Tate (London) in 1983. In 2005, the artist opened a permanent exhibition at the Sir Peter Blake Music Art Gallery as part of the University of Leeds’ School of Music, and a second retrospective was staged at the Tate Liverpool in 2008. To mark his 80th birthday, an exhibition titled Peter Blake and Pop Music was held at Pallant House Gallery in Chichester from June – October, 2012. In March 2011, Blake was awarded an honorary Doctor of Music from the University of Leeds and, just a few months later, he received an honorary degree for Doctor of Art from Nottingham Trent University.
More information available at – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Blake_(artist)
Carol Bobolts (Red Herring Design, NYC) – notable album cover credits include – Ray Charles – The Birth Of Soul; Shirley Murdock – A Woman’s Point Of View; Various Artists – Atlantic Blues (Piano, Guitar, Chicago); Keith Sweat – Make It Last Forever and I’ll Give All My Love To You; Shinehead – Unity and The Real Rock; Tracy Chapman – Tracy Chapman; Anita Baker – Giving You The Best I Got and Compositions; Phish – A Live One; Jules Shear – Between Us; Boz Scaggs – Silk Degrees, Hits!, Dig and Greatest Hits Live; John Lee Hooker – Mr. Lucky; Steely Dan – Two Against Nature and Everything Must Go; Luther Vandross – Love, Luther
Past Art Director for Atlantic/Elektra Records; Principal at Red Herring Design, Brooklyn, NY. Grammy Nomination in 1991 for her work on Compositions for Anita Baker.
A more-complete biography about this artist will be posted soon.
Eric Boman – notable album cover credits include – Bryan Ferry – Frantic, The Best of Bryan Ferry and Another Time, Another Place; Roxy Music – Country Life, The Thrill Of It All, Roxy Music 1973-80: The Atlantic Years and The Complete Studio Recordings; The Power Station –Power Station and The Best of Power Station; John Phillips – Andy Warhol Presents Man On The Moon
Originally from Sweden, Bowman attended the Royal College of Art in London from 1966 – 69, going there as a fan of Pop Art to study illustration and finding himself swept up in the boundary-pushing aspects of design and fashion, becoming known both for his outrageous style and good looks. During his time there, he met another student named Anthony Price, who’d go on to become a fashion icon of the era and they’d both soon be introduced to another local art school graduate and fashion afficianado, Bryan Ferry. Bowman, Price and other trend-setters – along with the music of Motown – would make a strong imprint on Ferry as he began his musical career with Roxy Music, hiring Boman to create the scandalous album cover images that the band became known (and notorious) for.
Since that time, Eric has worked in London, New York and Paris, producing photos for magazines including Elle Decor, House & Garden, Marie-Claire, Vanity Fair, Vogue and The World of Interiors and for fashion designers including Manolo Blahnik and Yves Saint-Laurent. Beginning in the late 1980s, he’s focused his work on fashion and fine-art photography. In 2005, Boman collaborated with Interview and Vanity Fair writer editor Bob Colacello to produce a book of portraits he’d taken of “women of style and substance” presented in a wide range of stylish and glamorous settings titled Eric Boman’s Dames. Also in 2005, Eric published the book Blahnik by Boman: Shoes, Photographs, Conversation, where the designs of Boman’s close friend Manolo Blahnik’s shoes are featured. In 2007, Thames & Hudson published Bowman’s next book titled Rare Bird of Fashion: The Irreverent Iris Apfel about the American Fashion icon, co-founder of the Old World Weavers textile company and an authority on antique fabrics.
His partner for the last 40+ years is the sculptor Peter Schlesinger, and the two split their time between homes/studios in Manhattan’s Flatiron district and Bellport, Long Island, New York.
Tracy Boychuk – notable album cover credits include – The Strokes – Is This It; Third World – The Best of Third World; Bob Dylan – Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits, Vol. 3; Soul Asylum – Let Your Dim Light Shine; Rasputina – Thanks For The Ether; Cheap Trick – Sex, America, Cheap Trick; Prong – Rude Awakening; Cowboy Junkies – Best of Cowboy Junkies; Youssou N’Dour – Guide (Wommat); Skrape – New Killer America; Chris Robinson – This Magnificent Distance; Queen Latifah – The Dana Owens Album; Sugarbomb – Bully;
A graduate of the Alberta College of Art + Design (with post-graduate work – with a focus on graphic design and communications under the tutelage of Richard Wilde), Tracy began her career in 1993 as an Art Director in the art department of Sony Music Entertainment, leaving there in 1996 to take on the role as Design Director in MTV’s Off-Air Creative Department, where she remained for the next 4 years until being hired as Co-Senior Creative (with Brett Kilroe) at RCA Records.
Looking to lead her own firm, Tracy left RCA in 2003 to serve as a founding partner for a NYC-based design firm called Trooper, where she did award-winning work for clients in a variety of industries until moving to the Chicago area in 2008 to launch several new businesses, including Stop Smiling Media and a creative business collaborative called Runner Collective. Not one to waste a speck of space, she also partnered with another tenant in her building – Omni Ecosystems CEO Molly Meyer – to launch a business developing roof-top “urban farms” calld The Roof Crop.
While working as a creative, Tracy also shared her knowledge with up-and-coming design students as an instructor teaching undergraduate courses and portfolio development for over 14 years at the famed School of Visual Arts in NYC. In Chicago, she worked as a fund raiser for the Sweet Relief Musician’s Fund and is also on the board of EEE (Empowerment through Education and Exposure), a non-profit dedicated to providing youth with experiences and exposure to help them achieve success beyond their current understanding of what is possible.
According to Tracy, her all-time favorite collaborator is her son Henry, who hopes to one day be Runner’s first Lego architect.
More on this artist is available on her business’ web site at – http://runnercollective.com/runners/tracy-boychuk/
Adrian Boot – notable album cover credits include – Bob Marley & The Wailers – Nattie Dread, Talkin’ Blues, Live!, Exodus and Legend; Bob Geldof and the Boomtown Rats – Boomtown Rats and Great Songs of Indifference: The Best of…; Kevin Ayers – Whatevershebringswesing; Jimmy Cliff – Steppin’ Out of Limbo and Ghetto Uprising; Jimi Hendrix – Blues; Roy Harper – The Unknown Soldier; Police – Zenyatta Mondatta; Buzzcocks – Singles Going Steady; Ash – Meltdown; Lee “Scratch” Perry – Battle of Armageddon (Box Set);
Adrian Boot’s career includes jobs as a staff photographer for Melody Maker Magazine (1975 – 1978) and Island Records (1976 – 1989). As a freelancer, Adrian handled assignments for other magazines such as NME and The Face as well as for Blackhill Enterprises, a music management company featuring clients including The Damned, Ian Dury, Roy Harper and The Edgar Broughton Band, among others. Also early in his career, Boot partnered with another talented photographer – Finn Costello – to form an agency they called “Words & Faces” (1976 – 1978), choosing to establish another agency later in his career with Shelly Warren called “Exhibit A”. During this agency’s run (1995-2002), they focused on exhibition and book development and production, with their first major project being the 1994 Bob Marley “Songs of Freedom” exhibition (and book of the same name by myself and Chris Salewicz).The exhibition would go on to tour the world in four versions for almost 7 years. In 1995, they produced the Jimi Hendrix “Ultimate Experience” exhibition which, after opening in London and Paris toured, the US for over a year. The accompanying book came out at the same time as the Ultimate Experience CD compilation, which “went gold” in the US.
Since 2000, Boot has served as the Managing Director of UK-based Urbanimage Media Ltd. – www.urbanimage.tv – an eclectic online photo archive built upon Adrian’s portfolio of work over the last 40 years, along with the work of “a small exclusive band of photographers”. The company – one of the UK’s few remaining independent photo agencies as of this writing – continues with Boot’s desires to publish quality books and create important and entertaining museum and gallery exhibitions.
More information on this artist is available on his web site at https://adrianboot.co.uk/ and https://adrianboot.co.uk/photography-biography-timeline/
Moshe Brakha – notable album package credits include – Ramones – Leave Home; Cheap Trick – All Shook Up and Cheap Trick; Devo – New Traditionalists and Hardcore; Pat Benatar – Best Shots; Peter Ivers – Becoming Peter Ivers; Rubber City Rebels – Rubber City Rebels; Ned Doheny – Separate Oceans; Lynyrd Skynyrd – Gimme Back My Bullets and Icon; Boz Scaggs – Silk Degrees; Diana Ross – Eaten Alive; Lita Ford – Lita; Richie Havens – Dreaming As One: The A&M Years
(B. 1947, Israel) Since moving from his native Israel to Hollywood, CA in 1969, Moshe Brakha has built an impressive career as a commercial photographer serving clients in the music, entertainment, editorial/publishing and advertising arenas. In addition to his portfolio of album package imagery, he’s built a long list of success for clients such as Air Walk, Best Buy, Dewars, Electronic Arts, Martini & Rossi, Motorola, Skyy Vodka and many others. For publications including Conde Nast Traveler, Details, Entertainment Weekly, Newsweek, Rolling Stone and others, Brakha has produced memorable images of celebrities such as George Clooney, Tom Hanks, Samuel L. Jackson, the late Steve Jobs, Katy Perry, Keanu Reeves, Will Smith, Charlize Theron, Reese Witherspoon and countless others.
In 2004, he partnered with his son Eddie Brakha to form a creative agency – Brakhax2/Commercial Head Films and, in 2009, a deep dig into his 1976 – 1986 rock & roll portfolio served as the basis of one of the Grammy Museum’s first exhibitions – it’s first photo show – titled “Occupation Dreamer”. In 2014, the pair released a series of photos titled “Man Woman Faucet”, “founded on the juxtaposition of man and his faucet” while, in 2017, Brakha published a book titled L.A. Babe (Rizzoli) that was built around a previously-unpublished collection of his photos taken of women in and around Los Angeles from 1975 – 1988.
Moshe lives in Los Angeles with his wife Sylvia. If you’d like more information on this artist, it is available on his web site at http://brakhax2.com/
Brad Branson – notable album cover credits include – George Michael – Older, Listen Without Prejudice and Ladies & Gentlemen: The Best of George Michael; Robert Palmer – Addiction Vols. 1 & 2, Gold and Best of Both Worlds: The Robert Palmer Anthology (1974 – 2001); Pet Shop Boys – Before, Very and Bilingual; Kinky Machine – Kinky Machine; Paul Rutherford – Oh World; Elton John – Duets; Del Fuegos – Longest Day; Boy George – Don’t Cry; Gypsy Kings – Gypsy Kings; Marc Almond – Treasure Box and The Desperate Hours; David Lee Roth – Just A Gigolo;
(b. 1963 in Los Angeles, CA; d. December, 2012) – Growing up in the Los Angeles area, Brad’s love of the Hollywood films and musicals made during the town’s “Golden Ages” motivated him to get into the business and, using his enthusiasm and smarts, landed himself a job at the age of seventeen as actress Gloria Swanson’s part-time personal assistant. He then moved on to take productions jobs before moving into taking a position at a top photo lab, exposing him to the works of many of the industry’s best photographers. Renowned photographer mentored Brad, pushing him to improve his skills and create his own style, and soon Brad began working alongside many of the people he’d admired in the past as a shooter on the roster of the Visages photo agency, where Jasmin, Herb Ritts and others also worked.
At the young age of 22, Branson’s images were beginning to be found on the covers and in editorials of a number of entertainment and cultural magazines, such as Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair, and the prestigious Andy Warhol publication – Interview Magazine – brought Brad on as a contributing photographer based in Amsterdam in the late 1980s. It was there that Brad met Dutch artist Fritz Kok and, together, the pair began to produce collages/montages featuring Kok’s art and Brad’s photographs that would appear in scores of international magazines and museum/gallery shows. Commissions for album cover work for musical acts including George Michael, Robert Palmer and others soon followed and, in the early 1990s, Brad teamed up with designer Vivienne Westwood to produce her promotional imagery. He was soon introduced to many other fashion houses, shooting memorable images for designers including Jasper Conran, John Galliano, Katherine Hamnett, Thierry Mugler and several more.
In the mid-1990s, Brad extended his visual talents to work in the music video arena, producing photos from the sets of several videos made of George Michael’s hit singles, while all along producing portraits for a veritable who’s who of celebrities in the entertainment and fashion worlds. He returned to the U.S. in 1995 to aid a fellow friend and film-maker on a documentary project and remained active on photo projects until his untimely death from cancer at the age of 49.
More information on this artist can be found at http://www.bradbransonphotography.com/
Shawn Brauch (with Aaron Brauch DBA Pen & Pixel) – notable album cover credits include – Master P – MP Da Last Don; Juvenile – 400 Degrees; Snoop Dogg – Da Game Is to Be Sold, Not to Be Told; B.G. – Chopper City in the Ghetto; Hot Boys – Guerrilla Warfare; Big Bear – Doin’ Thangs; 2 live crew– The Real One; Chris Rock– Bigger and Blacker; Cher – Live from Las Vegas; Destiny’s Child – Farewell Tour; E-40 – Da Hall of Game;8 ball & MJG – On Top of the World; Three-Six Mafia – World Domination; Lil Wayne – Lights Out; DJ Screw– 3N tha Mornin’; Birdman – Tha #1 Stunna; ESG – Oceans of Funk; Willie D – I’m Goin Out Lika Soldier
(b. 1963 in Washington, USA) While born in the U.S., Shawn and his family moved overseas (Southeast Asia and Brazil) when he was very young, giving him, as he states, “the good fortune of an international upbringing”. Showing an early aptitude for the arts (taking college-level course at the age of 15), Shawn returned to the U.S. to study commercial art, first attending the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he focused on Interior Architecture and Photography, and then moving to the Los Angeles area to earn his degree in Communications Design from the West-coast branch of the Parsons School of Design.
Shawn spent several years early on in his career working for various New York advertising agencies while, at the same time, his brother Aaron had moved to Houston, Texas to join a burgeoning rap music label there called Rap-A-Lot, where he rose through the ranks to become the company’s General Manager, building a team and a roster of soon-to-be-classic musical acts, such as Run DMC, Royal Flush and Two Live Crew. After six years in the ad business, Shawn moved down to Houston to join his brother at the label, becoming its Art Director and convincing company management to begin investing in computer-based graphics systems as a way to give his team of designers and artists a way to create record packages that stood out from the crowd, in record time.
According to Shawn, after a lot of trial and error with their new systems, the first cover created that would introduce the photo-effects-boosted style that would become their trademark was the one for ex-Geto Boy Willie D’s 1992 solo record I’m Goin Out Lika Soldier, a record with a cover showing a large stylized photo of the rapper layered on top of a photo of the U.S. Capitol Building. The stunning image motivated many other local groups to ask for a similar level of larger-than-life graphic design for their own records, showing the Brauch brothers that there was business to be done crafting covers for both their own acts and, on commission, for others. They proposed such a business to the label’s owner but, unable to come to terms with him, the two left to launch their own full-service design firm that they’d call Pen & Pixel Graphics.
For the next thirteen years, Shawn served as Vice President and Creative Director for Pen & Pixel, growing the company into one of the largest music industry design/promotion agencies in the entertainment business. Their list of clients in the entertainment space grew to include Dreamworks, HBO, Miramax, Paramount, Sony/BMG and Warner Brothers, adding top-notch commercial clients including Budweiser, Ferrari of North America, the Grammy Awards, the Houston Rockets basketball team, Instyle Magazine, Miller Lite and NASCAR, among others. Shawn was hands-on, personally managing the promo work for music and entertainment celebs including Boston, Cher, Destiny’s Child, B.B. King, Lyle Lovett, Willie Nelson, Nine Inch Nails, boxer Oscar De la Hoya, Master P, Chris Rock, Randy Travis, Lil’ Wayne, ZZ Top and many, many others, with his work resulting in more than 60 Platinum or Gold records.
Looking to share his knowledge and experience with others, Shawn also taught marketing/branding classes at the Art Institute of Houston while he also served as an adviser/voting governor for both the Grammy organization and the RIAA. His work has been featured in articles in publications such as the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, Rolling Stone Magazine, Spin Magazine, Vibe Magazine and others and in exhibitions at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame & Museum and the Museum of American History. In 2016, a retrospective show of Pen & Pixel’s creative output titled “Kings of Bling” began a tour of galleries throughout Europe.
Since closing the company in the mid-2000s, Shawn has moved to Florida where he runs a company called Smartface Media Management, with more information his most-recent efforts available on his company’s website at http://www.smartfacemedia.com
Please note – there is another company that picked up the name “Pen & Pixel Graphics” after the brothers Brauch closed their agency a number of years ago. While they also produce album cover work, they are NOT affiliated with the original P&P agency.
Craig Braun – Notable album cover credits include – The Pretty Things – S.F. Sorrow; The Four Tops – Soul Spin; Joe Cocker – Mad Dogs & Englishmen and The Complete Fillmore East Concerts; Bobby Sherman – Here Comes Bobby; Rolling Stones – Sticky Fingers; Alice Cooper – School’s Out; Grand Funk Railroad – E Pluribus Funk; Jimi Hendrix – Crash Landing; Solomon Burke – The Collection; Huey Lewis & The News – Four Chords and Several Years Ago
(b. June, 1939 in Chicago, IL) Craig is best known in album cover circles for his work with Andy Warhol in 1971, with the pair collaborating (along with Factory photographer Billy Name) on the design for the Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers “zipper” cover (which, interestingly, relegated photographer Peter Webb’s original album cover shot to being used on an inside sleeve image).
In 1973, Braun partnered with designer Tom Wilkes to form the design firm Wilkes & Braun, Inc. and, in addition to being awarded a number of illustrious album cover art commissions, the pair were awarded a Grammy Award in 1974 for “Best Recording Package” for their designs for the London Symphony Orchestra’s 1973 recording of the orchestral stage version of The Who’s Tommy. The partnership ended in 1974, with Tom moving on to serve as art director for ABC Records.
Choosing to pursue a career as an actor, Craig studied with legendary acting coach, Milton Katselas, in his master class until his passing in 1998 and, in 2010, Craig was named a Lifetime Member of The Actors Studio. He has appeared in many films (inc. Great Expectations in 1998, Flawless in 1999 and Swordfish in 2001) and TV shows including Law & Order, Cold Case and Gone.
Craig’s family has also found success in the acting/directing fields, with his sons Nicholas Braun and Guillaume Rumiel acting and son Timothy Braun a highly-acclaimed director, writer and producer.
For more information on this artist, please visit
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0105733/
Keith Breeden – notable album cover credits include – ABC – How To Be A Zillionaire!, Beauty Stab, Vanity Kills and Alphabet City ; Secret Affair – Behind Closed Doors; Cockney Rejects – Greatest Hits Vol. 3: Live & Loud!; Duran Duran – Seven & The Ragged Tiger; Gang of Four – Solid Gold/Another Day, Another Dollar and Mall; The Cult – Electric; Thunder – Laughing On Judgement Day; Scritti Politti – Cupid & Psyche 85 and Provision; Fine Young Cannibals – The Raw & The Cooked; The Mission UK – Carved In The Sand; Pink Floyd – Division Bell (the metal heads); Ellis Beggs & Howard – Homelands; Alison Moyet – Hoodoo; 3 Mustaphas 3 – Heart of Uncle
(born March, 1956 and raised in Cheshire, UK) Displaying a love for drawing and painting at an early age, Keith attended the same school , St Ambrose College, an independent Catholic grammar school in Hale Barnes, Cheshire, as did two other fellow art class mates who’d go on to enjoy fame in the album cover design world – Peter Saville and Malcolm Garrett. While the other two would move on to study at Manchester Polytechnic, Keith enrolled in classes at the Bath Academy of Art. There, he realized that school was not the right setting for him, so he left and, according to his own site bio, ” carried on drawing and painting and, occasionally, something sold.” To pay the bills, he also would take on work as a “cellarman”, gardener, forklift driver, warehouseman & occasional gravedigger.
By 1977, Breeden had moved to London (just in time for the beginnings of the Punk Music era) and was asked by his old schoolmate Malcolm Garrett to help him with designing album art at Assorted iMaGes, the design firm he’d founded that year. Broadening his knowledge of print design while working there (and on freelance jobs for his other school chum Peter Saville, who was working at Virgin Records spin-off label Dindisc Records), Keith decided to set up shop on his own in 1984 and opened his DKB studio, partnering with designers Peter Curzon and (later) Martin Jenkins.
Word of the firm’s creativity quickly spread and the team would soon be producing memorable design work for musical acts including ABC, Alison Moyet, Bryan Ferry, FYC, Gang of Four and Scritti Politti, among many others. Introduced to the late designer Storm Thorgerson, Breeden was commissioned to create collages, paintings and sculptures for Storm’s clients (Ellis, Beggs & Howard and Pink Floyd, for example) as well. His work was honored in both 1985 and 1986 with top prizes for both Single and Album Sleeve design at the annual Music Week Awards.
A slow-down in work in the late 1980s caused Keith to re-think his present/future opportunities in the business and, as a result, in 1992 he closed his business and moved his family to a cottage in Wales he’d purchased a few years earlier. For the next two years, Breeden tried to develop his skills as a painter and, after time spent painting still-lifes and scenes of nature, in 1995 he took up portraiture as his principal focus. Since then, major commissions have included portraits for Sir Brian Smith, Vice Chancellor of Cardiff University; Sir Dominic Cadbury, Chairman of Cadbury Schweppes; Major General GW Field CB OBE, Resident Governor, HM Tower of London; Professor John Temple, President of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, Major Geoffrey Crook, Controller of Royal Pioneer Corps Association and Professor Roger Williams, Vice Chancellor of the University of Reading, among others.
Since then, Breeden has received many awards for his work, including the 1996 “Visitors Choice” award at the BP Awards, National Portrait Gallery, London and a First Prize at the 2000 Kodak FotoKalender Awards at the Kalenderschau in Stuttgart, Germany. In 1998, Keith was elected to the Royal Society of Portrait Painters ( as a result, he’s now known as “Keith Breeden, RP”).
Breeden’s works have also been included in many exhibitions and gallery shows in the U.K., including displays at the Museum of Modern Art (Wales) and numerous Royal Society of Portrait Painters annual exhibitions at the Mall Galleries in London.
More information on this artist is available at – http://www.keithbreeden.com/information
Jim Britt – notable album package credits include – Smokey Robinson & The Miracles – Flying High Together and Anthology; Jackson Five – Lookin’ Through The Windows; Bobby Darin – Bobby Darin; The Supremes – Floy Joy and The Supremes Produced & Arranged by Jimmy Webb; Lesley Gore – Someplace Else Now; Michael Jackson – Got To Be There; Marvin Gaye – Trouble Man and Let’s Get It On; The Temptations – Anthology 1964 – 1973; Eddie Kendricks – Eddie Kendricks and Boogie Down; The Miracles – Renaissance; The Spinners – The Best of The Spinners; Rare Earth – Ma; Commodores – Machine Gun and Caught In The Act; Stevie Wonder – Anthology; Olivia Newton-John – Icon; Willy Hutch – Fully Exposed and The Mack
(b. _____, 19___ in San Francisco, CA, USA) – Although born in California, Jim’s family relocated several times during his childhood, with the first stop being in Guerneville in Sonoma County and then further up the coast to Tacoma, Washington, where he went to high school before attending the University of Washington in Seattle where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Communications (with minors in English and Music). With his heart set on a career as a singer, he moved back to the Bay Area after school to begin his musical career, working in the local clubs with a vocal group. Before a long road trip, he purchased a camera to document his travels and found that he had a passion for another artistic pursuit – photography – and soon upgraded his equipment and brought a complete darkroom kit with him so he could process and print his photos while out on tour. As he had no lighting equipment, he taught himself how to shoot with available light, producing a portfolio of shots of the people and performers he met along the way.
Finding his career as a musician stalled in the late 1960s, Britt later took a job at a photo dealership in Los Angeles. When his camera equipment was stolen from his apartment, Jim was saddened but his spirits were soon lifted when he received notice that he’d come in 2nd place in a photo contest sponsored by Nikon in which the prize was a new camera and lens. It seemed clear that Britt was destined to a career as a photographer! Soon after, in 1972, Motown Records opened a West Coast office in LA and hired the young photographer as its photographer and art director and, over the next three years, Britt would go on to produce dozens of album packages for the label while, at the same time, improving upon his image-manipulation skills.
The next stop on his career path was at ABC Television where, as their head photographer, he’d produce many of the network’s best-known promo images, such as the doubly-exposed photo of actor Levarr Burton that would be featured on the cover of TIME magazine for their coverage of the huge hit series Roots. After three years at the network, Britt would then venture out on his own, setting up his first studio in 1979 and then, ten years later, moving into a larger studio where he worked until 1994, when he chose to downsize a bit and also use his studio – with the help of local jazz legend Ruth Price – as a performance space called the Jazz Bakery where he’d invite friends and local musicians over to play to appreciative fans. During his career as a commercial/editorial photographer, Britt has had the pleasure of producing portrait of some of the best-known people in the worlds of entertainment and sports, with his subjects including athletes such as Muhammad Ali, Arthur Ashe, Billie Jean King, Joe Namath and Peggy Fleming; film stars including Maureen O’Hara, Nick Nolte, Michelle Pfieffer and Ben Vereen and scores of his fellow musicians, such as Miles Davis, Sarah Vaughan, Branford and Winton Marsalis, Tony Bennett, Janis Joplin, Michael Jackson, Smokey Robinson and many, many others.
Returning his focus to photography in 2001, Jim relocated to Ketchum, Idaho, where he continues to work of projects to this day, splitting his time shooting “old school” portraits between his studio there and another space in Southern California.
More information on this artist can be found on his web site at http://jimbrittphoto.com/wordpress/
Joel Brodsky – Notable album cover work examples – The Doors – Strange Days and The Best of The Doors; Tom Waits – Small Change; Isaac Hayes – Black Moses; Ohio Players – Pain and Climax; KISS – KISS
Joel Brodsky (b. 1939 – d. 2007) was a prolific American photographer whose work appeared on over 400 album covers. He was born in Brooklyn, NY and, after discovering photography via a college class, found a job in a Brooklyn camera store after graduating from Syracuse University in 1960, where he continued to develop his craft.
Opening his own studio in 1964, his first album cover commission was for folk singer Eric Anderson (‘Bout Changes & Things, 1966), followed by covers/back covers/liner photos for a broad range of musical acts, including Judy Collins, MC5, Herbie Mann, KISS, Barry Manilow and a number of top R&B, Jazz and early rock bands. His best-known works were for Jim Morrison and The Doors and his iconic photos of a shirtless Morrison graced many a dorm room in the late 1960s.
By 1980 he’d expanded his commissions to include work for ad clients such as Avon, DuPont, Revlon and others. His work has been shown in exhibitions at the Govinda Gallery in Washington, D.C., the Morrison Hotel Gallery in New York and the Fahey/Klein Gallery in Los Angeles. More information is available at – http://www.artandpopularculture.com/Joel_Brodsky
Neville Brody – Notable album cover credits include – Desmond Dekker – Black and Dekker; The Slits – Return of the Giant Slits; Cabaret Voltaire – Red Mecca, 2X45, Johnny YesNo and The Original Sound of Sheffield 83/87; 23 Skidoo – Seven Songs, The Culling is Coming, Urban Gamelan and Just Like Everybody; Depeche Mode – Singles Box, Vol. 1 ; Throbbing Gristle – Five Albums
(b.April, 1957 in Southgate, London, UK) Beginning his pursuit of a lifetime in the arts at an early age, Neville Brody took courses in art in grammar school and then enrolled in Fine Arts courses at the Hornsey College of Art, eventually transferring (in 1976) to the London College of Printing and beginning a three-year Bachelor of Arts track in graphics. Brody soon discovered an affinity to the Punk Rock approach to music and art, much to the chagrin of the much-more-traditional instructors at his school, and his work during his time there took on a noticeable punk energy and aesthetic.
Beginning in 1980, Brody brought his talents to both the music industry – working for Alex McDowell’s indie design firm Rocking Russian, followed by stints at Stiff Records and Fetish Records – and, first as Art Director for former NME editor Nick Logan’s newly-launched Pop culture magazine The Face (through 1986) and then at Arena (another Nick Logan lifestyle publication), to the printed page as well. In 1988, the Thames & Hudson publishing house released the first of two volumes about his work, titled The Graphic Language of Neville Brody (the second volume published in 1994), which sold over 100,000 copies to become one of the world’s best-selling books about graphic design. An exhibition of his work was staged at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London which proved to be so popular that it was packaged for a tour of exhibition spaces throughout Europe and Japan.
In 1989, Brody launched “Neville Brody Studios” and, with cohort Cornel Windlin (a talented graphic artist and typeface designer), the studio took on a number of commissions and successful collaborations with other respected design firms. First renaming the firm Research Studios in 1994 and then, more recently, Brody Associates, Neville and his team have worked on an impressive portfolio of projects for clients in many industries world-wide, including media companies such as the BBC, D&AD, The Guardian, MTV Europe, Paramount Studios, The Times (London) and Wallpaper* Magazine, venues such as Parco (Japan), The Barbican (London) and the Institute of Contemporary Arts (London) and retail product firms including Apple, Asics, Bentley, Bonfire Snowboarding, Chloe, Deutsche Bank, Dom Perignon, Homechoice, Microsoft, Nike, Salomon, Sony Playstation, YSL and many others.
Examples of more-recent work includes a 2006 project developing a new font for The Times – Times Modern, the first new font for the newspaper since Times New Roman was introduced in 1932 – and a branding redesign for the BBC in 2011. Research Studios spun off another company called Research Publishing which produces and publishes experimental multi-media works by young artists and produces the well-respected FUSE design conferences and it’s like-named semi-annual experimental typography/communications publication. In his spare time, since 2010, Brody has also served as the Head of the Communication Art & Design department at the Royal College of Art in London and has announced that he’ll be transitioning to the role of Professor of Visual Communications there in September, 2018.
More information on this artist is available at – http://brody-associates.com/
Hugh Brown – notable album cover credits include – Various Artists – Brain in a Box – The Science Fiction Collection (Grammy – 2001), Titanic – Music As Heard On The Fateful Voyage (Grammy – 1997), Beg Scream And Shout! – The Big Ol’ Box Of ’60s Soul (Grammy – 1997), The Complete Motown #1s (box set), Heavy Metal (box set), OMIGOD! The 80’s Pop Culture Box (totally), Girl Group Sounds (Lost & Found), Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965 – 1970; Chicago – Chicago 18; Concrete Blond – Bloodletting ; Jerry Garcia Band – After Midnight; Dread Zeppelin – Un-Led-Ed and It’s Not Unusual; Kevin Gilbert – Kashmir; The Clash – Give ‘Em Enough Rope
(b. June, 1954, Saginaw, MI, USA) Born into a family with a strong creative history (his grandfather, Hugh Brown, Sr. was an inventor with a large portfolio of patents, while his grandmother’s sister was an anthropologist studying Pygmy tribes. Great Uncle Rupert was a lead chemist at Dow Chemical, while Great Uncle Douglas Brown was the Dean of Faculty at Princeton and was one of the main economic advisers to FDR. The New York Times once called him “The Father of Social Security”) and with degrees in both Psychology and Criminology from the University of Sussex in England and the University of California, Berkeley, you’d assume that artist Hugh Brown would bring a very interesting perspective and degree of detail to his works and, based on his 35+ year portfolio of imagery, you wouldn’t be disappointed in your assumption.
Beginning his record collection at the age of 13 by winning a music trivia contest sponsored by a radio station in Chicago, he was drawn to the Blues and, at the age of 14, hitch-hiked to Chicago to visit the Chess Records office there (and, perhaps, meet Muddy Waters). A secretary there took pity on the lad and gave him a load of records to take home. To build on that collection, Hugh took the money he earned during the Summer and spent half of it at a local record store. He also began attending local shows and concerts and, in his senior year of high school, he bought a camera that he used to photograph these events.
His passion for photography and films led him to enroll into the Journalism program at UC Berkeley but, after discovering that he could work as a documentarian without a journalism degree, he switched his major to be able to study both Psychology and Criminology, ultimately becoming one of the last students ever to earn a Criminology at Berkeley (they closed the school there!). He spent his junior year abroad, attending Sussex University near Brighton, England, where he fed his love for all thing music by attending concerts at least twice a week and photographing those shows, learning to develop and print his own photos at the student darkroom and starting to silkscreen shirts with his live band photos on them.
After returning to Berkeley to continue his studies, Hugh started spending a lot of time in the Student Union darkroom, working with the prestigious staff there (three of them won National Endowment Photography grants in one year!). He graduated in 1976 with two degrees which, according to Brown, were quite beneficial to his career long-term. “The Psychology degree was good for dealing with bands, and the Criminology degree was good for dealing with the record companies.” Post-graduation, he worked part-time at Berkeley’s Darkroom, photographed punk bands in local clubs and worked at a camera store in order to be able to purchase equipment and supplies at a discount. Meanwhile, his photo t-shirt business got a boost when a local record store – Rather Ripped Records – began to carry his shirts.
It was at the store that he met Patti Smith and her manager, Jane Friedman, when Patti performed a show at the store. That connection led to Hugh’s being able to shoot a number of friendly acts – Talking Heads, Television, John Cale, etc. – and brought him work providing photos to various publications which, ultimately, brought him his first commissions for publicity photos and album covers.
His desire to produce “fine art” photography moved him to produce works in various media types, including what he called “Chinese Tourist Art” made from imported Chinese Communist materials found at a local store. During a showing of this art at a San Francisco art gallery, members of The Clash, who were in town recording an album (“Give ‘Em Enough Rope“) came to his show and asked Brown for permission to use one of the works for their new record’s cover. More than happy to help, he began work on the project only to find that a label staffer, in a rush to crank out a cover, had “appropriated” elements from his work, created a new design and conveniently left any mention of Brown off of the credits. Discovering this, the music industry press came to Brown’s defense – he was, after all, “a local artist ripped off by the big corporate company” – and while he continued to work as a freelancer on several album cover projects in the late 1970s (and, as a bit of a art/music rabble-rouser when he lead a popular rebellion against music industry hype and contrivance with his “Knuke the Knack” campaign – complete with anti-Knack merchandise), Hugh began his formal career in the music packaging business in 1989 with I.R.S. Records, where he served as Creative Director for six years before moving on to an eleven-year stint with Rhino Records, where he was able to bring his unique training and talents to lead the label’s efforts in the the packaging of their core products – reissues and box sets/collections of classic rock, pop, soul and R&B music from the archives of both current and long-gone record companies.
His work at the label was rewarded with eleven Grammy Award nominations in the packaging categories, along with three wins, making Hugh one of the most-honored designers in the field today. Since 2007, when he left Rhino to set up his own shop (called “Hugh Brown Heavy Industries” where, according to his business card, he’s the resident “Evil Genius”), Brown has continued to provide all service creative direction, art direction, design and photography for his clients in the entertainment and packaging industries. Recent clients include Viacom, Universal Music Group, EMI, Arhoolie Records, RockBeat Records, Baby Tattoo Books, Barbra Streisand, Loudon Wainwright. In addition to his accolades from the Recording Academy, Hugh has been honored with over 50 other industry awards, including ones from the AIGA and Communication Arts, I.D. and Print magazines, along with many others.
Hugh has also been a regular contributor to fine art shows in galleries and other art venues throughout the U.S.. As an artist “specializing in photography, print making, assemblage, and forgery”, his works have been the focus of group and solo show such as his May-June, 2009 exhibition titled Allegedly: The Hugh Brown Chainsaw Collection that was on display at Cal State’s Grand Central Art Center in Santa Ana, CA, which went on to be named “show of the year” by the OC Weekly magazine and moved on to the Robert Koch Gallery in San Francisco later the following year. In July – August, 2010, LA’s Robert Berman Gallery hosted a similar showing titled Allegedly:New Chainsaw Works built around a collection of images where (according to the Gallery’s promo materials) Brown inserted “chainsaw references into brilliant forgeries of Ed Ruscha, Jackson Pollack, Ed Keinholz, John Baldessari and dozens more contemporary art heavy hitters”.
As a fine art photographer, Hugh has also created memorable portraits for a number of entertainment industry illuminaries including Robert Downey Sr. & Jr., Chris Isaak, Mick Jones, Freddy Mutant, Jonathan Richman, Richard Thompson and Neil Young, among others. Brown has published a catalog of his fine art work titled Allegedly: the Hugh Brown Chainsaw Collection while his work has been featured in a number of other books on record/poster/packaging and design such as The Art Of Punk, Compact Disk Packaging and Graphics 1 & 2, Cover Show, The Art Of Rock, The Record Cover, Fantastic Covers, Type Play, and several others. He’s working on a new book – over 20 years in the making (publishing dated TBD) titled Saw: The Chainsaw In Popular Culture.
More information on this artist is available via his LinkedIn page at https://www.linkedin.com/in/hugh-brown-16482111/
Robert Brownjohn – Notable album cover art credits include – The Rolling Stones – Let It Bleed (see our “Individual Achievement” list)
(b. August, 1925 – d. August, 1970) Born in Newark, NJ to British parents, Brownjohn took his budding artistic talents and, in 1944, enrolled at the Institute of Design in Chicago, studying under the school’s (and “New Bauhaus”) founder László Moholy-Nagy. Leaving (before graduating) school in 1947, he began his career as an architectural planner and freelance designer in Chicago, returning in 1949 to the Institute to teach there. In 1950, Robert moved to New York to look for work as a graphic designer, finding work as a freelancer for Columbia Records and befriending jazz greats such as Miles Davis and Charlie Parker.
In 1957, after marrying and having a daughter the previous year, Brownjohn teamed with fellow designers Ivan Chermayeff and Tom Geismar to launch the BCG agency, taking on a wide range of jobs for the print industry, with a focus on experimental typographical designs. After winning a commission to design the USA exhibition at the 1959 World’s Fair in Brussels, Belgium, the firm’s standing in the industry grew, winning them major clients including Pepsi, Herman Miller and the American Crafts Museum.
In 1959, Brownjohn split (amicably) with his partners to move to London with his family. He’d picked up a heroin habit during his time with his friends in the jazz arena and thought that he’d be able to take advantage of the UK’s more liberal drug policies while still finding challenges as a designer. There, he signed on as creative director for the J. Walter Thompson agency, moving soon after to rival agency McCann-Erickson. Leaving the agency in 1962 (and moving to the island of Ibiza), he took on freelance jobs as a designer for the film industry, with his first major project being creating promotional designs for and title sequences for the first James Bond film, From Russia with Love. The resulting product was so well-received that he was hired to create the title sequence for the next Bond film as well – Goldfinger – and, after a falling out between Brownjohn and producer Harry Saltzman made it clear that he wouldn’t be contributing designs for the next Bond film, Robert joined a film production company called Cammell Hudson full time in 1964.
Going freelance again in 1966, Brownjohn created animations for a series of clients (including the sculpture he designed for his chum Keith Richards in 1969 for the album cover for the Rolling Stones’ Let It Bleed), with his final design job being the creation of a poster for Dick Davidson’s “New York Peace” Campaign poster series in 1969. Ultimately losing his battle with drugs, Brownjohn suffered a heart attack in London in August, 1970.
The cake sculpture shown on the turntable was made by the then-unknown British chef Delia Smith (now the country’s best-known cook and TV presenter). Featuring a tape canister, a clock dial, a pizza along with the cake (with the band members done up in icing), the image became an instant classic, with the album cover for Let It Bleed was among the ten chosen by the Royal Mail in the UK for a set of “Classic Album Cover” postage stamps issued in January, 2010.
The original working art for the album cover was put up for auction by Bonham’s in December, 2011, with pre-auction estimates set at £30,000-40,000.
Tim Bruckner – notable album cover credits include – Average White Band – AWB; Ringo Starr – Ringo; Parliament – Trombipulation; Ray Charles – Renaissance
Tim Bruckner’s artistic leanings emerged early, beginning sculpting in wax at the age of seven and working professionally as a jeweler’s apprentice and wax carver at the age of 18, spending the next two years creating the models for a variety of jewelry items. Leaving to strike out on his own, he found an agent who brought him a number of freelance assignments (including creating a 24 foot-long alligator used in the movie Alligator) and was introduced to clients in the music industry who wanted to feature his clever designs on their record packages.
While music has always been a passion for Tim – he even took a break from sculpting to pursue a career in music – he has achieved his greatest success as a creator of fine art sculptures for the comic book, gift and toy businesses, crafting amazingly lifelike sculptures of characters from comic books, graphic novels and other licenses. Bruckner has produced figures for American Greetings, Danbury Mint, DC Direct (working with them from 1999-2005), Franklin Mint, Hallmark, Hasbro, Kenner, Mattel and many others.
Along with fellow sculptors Ruben Procopio (Masked Avenger Studios) and Zach Oat (Cartoon Network’s Robot Chicken), Tim authored an instructional book for budding model sculptors in 2010 titled Pop Sculpture: How To Create Action Figures and Collectible Statues (published by Watson-Gutpill).
For over 20 years, he and his wife and their two kids have lived and thrived on a 40-acre hobby farm that he has named “The Art Farm”, located outside a small town in western Wisconsin. According to Bruckner’s site, the farm consists of “three dogs, one horse and, in the summer, more frogs around the pond than you could shake a pair of noise-suppressing headphones at. “
More information on this artist is available on his site at http://www.timbruckner.com/ or via his Facebook page at – https://www.facebook.com/tim.bruckner.3/about
Tim Bryant – notable album cover credits include – Hot Tuna – Hoppkorv and Final Vinyl; Jefferson Starship – Earth and Spitfire; Pure Prairie League – Dance, Just Fly, Firin’ Up and Something In The Night; Grace Slick – Dreams; John Denver – Autograph; Harry Chapin – Greatest Stories Live; Ashford & Simpson – Come As You Are; Jimmy Buffett – Changes In Latitudes, Changes In Attitudes; Andy Gibb – Shadow Dancing; Bee Gees – Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Soundtrack); Shalamar – Disco Gardens; Blind Date – Blind Date; Fandango – Last Kiss
(b. February, 1947 in Porterville, CA, USA; died June, 2017 in Bloomfield Hills, MI) After graduating from Art Center College of Design in California, Tim began his career in the record business in the early 70’s at a design studio called See, Hear & How, which was owned by designer Chris Whorf. Chris’ older brother Peter Whorf (who’d been art director at A&M Records) hired Tim a couple of years later when Peter became head art director at ABC Records. Over a 3-4 year period, ABC’s small (3-4 staffers) art department turned out hundreds of album packages. Tim figures that he alone was designing and/or art directing approximately ten packages a month – adding up to a LOT of records during his tenure there.
Tim stayed at ABC a short time after Peter Whorf left the label, but then moved on to become a partner in Gribbitt! Ltd. a design firm based in Hollywood, in 1975. With a very talented group of people (including designers Chris Whorf and George Corsillo), they soon took on projects for just about every record company in town. Tim was the firm’s Creative Director and his biggest clients were companies such as MCA, Motown, RCA, RSO, funk label Solar, 20th Century and Warner Brothers and, simultaneously, he did double-duty as RCA’s West Coast Art Director. Tim left Gribbitt! in 1982 to form his own graphic design firm, Bryant & Associates/Bryant Design, in partnership with his wife Diane, a talented designer in her own right.
Tim was a member of the Recording Academy for many years, serving on their Board of Governors and taking on the role of Chairman of the Album Packaging Committee for eight years. During his career, Bryant has received many industry accolades, including a Rolling Stone Magazine award for “Best Album Cover” for Jefferson Airplane’s Spitfire as well as a Grammy Award nomination for Fandango’s Last Kiss in 1979. Tim and his company also achieved a bit of notoriety during his time at ABC when he and the company were sued by a classical guitarist who was unhappy that the cover art for his record album featured a shot of Tim playing the guitar without his pants on. Unfortunately, it seemed that the guitarist did not share the same sense of humor as the art department at ABC
To learn more about this artist’s work, please visit his web site at – https://www.etsy.com/people/BryantDesigns
Barney Bubbles – Notable examples of album cover work include – Hawkwind – Space Ritual; Elvis Costello – My Aim Is True, This Year’s Model and Armed Forces; Ian Dury – New Boots & Panties; The Damned – Music For Pleasure; Graham Parker – Parkerilla
Barney Bubbles was born Colin Fulcher in July, 1942 in Whitton, Middlesex (near London) and, in 1958, at the age of 16, he enrolled in a curriculum that would lead to a National Diploma in Design at the Twickenham College of Technology’s art school, with his studies including courses in cardboard design and packaging that would come in handy later on in his album cover work. He left college in 1963 to work as an assistant at the Michael Tucker + Associates design firm in London, working with clients including Pirelli and, under Tucker’s tutelage, improved his skills in typography.
After a 2-year stint at Tucker, Fulcher left to join The Conran Group as a senior graphic designer. There, he worked on a variety of projects, including a logo for Strongbow Cider and, after Conran launched their Habitat stores in 1964, an array of items and designs for the retailer. While at Conran, Fulcher pursued other creative projects and, during the years 1965-1966, he produced a series of parties and “happenings” under the name “A1 Good Guyz” with two fellow graduates of Twickenham Art College, David Wills and Roy Burge.
In 1967, Fulcher changed his name to Barney Bubbles, with the name being derived from the results of the psychedelic bubble effects he created for the projected light shows he produced for a number of bands playing at underground clubs in the area. Working with Wills, the two designers took on a variety of freelance publishing design jobs and, in May, 1968, art-directed an issue of Oz Magazine titled “The Tax Dodge Special”. Also during this time, while still working at Conran, he also developed strong ties with a fellow employee, Justin de Blank, who’d joined the firm to launch a mail order business in 1967 and which continued on when de Blank left to launch his own upscale deli/restaurant and provisions company in London in 1968.
Striking out on his own early on in 1969, Bubbles leased a building in West London and set up the ground floor as a graphic arts studio, which he named Teenburger Designs. With backing from a pair of entrepreneurs, he began to seek work from clients in the music business and that year created his first album cover for prog rock pioneer Quintessence’s LP In Blissful Company. While the company folded a year later, with Bubbles doing freelance work and designing for the underground paper Friends, he was introduced to the band Hawkwind and forged a relationship with them that would result in three memorable album cover designs, as well as a wide array of associated products. One other great example was of Bubbles’ design work of the time was the impressive package he put together for the 1972 record Glastonbury Fayre, which included a fold-out cover, 32-page booklet, posters and alternative design options.
During the period from 1973 through 1976, he continued doing freelance work for a variety of clients, often un-credited or done under alternative names. In 1977, Bubbles joined the staff at Stiff Records as their art director and the label’s reputation grew quickly for both the creativity of their acts and Bubbles’ record cover designs and promotional materials. Bands that received the Bubbles treatment during that time include Elvis Costello, Ian Dury and The Damned. When label founder Jake Riviera to start a new label, Bubbles joined him to add work for artists such as Carlene Carter and Nick Lowe. Still working freelance, he also produced impressive designs for acts including Big Star, Generation X, Billy Bragg, Dr. Feelgood and The Psychedelic Furs.
Bubbles extended his talents to the music video field, directing videos for Elvis Costello, The Specials and Squeeze. In 1978, he was commissioned to bring a new look – from logo down – to weekly music news paper NME, with the early 1980s bringing him work in many aspects of the design spectrum (including some furniture designs), but at the same time, the personal and financial aspects of his life were in shambles. He was being chased by the local tax authorities for unpaid taxes and some of his design work was unappreciated by his clients, leading him to experience severe bouts of depression and talk of suicide. Unfortunately, he chose to commit suicide in London on November 14, 1983, bringing an end to his life but not the influence of his work on later generations of album cover designers.
To read more about the life and work of Barney Bubbles, please read author Paul Gorman’s book Reasons To Be Cheerful: The Life And Work Of Barney Bubbles.
More information available at – https://barneybubbles.com/
Peter Buchanan-Smith – notable album cover credits include – Wilco – A Ghost Is Born (Grammy – 2005); Brian Eno/David Byrne – My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (re-issue); Philip Glass – The Glass Box; Tim Ries – Stones World
(b. 1972, Ontario, Canada) Although Peter was raised on a farm in Ontario, Canada, he thought that his goal was to become a painter, and so he studied fine art in college and earned his B.F.A. from the University of Guelph in Ontario in 1995. While in school, Peter took part in several small publishing ventures and then realized that his true passion was, as he puts it (in his site bio), “making stuff”, meaning that he wanted to learn more about how to best-produce things on a mass scale and moved to New York City to find work in the publishing business there.
Working in an entry-level position did not give Peter the chance to express himself creatively, so he left to go earn a Masters in Fine Arts in Design in a “Designer As Author” program from the School of Visual Arts in NYC (where his advisor was the accomplished designer, Maria Kalman), graduating in 2000. After graduation, Peter first gathered the resources needed from his MFA thesis to author his own book about how people interacted with the design of everyday objects titled Speck: A Curious Collection of Uncommon Things (published by Princeton Architectural Press, 2001) before taking on a role at The New York Times, where he was art director of the Op-Ed page from 2000 to 2002. He then worked on a number of different commercial projects, many in the publishing design arena. Examples of this work include covers for the books A Shortcut Through Time by George Johnson (Vintage Books, 2004), The Elements of Style by Strunk, White, and Kalman (Penguin Press, 2005), The Story of Psychology by Morton Hunt. (Vintage Books) and The Wilco Book by Dan Nadel, a book published in 2004 (by PictureBox, Inc.) that gave fans a pictorial look into the band’s creative process. The package also included a special CD of “experimental music”, which led to another project for the band titled A Ghost Is Born – winning him a 2005 Grammy Award for “Best Recording Package” – before he moved on to a post at the influential design tome Paper Magazine, where he was creative director from 2005 to 2008.
In 2006, Buchanan-Smith started his own design studio called Buchanan-Smith LLC in order to offer his services in the areas of branding and packaging to a wide range of clients. That year, his mentor, Ms. Kalman, introduced Peter to her friend and neighbor Isaac Mizrahi, who hired him to develop a magazine that took you “into the world of Isaac” titled Isaac’s Style Book. Always intrigued with improving both the design and beauty of conventional objects – and wanting a better axe than those he found from traditional sellers of tools, in 2009 Buchanan-Smith founded the company Best Made Co., a company founded (according to its site) to “equip customers with quality tools and dependable information that they can use and pass down for generations.” The first tool sold by the firm was a handmade axe with bright bands of color painted on the handles (so beautiful that they’ve been purchased by well-known art collectors and have been included in an exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery in London), but the company’s catalog has now grown to include rugged clothing, bags and cases, other camping tools and accessories, a first aid kit and a series of items for cartographers. Also in 2009, Peter began a project with the publisher Vintage Books to redesign the covers of author Raymond Carver’s backlist for the 25th anniversary of its “Vintage Contemporaries” series.
Buchanan-Smith’s work has been honored by the AIGA (where he served as a board member from 2005 to 2007) and has been featured in both ID Magazine and The New York Times.
More info on this artist is available at his company’s web site at – http://www.bestmadeco.com/ while his online portfolio can be found at http://buchanansmith.com/
Stefan G. Bucher – notable album cover credits include – Alanis Morissette – Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie; Candlebox – Happy Pills; Sting – Brand New Day: The Remixes; S Club 7 – 7; Cold – 13 Ways To Bleed On Stage; Whitney Houston – Love, Whitney; Morrissey – World Peace Is None Of Your Business; Marilyn Manson – Rock Is Dead; Film Soundtrack albums – Biker Boys, Minority Report and The Matrix; John McCarty – Plans We Made; Solar Twins – Solar Twins
(b. 1973 in Germany) – Coming to the U.S. from Germany to study at the prestigious Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA, Stefan earned his degree (a BFA in Advertising) in 1996 and, soon after his graduation, he was hired by the Portland, OR-based ad/design firm Wieden + Kennedy, where he went to work as an Art Director for one of the agency’s top clients, Microsoft, focusing on their Back Office line. He stayed at the agency for a while, expanding his scope to include some work for Nike, until circumstances allowed him to return to the Los Angeles area to head up 344 Design, where he’s worked ever since.
Using his vast storehouse of design/illustration/writing talent, Bucher has since gone on to provide creative packaging and design solutions for commercial clients throughout the media world, including musical acts, TV/film studios, radio stations and art gallery owners.
He is the author of several design books, including All Access – The Making of Thirty Extraordinary Graphic Designers (2004), The Graphic Eye – Photographs By Graphic Designers From Around The Globe (2009) and 344 Questions: The Creative Person’s Do-It-Yourself Guide to Insight, Survival, and Artistic Fulfillment (2011). He was also the creator of a very popular online series/app launched in 2006 called Daily Monster in which Stefan posted video of himself creating a new monster every day for 100 days (based on ink blots) and asked the audience at large to create stories for those images, selections of which were featured in another book titled 100 Days of Monsters.
His work has been praised by organizations including the Art Directors Club of New York, the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) and D&AD, winning awards from industry heavyweights including the Type Director’s Club; Communication Arts, HOW and Print magazines, and others. He’s been a popular speaker at design/creative thought conferences such as TED, TEDx Santa Barbara, San Francisco Design Week and the RGD Design Thinkers Conference in Toronto and at scores of schools including Art Center, Cal Arts, Carnegie Mellon, Cooper Hewitt (National Design Museum), MICA and Otis College. In 2011, he collaborated with the online learning site Lynda.com to create a course called Creative Inspirations and, as part of the introduction, filmed an hour-long documentary on the artist, which you can view via this link – https://www.linkedin.com/learning/creative-inspirations-stefan-g-bucher-designer-illustrator-and-writer/stefan-g-bucher-designer-illustrator-and-writer
In 2015, Bucher programmed the AIGA’s national conference where he, as he describes it, brought “in a diverse lineup of over 100 international speakers, expanding beyond graphic design by tapping my contacts at NASA/JPL, in the recording industry and academic community, and at the Magic Castle in Los Angeles.”
More information on this artist is available on his design firm’s web site – https://344design.com/about/ and to see more details about his music-related projects, click over to https://www.344lovesyou.com/projects/type/cd-design/
Gary Burden – Notable album cover design examples include – The Mamas & The Papas – Papas & The Mamas; Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young – Crosby, Stills & Nash, Deja Vu and 4-Way Street; Neil Young – On The Beach and Neil Young Archives Vol. 1 (1963-1972); The Eagles – Desperado and One of These Nights; The Doors – Morrison Hotel; Joni Mitchell – Blue; Jackson Brown – The Pretender
(b. 1934; d. March, 2018) Raised in Southern California, Burden began showing his artistic talents early but, growing up during the second World War, he decided to enlist in the Marine Corps instead when still a teen. Returning as a veteran in the late 1950s, he settled in the North Beach area of San Francisco and enrolled in the architectural design program at U.C. Berkeley while staying close to the Free Speech Movement and the burgeoning local music scene.
While working on a design for singer Mama Cass Elliot’s house, an appreciative Cass suggested that the gifted designer put his talents into album cover artwork and, soon after entering the field, Burden had a long list of clients for his works – The Mamas & The Papas, Joni Mitchell, Three Dog Night, Crosby, Stills & Nash, The Doors, Steppenwolf and The Eagles (who he’d ultimately do four covers for). Early on, he began a lifelong collaboration with photographer Henry Diltz and the two worked together on many of the era’s best-known cover designs.
Over the years, Burden’s work has earned him for Grammy Award nominations for album cover and/or packaging design, including an award in 2010 for “Best Boxed or Special Limited Edition Packaging” for his work on Neil Young’s Neil Young Archives Vol. 1 (1963-1972). Burden worked alongside artist Jenice Heo and Neil Young himself, who was hands-on throughout the development of the package (Young and Gary have collaborated on album cover art for more than forty years and have become close friends, as well). The impressive package even includes a reproduction of a journal Young kept, complete with lyrics, photos and clippings of his escapades.
When the music industry needed folks “with a good eye” to bring their talents to touring, music video and TV/film production, Burden responded by designing and directing projects for clients including Lee Greenwood, Dan Fogelberg, Atlantic Records and Viacom. In 2000 Burden and Diltz worked together to produce the documentary film titled California Rock: Under the Covers, detailing some of the most-interesting back-stories for a number of the album cover works they collaborated on and riffing on their deep links to the Southern California rock scene. Not all of his work was with “classic rock” artists – he’s also worked with artists including Conor Oberst, My Morning Jacket, Matt Corby and the Monsters of Folk tour.
Upon Burden’s passing in March, 2018, his friend and collaborator on nearly 40 album covers Neil Young was quoted in a tribute article for Rolling Stone magazine (by Daniel Kreps) – “My friend for life, Gary was my art director, creating album covers with me for almost 50 years, beginning with After the Gold Rush and ending with Paradox and Roxy, my next two albums,” Young wrote. “I still have some covers for unreleased albums that we made together… We probably made 40 covers. I lost count. In the last twenty, thirty or so years, Gary has worked alongside his talented and beautiful wife, Jenice, at R. Twerk & Co, as we have continued on a life-time of making album covers, laughing, loving acoustic music and so many other things. My heart is heavy.”
In that article, Young also recounted the creation of his favorite Burden-designed cover image – that being the photograph that’s on the cover of his 1974 album On the Beach.
More information available at – http://garyburdenforrtwerk.com/biography
Greg Gigendad Burke – notable album cover credits include – Mark Ronson – Here Comes The Fuzz; Jet – Get Born and Shine On; T.I. – Urban Legend, King, Paper Trail, No Mercy and Trouble Man: Heavy Is The Head; Jason Mraz – We Sing, We Dance, We Steal Things; Wiz Khalifa – Rolling Papers and O.N.I.F.C; Jay Z – The Blueprint 3; Missy Elliott – The Cookbook; The Donnas – Gold Medal; Trey Songz – Trey Day, Ready, Inevitable and Passion, Pain & Pleasure
(b. Kingston, Jamaica) Moving with his family from Jamaica to the U.S. when he was 6 years old, Greg Burke spent his childhood living in the New York City area, first in Brooklyn, then moving to Long Island to complete his early education there. Graduating from the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, he did freelance work for some time for a variety of clients in the NYC area (trading some project work for access to technology) before accepting a position with Island Records.
Not happy with the atmosphere within the label’s art department, Greg departed for an opportunity with another record company, Elektra Records, after an artist friend of his who worked at the label offered him some freelance work. The first project he was asked to participate in was for the debut record for Missy Elliott, and he so impressed his new client that he’d go on to do two more albums for her. Burke would also produce the cover for the 2001 debut of another Elektra act – Australian rockers Jet – before his desire for new creative challenges brought him to hip-hop label Tommy Boy Records, where he’d stay until the company sold off its assets to its distribution partner Warner Music Group.
Since that time, Burke has rose through the Warner Music ranks to become Vice President and Creative Director at Atlantic Records, with prominent examples of his influential work including the packages for Group Home’s Livin’ Proof, T.I.’s Paper Trail and the highly-regarded 2009 album titled The Blueprint 3 for Jay Z (which gave fans a nicely-produced “making of” video showing the high degree of production expertise required at times to package a major-name act’s product – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JId_kQz-9Sg).
Asked in a 2012 interview published on the Large Up web site, Greg was asked about what he thought his legacy would be in the world of album art/design, to which he replied “I get teased and we laugh about this..’So you’re the guy who did the most anticipated Jay-Z album ever, but didn’t put any pictures of Jay-Z in it?’ That’ll be my claim to fame”.
Craig Butler – notable album cover credits include – The Byrds – Sweet Heart of the Rodeo; David Byrne – Double Dip; Frank Zappa – 200 Motels (Soundtrack); Alice Coltrane – PTAH The El Daoud; The Beach Boys – Friends; Various Artists – Motown Smash Hits; Jessie, Wolff & Whings – Jessie, Wolff & Whings; Poco – Pickin’ Up The Pieces
(b. May, 1946 in Pasadena, CA; d. December, 2019 in Los Angeles, CA) After Craig graduated from Art Center College of Design at the age of nineteen (the youngest graduate of the college at that time), he began his career in advertising, working at Doyle Dane & Bernbach (now DDB) in Los Angeles,. While working under Sy Lamb (an award winning creative), he worked on such accounts as VW, Orbachs, Jack in the Box, The Gas Company and CARE.
He then moved on to working as an independent graphic designer, forming a design collective in the late 1960s with fellow designers Dave McMacken, Patti Mitsui and Art Snyder called “The Institute For Better Vision”, designing record company advertising campaigns and album covers for such recording artists as The Beach Boys, The Byrds, Poco, Frank Zappa and others for label clients including Columbia, MCA, Shelter, Motown and Capital Records.
Teaming up again with fellow designer and native Angeleno Art Snyder to form an agency called Snyder Butler in the 1970s, the pair ultimately split in 1978 and Craig launched Butler, Inc. where, for the next 15 years, he applied his print design expertise on a broad portfolio of projects for clients including ABC Entertainment, AMC Theaters, American Isuzu, Century 21, Disney Home Video, General Cinema, Max Factor, Richard Simmons, Vidal Sassoon and Warner Brothers Pictures.
When his wife Alexis (a photographer’s agent) lost her phonebook, she noted to him that she felt that there was a basic lack of comprehensive information about the wide variety of creative talent available to clients in businesses looking for advertising design help. The pair responded by creating a trade sourcebook known as The Workbook, with Craig working as its co-owner and creative director.
In 2003, working with archivist Michael Ochs, Craig co-created and produced a show and catalog for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, OH called “The Greatest Album Covers That Never Were” and consisted of designs created by 100 well-known graphic and fine artists who were invited to create “the definitive album covers for their favorite recording artists”. Participants in this show – which went on to travel to several other galleries – included artists such as Robert Williams, Ralph Steadman and John Dismukes, along with musician/artists Graham Nash and Marilyn Manson, photographer William Claxton and author Kurt Vonnegut. In 2014, Craig re-teamed with friend/ex-partner Art Snyder and the two created the newest iteration of Snyder/Butler, which was a design company specializing in the “Boomer” market.
Craig has served as the President of the Los Angeles Art Director’s Club and President of the Art Center Alumni Association. Over the years, Butler has been honored with awards from the New York Art Directors Club, Anny (two years for “Best LA Directory Publication”), The Society of Illustrators (for cover art) and the Typography Club (cover art). His works have been featured in many album art-related articles and books, including the 100 Best Album Covers (Thorgerson/Powell).
After being diagnosed with and battling a rare form of sarcoma cancer in 2018, Craig died at home on December 21, 2019. According to his LA Times obituary, his parting words were “I lived. I laughed. I loved. I left.”
More information on this artist’s contributions to the world of album cover art is available on the Discogs.com web site at https://www.discogs.com/artist/428731-Craig-Butler
Steve Byram – notable album cover credits include – Beastie Boys – Licensed To Ill; Fifth Angel – Fifth Angel and Time Will Tell; Living Colour – Vivid; Indigo Girls – Indigo Girls and Retrospective; Spyro Gyra – Road Scholars; Five For Fighting – Two Lights; Cassandra Wilson – Jumpworld
(b. 1952 in Oakland, CA) Steve grew up in the San Francisco Bay area in the 1960s and, after finishing high school and spending some time in community college, Byram enrolled in the San Francisco Academy of Art with a focus on art and design. He’d been exposed to the many “enlightened” aspects of Pop Culture that prevailed at the time in that area – cars, surfing, Hippies, underground press, music, etc. – but it was music, and the art that promoted/packaged it, that inspired him to test his own abilities in that area.
Realizing that his love of music was not accompanied with corresponding talents as a musician, he felt that he could at least apply his abilities and creativity to the making of album covers, so when he completed his studies in 1978, he decided that he’d need to move to one of the cities – Los Angeles, New York or London – that acted as the centers of the music business in order to entrench himself there. Selecting New York (figuring he could move from there to London after establishing his reputation) and moving there in 1979, he quickly found work, first as a designer/art director at Columbia Records (where he stayed until 1990) and then at Sony BMG Music in the late 1990s through the mid-2000s, after which he launched his own design studio (he never did move to London!).
His impressive work for musical acts on two labels in particular during his career – JMT Records in the 80s and musician Tim Berne’s Screwgun Records beginning in the late 80s to the present – established Byram’s reputation as an innovator in the field, combining the arresting use of drawing, custom typography and texture to produce unique packages for acts including Living Colour, The Beastie Boys, Slayer, Indigo Girls, Spyro Gyra, Django Bates, Dave Douglas, Paul Motion and many other trend-setters.
Beginning in the late 1980s, Byram also added the role of educator to his resume, teaching at the prestigious New York School of Visual Arts up until 2010. Along with his wife, Cindy, Byram has lived close to New York City in the lovely Palisades town of Guttenberg (Hudson County), New Jersey since 1993.
More information on this artist is available on his LinkedIn page at – https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephen-byram-81114a5/
John “Patrick” Byrne – notable album cover credits include – Gerry Rafferty – Can I Have My Money Back?, Night Owl, City To City, Snakes & Ladders and Days Gone Down: The Anthology 1970 – 82; Stealer’s Wheel – Right or Wrong and Ferguslie; The Humblebums – The Humblebums; The Beatles – The Beatles Ballads and A Doll’s House – 25 More Alternate “White Album” Mixes; Donovan – HMS Donovan; Eric Bogle – Singing The Spirit Home; Wet Wet Wet – Picture This;
(b. 1940 in Paisley, Scotland; d. November, 2023 in Paisley) John Byrne was born in Paisley, Renfrewshire where he grew up in the “very tough” Ferguslie Park housing project and attended school at the city’s St Mirin’s Academy. He quit school and started work as a ‘slab boy’, mixing colors for the designers at A. F. Stoddard, a carpet manufacturer in nearby Elderslie.
In 1958, Byrne was accepted into a program at the Glasgow School of Art where he studied drawing and painting and soon became a star pupil there, ultimately winning the Bellahousten Award, the school’s top painting prize. After graduation in 1963, John travelled to Italy, returning six months later as “a highly accomplished and confident young artist.” He first settled into a job designing covers for Penguin Books while continuing to build his portfolio of fine art. However, his work was not given much consideration from the galleries he visited in London and, rather than give up, in 1967 Byrne developed a plan in which he presented some works as those by another artist – his father – working by the name of “Patrick”. The Portal Gallery in Mayfair asked to see more of this style of work and soon staged a well-received one-man show.
“Patrick” became a success and others in London’s high society wanted more of his work, where in one example he was hired in 1968 by The Beatles to paint a cover for their soon-to-be-released “White Album“, although this was replaced prior to the record’s release with Richard Hamilton’s now-iconic white cover (the “Patrick” version was later used in 1980 for the cover of the compilation titled The Beatles Ballads). Byrne later revealed himself as the real talent behind “Patrick’s” work and, while some were a bit miffed about his hoax, they simply couldn’t deny his talent and his instantly-recognizable style, and so his career continued on in grand fashion.
During the 1970s and 1980s, Byrne’s resume grew to illustrate his talents in other creative areas, which had expanded into album cover and theatrical set design, film-making and play-writing. His second play, titled The Slab Boys, was published in 1978 (winning him a “most promising playwright” award from The Evening Standard that year and named in 2011 as one of “twelve key works of the last 40 years” by the National Library of Scotland) and was brought to the New York stage in 1983 in a production starring Kevin Bacon, Sean Penn and Val Kilmer. He went on to write a very successful (and BAFTA-winning) mid-1980s BBC TV series called Tutti Frutti (starring Robbie Coltrane and Emma Thompson) and then Your Cheatin’ Heart, with a cast that included actress Tilda Swinton, who would later become his life partner (and mother of two of his children).
Byrne would also illustrate James Kelman’s novel Selected Stories, winner of the 1994 Man Booker Prize. His works are held in major collections throughout the world and he’s been featured in a number of exhibitions in galleries and museums, including those at the National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh (the “John Byrne: Sitting Ducks” portrait show in 2014), the Glasgow Print Studio and the Fine Art Society in London.
In 2001, Byrne was awarded an MBE in the U.K. “for services to literature and the theatre” but, in an act of protest against the British Government’s involvement in the invasion of Iraq, he returned the award in 2005. In 2004, he was made an associate of the Royal Scottish Academy (and a full member in 2007) while, in 2006, he received an honorary doctorate from the Robert Gordon University Gray’s School of Art in Aberdeen, with other honorary degrees following from universities in Dundee, Glasgow, Paisley and Strathclyde. Additionally, Byrne is an Honorary Fellow of the Glasgow School of Art and the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland, as well as an Honorary Member of the Royal Glasgow Institute.
In 2012, an award was named for Byrne – The John Byrne Award – that “challenges young adults in Scotland and South Africa to consider how relevant and valid society’s traditional values are today – and invites them to express the values they feel will help create a better world… It is the sole endeavour of The John Byrne Award to encourage young members of our society to engage in meaningful and potent debate about morals, values and ethic.” Byrne also served as a judge for this effort – more about this award and the organization behind it can be found on the following web site – http://www.johnbyrneaward.org.uk/home/
Byrne died on November 30, 2023 at the age of 83, and while the artist did not have his own web site, additional information on this artist can be found on his Wiki entry at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Byrne_(playwright)
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Brian Cannon – notable album cover credits include – The Verve – Storm in Heaven, No Come Down, Bitter Suite Symphony, Urban Hymns Lucky Man; The London Suede – Stay Together, We Are The Pigs, Dog Man Star, Stay Together #2 and Singles ; Oasis – Definitely Maybe, (What’s The Story) Morning Glory, Be Here Now, Masterplan and Complete Set; Super Furry Animals – Fuzzy Logic and The Singles, Vol. 1 ; Ash – 1977; Cast – Mother Nature Calls, Free Me, Guiding Star and Beet Root
(b. 1966, Wigan, Lancashire, U.K.) After his artistic talents were discovered in the early 1980s after he’d created a hip-hop inspired graffiti mural on a warehouse wall in his home town of Wigan, the local DJ who’d been impressed with his work sought out the then-18-year-old Cannon to create some artwork for a group – The Ruthless Rap Assassins – who were releasing a record on the EMI label. Excited to see his work so well-appreciated, Brian decided then to make a career doing graphics for clients in the music business, enrolling in classes at Leed Polytechnic and, after graduating in 1988, he spent some time touring the United States and then returned England, moving to London to stake his claim as a working record cover artist.
Opening his “studio” – i.e., working from his bedroom in North Wembley – in 1988 with little experience or proper equipment, Brian still managed to locate enough freelance work through positive word of mouth about his work – and a few chance meetings with well-connected individuals in the music business – that he was able to keep busy and building up his portfolio. He named his studio “Microdot” and has worked under that moniker ever since. Drawing his inspiration from both classic/Renaissance paintings and more modern works (he’s a fan of Otto Dix, M.C. Escher and Rene Magritte, along with Pop artists including Warhol and Rauschenberg) he favors works that tell a story and would honor these influences through his work going forward.
One chance meeting with a young Richard Ashcroft at a party in Wigan (also Ashcroft’s home town) lead to Ashcroft remembering Cannon several years later (when he was working on the music for the debut release for his band called “The Verve”) when the two ran into each other at a filling station and asking him if he’d like to create the cover for his new group’s record (Cannon wisely said “yes” and produced the cover for A Storm in Heaven in 1993). He met Noel Gallagher – of the band Oasis – in the elevator of his building, where they both had offices. The conversation drifted from talk about their sneakers to what sort of work each other did, Brian chanced upon a new client, leading to the creation of what would become a series of iconic covers for the band (their 1994 debut – Definitely Maybe, along with (What’s The Story) Morning Glory? and Be Here Now).
Since then, Brian has gone on to produce an impressive album art/music packaging portfolio for other clients including Ash, Groove Armada, Sex Pistols, Suede, Super Furry Animals and The Beta Band (who he also managed during their 8-year career). Expanding outside the music business, his firm has created graphics, logos and typography for corporate clients as well, including Absolut Vodka, The BBC, Columbia Tri-Star Films, Converse, DW Sports, Fruit of the Loom, The Guardian, The International Rugby Board, Levi’s, Virgin Trains and many others.
Eager to share his career experiences with budding designers throughout the U.K., in 2011 Cannon began the “Microdot Lecture Tour”, visiting schools, museums and festivals in Bradford, Leeds, Liverpool, London, Manchester, Preston, Salford and Sheffield and again in 2013 in front of the Royal Geographical Society, London as part of the “Inspiration – The Life Cycle Of Ideas” event. In November, 2011, Brian was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the global Annual Design Awards.
Celebrating his 25th anniversary with Microdot in 2013, Microdot HQ is now housed “in a spacious, bright creative space in a converted Victorian cotton mill in Wigan, Lancashire” (U.K.).
More information on this artist is available on his website at http://www.microdotcreative.co.uk/
Ed Caraeff – Notable album cover work examples include – Credence Clearwater Revival – Pendulum; Rod Stewart – Never A Dull Moment and Chronicles; Elton John – Honky Chateau; Carly Simon – No Secrets and Hotcakes; Steely Dan – Pretzel Logic and Royal Scam; Bee Gees – Children of The World and Spirits Having Flown; The Stooges – Fun House; 10 Years After – A Space In Time; Daryl Hall & John Oates – Private Eyes; Three Dog Night – Cyan; Eric Clapton – No Reason To Cry; The Doors – Live In Hollywood
(b. April, 1950 in California) Ed Caraeff is a photographer, designer, illustrator and art director whose music industry credits in the 1960s and 1970s included hundreds of album covers for acts including Strawberry Alarm Clock, Mark Lindsay, Three Dog Night, Ten Years After, Linda Ronstadt, Van Morrison, Ambrosia, The Bee Gees, The Doors and many others. His photography has also appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone Magazine and has been on display in exhibitions at The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the “Who Shot Rock and Roll” touring rock photo exhibition.
In 1980, Ed became an art director for a jazz record label and, after five years, switched gears and began a near 30-year career as a chef and restauranteur, although requests to license his work continued, including one from Rolling Stone in 1987 to use a shot of Jimi Hendrix at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival for a cover of a special edition of the magazine. The photo would go on to become one of rock music’s most-iconic – the one of Hendrix kneeling “in prayer” in front of his burning guitar on the festival’s stage.
In 2015, Ed decided to permanently call it quits (work-wise), focus on his health and “the good life” and to embark on a multi-year journey across the U.S. in his tricked-out vintage VW camper van named “Moonbeam” (you can follow his progress via his Instagram page – https://www.instagram.com/thebucketlisttrip/).
In 2017, Ed released a book built on over 100 photos taken from his archive of Hendrix images shot while Jimi and his band was on tour from 1967 (when Ed was only 17 years old!) through 1969 that’s titled Burning Desire: The Jimi Hendrix Experience through the lens of Ed Caraeff, published by ACC Editions – here’s a link to the book’s brochure on the publisher’s site where you’ll find more information about the photographer and his book – https://www.accpublishinggroup.com/us/store/productdatasheet/9781851498345/ with additional, updated information available at – https://iconicimages.net/photographers/ed-caraeff/
Michael Carney – notable album cover credits include – The Black Keys – Thickfreakness, Rubber Factory, The Big Come Up, Magic Potion, Chulahoma, Live, Turn Blue, Attack & Release, El Camino and Brothers (Grammy – 2011); This Moment In Black History – Midwesterncuttalistick; Dax Riggs – We Sing Of Only Blood Or Love; Soul Position – Things Go Better With RJ and Al; Dr. John – Locked Down
(b. January, 1982, Akron, OH) A 2005 graduate of the Columbus College of Art and Design (with a major in Media Studies) in Columbus, OH, Michael was asked by his brother, Patrick – drummer for The Black Keys – to serve as the band’s art director, with responsibilities for all of the visual aspects of the group’s music packaging, stage design and merchandising. One small problem – Michael was still in school at the time! While the commitments he made to work on his brother’s record caused him to spend an extra semester in school, it turned out to be time well-spent as his unique approach to design went on to win him a strong base of fans both in and outside the music industry, culminating in his Grammy Award win in 2011 for his controversial work on the band’s album titled Brothers.
He has since added a number of other music industry clients to his portfolio, including Dr. John, Lady, Dax Riggs and Soul Position, and in 2012 he provided seven ink-blot-based designs for a new line of professional skateboards sold by Girl Skateboards in Torrance, CA.
To see more of this artist’s work, please visit his web site at http://www.carneymichael.com/
Drew Carolan – notable album cover credits include – Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers – Tomorrow People; Eric B. and Rakim – Follow the Leader; Edie Brickell & New Bohemians – Ghost of a Dog; Tony Bennett – 50 Years: The Artistry of Tony Bennett; Living Colour – Everything is Possible: The Very Best of Living Colour
(b. 1957, New York, NY) Drew Carolan was born and raised on the Lower East Side of New York City and has been creating photographic works since 1973. His attraction to art started when he discovered graffiti in the early 70’s, with writers including Super Kool 223, Stay High 149 and Dino Nod his “superheroes” in the field.
Drew served as a photographic assistant to photographer Richard Avedon from 1983 to 1985 and helped him complete the book titled In The American West. In 1986, Drew assisted photographer/creative director Giles Bensimon in the launch of ELLE Magazine in America. Drew also worked as a photographer for MTV Networks in the 1980’s, and his work has appeared in numerous publications including Interview, SPIN, Rolling Stone, Elle, Vogue and The New York Times.
As a director and producer, he has created many ground-breaking music videos, PSA’s and documentary films, most notably his work with the Red Hot Chili Peppers, B-52’s, Ziggy Marley and Living Colour and his public service announcements for Rock the Vote, PETA and LifeBeat; The Music Industry Fights AIDS. Drew served as the line producer for David La Chapelle’s documentary RIZE, which debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in 2005. In 2007, he produced director Chloe Webb’s film Surfing Thru and he is also producing another music-based documentary titled A Taste Of Heaven, which is based on the life of New Orleans gospel legend Rymond Myles.
Drew’s book of photographs entitled MATINEE features portraits of the kids who frequented the Hardcore Matinee’s at CBGB’s in the early 1980’s. He produced a video short related to this book which you can view via this link – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jN46nf0nl0. Other books featuring his photographs include NEW YORK AT NIGHT: Photography After Dark (published by powerHouse Books in 2012); A PURE DROP: The Life of Jeff Buckley by Jeff Apter (Omnibus Press, 2009), CALIFORNICATION: The Red Hot Chili Peppers Story by Jeff Apter (Omnibus Press, 2006) and RIGHT TO ROCK: The Black Rock Coalition and the Cultural Politics of Race, by Maureen Mahon (Duke University Press Books, 2004).
Drew moved to Southern California in 1994 where, along with his other work, he has also been photographing the surf culture there. He currently lives in the Los Angeles area.
To see more of this artist’s work, please visit his website at http://www.drewcarolan.com
John Casado – notable album cover credits include – The Doobie Brothers – Toulouse Street, The Captain & Me and Stampede; Malo – Malo and The Best of Malo; Little Richard – The Second Coming; Gordon Lightfoot – Old Dan’s Records; Carole King – Wrap Around Joy; Redbone – Wovoka; Mason Proffit – Come & Gone; Barry White – Put Me In Your Mix, Staying Power, The Ultimate Collection, Icon 2 and Ballads; Aaron Neville – Warm Your Heart, Love Songs and Ultimate Collection; Loggins & Messina – On Stage
(b. May, 1944 in East Los Angeles, CA). The son of an advertising art director, young John was eager to learn all he could about the business. After graduating from Dorsey High School in Los Angeles and then attending UCLA, Casado ultimately graduated in 1964 from The Art Center School in Los Angeles (now the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena). Upon graduation, he was able to find regular advertising design work via the network of LA-based designers who were friends of his father, first working with the Young & Rubicam agency and then accepting a position with Saul Bass Design in 1966.
At that firm, Casado worked on a wide variety of graphic design projects, including projects for Continental Airlines and Northern Towels and also as a storyboard artist on a documentary film that Bass directed called Why Man Creates, which went on to win an Academy Award in 1968. Feeling confident to set out on his own, Casado left to form a new firm (John & Barbara Casado Design) with his wife Barbara and they soon met another designer named Christopher Whorf who, at the time, was the art director for Warner Brothers Records, who introduced them to the world of design for the music business. Soon after their work was put on display on WB covers, other labels – including A&M, Capitol and United Artists – commissioned the team to create designs for their musical acts. Stand-out examples of Casado’s work in the genre include the custom typeface he created for The Band’s The Last Waltz record (and for the soundtrack for the Scorsese film) and a limited-edition music sampler package for Warner Brothers – featuring the work of Frank Zappa – that came in the form of a baloney package, complete with baloney-colored records. Casado was honored with two Grammy Award nominations in 1974 for “Best Album Cover” – one for Mason Proffit’s Come & Gone and one for On Stage by Loggins & Messina – and won the coveted award for Come & Gone.
Other satisfied music clients included The Allman Brothers Band, Ashford & Simpson, Captain Beefheart, Deep Purple, The Doobie Brothers, John Fahey, Jerry Garcia, Arlo Guthrie, Carole King, Gordon Lightfoot, Loggins & Messina, Malo, Aaron Neville, Bonnie Raitt, Diana Ross, Bob Weir, Barry White and many others. Moving his agency (now called “Casado Design”) to San Francisco in 1975, he took on a number of high-visibility clients from outside the music business, including film director Sam Peckinpah, fashion labels Esprit and Jeanne Marc, the Herman Miller furniture company, the New Line Cinema studio, the Mill Valley Film Festival and, in 1984, Casado produced the now-classic logo for the first Macintosh Computer by Apple Computer.
In 1988, Casado switched his focus to center his attention on photography, principally shooting photos for advertising and fashion industry clients, including Infiniti Automobiles, the Presidio Bank, Victoria Amplifiers and Victim Magazine. Since then, his photographs have been included in exhibitions in museums and galleries throughout the United States, including shows and collections at NYC’s Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum, the Art Center College of Design and the New Orleans Museum of Art.
To learn more about this artist, please visit his web site, which includes a very nice interactive timeline of his career, at https://www.casadodesign.com/
Bob Cato – Notable examples of album cover art include – Bob Dylan – Greatest Hits; Barbra Streisand – People; Simon & Garfunkel – Parsley, Sage, Rosemary & Thyme; The Band – Cahoots and Rock of Ages; ELO – On the Third Day
Bob Cato (b. 1923 – d. March, 1999) was born to a Cuban mother and Quaker father in New Orleans, LA. His interest in the arts began as a teen while the family was on a trip to Mexico, where he stayed to study with a number of notable Mexican painters. After spending time in prison as a conscientious objector during WWII, he then moved in 1944 to Chicago, IL to continue his studies there at the IIT Institute of Design with Hungarian artist and former New Bauhaus school director Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. He then continued on to Philadelphia, PA to work under the tutelage of Harper’s Bazaar magazine Art Director Alexey Brodovich, ultimately becoming the famed designer/educator’s assistant.
Following his time at Harper’s, Cato’s career grew as he took on art directing roles at Junior Bazaar, Theater Arts, Dance and Glamour magazines and he also exhibited his works in shows at the Martha Jackson Gallery in NY throughout the 1950s. His entree into the music business came in 1959 with a job at Columbia Records, becoming art director (taking over from S. Neil Fujita) in 1960 (taking John Berg on as his assistant in 1961) and Vice President of creative services in 1965, with Berg becoming Creative Director in 1969. Over the next 20 years, he designed and oversaw hundreds of albums for dozens of artists, including work for Johnny Cash, Miles Davis, Bob Dylan and The Band, George Harrison, Janis Joplin, Van Morrison, Barbra Streisand and many others.
During his time at Columbia, Cato expanded his talents into the TV & film business, he notably directed a CBS-TV miniseries that aired in 1966 that featured the talents of Leonard Bernstein, Miles Davis, John Gielgud, Johnny Mathis and Igor Stravinsky. He left Columbia in 1968 to become Art Director at McCall’s magazine and, in 1972, he became V.P. of Packaging and Design at Revlon, where he was best-known for his ad campaign – featuring the young model, Lauren Hutton, as spokesmodel – for the Charlie fragrance (the “Charlie Girl”). In 1974, he left Revlon take a key position at United Artists Records & Films where he remained until 1977, when he ventured out to start his own design firm – Bob Cato & Associates/Bob Cato Design – and worked with a number of high-profile clients (including airline magazine publisher East/West Network) until he retired in 1991.
Staying active post-retirement, he worked on the occasional project (book cover design, teaching assignments at the Rochester Institute of Technology and the School of Visual Arts in NY and a 1994 book of art and photographs dedicated to author James Joyce). He also served for many years on the advisory council of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. In 1997, the Academy awarded Cato the President’s Merit Award, taking into account his long service to the music industry and, most-notably, the two Grammy Awards he won for “Best Album Cover” (the first in 1964 for Barbra Streisand’s People and the second, in 1968, for Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits).
He died as a result of complications of Alzheimer’s disease in 1999. His son, Eric Cato, is also a photographer who has done work in the music industry.
More information available at – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Cato
Ernie Cefalu – Notable album cover works include – Aerosmith – Toys in the Attic, Jesus Christ Superstar Original Soundtrack Recording, Alice Cooper – Welcome to My Nightmare, Captain Beyond, Bee Gees – Main Course
Ernie started his career on Madison Avenue in the late 1960’s. He was hired at Norman Levitt Advertising and his award-winning work for Decca Records (including designs for the Jesus Christ Superstar album) quickly established his creative genius and created demand for his talents. As a young designer in the late 60’s, Ernie had the honor and privilege of working side by side with many great, emerging artists. Ernie’s drive and passion for excellence led him to a new chapter in 1970 when he joined forces with Craig Braun, Inc. in New York. Knowing the importance of first impressions, he wanted to make a mark on his first assignments. The results have become rock icons – the tongue logo for The Rolling Stones and the rule-breaking Sticky Fingers album. Three months later, Ernie opened a satellite office for the agency in California where he would be the head Art Director. The hits kept coming for Ernie.. Alice Cooper’s School’s Out, Cheech & Chong’s Big Bambu and Captain Beyond, among others..
In 1972, Ernie was at the top of his game and knew it was time to leave and start his own agency. He opened the legendary “Pacific Eye and Ear” agency where, over the next 13 years, he created another 183 album covers for rock legends such as The Doors, Aerosmith, The Bee Gees, The Guess Who, Black Sabbath, Jefferson Airplane, Grand Funk Railroad, and Iron Butterfly. Pacific Eye and Ear was now on the map forever – easily recognized as one of the top three album design companies in the country. As Pacific Eye & Ear’s Owner/Creative Director, Mr. Cefalu was the conceptual link for some of today’s top illustrators, designers, writers and photographers, including Drew Struzan, Ingrid Haenke, Joe Garnett and many others. During his tenure at Pacific Eye & Ear, Ernie earned 3 Grammy Award nominations, 10 Music Hall Of Fame Awards and 4 Creative Director Awards of Excellence From The Los Angeles Art Director Club.
In the late 80’s, as work in the music business was slowing, Ernie knew it was time to reinvent himself. He would “go mainstream” where traditional advertising was expected, but he would offer clients a very different kind of service and product. If they were half as bored as he was with status quo in advertising, packaging design, consumer promotions, and merchandising materials in stores, he knew he would have an exciting, thriving business. He felt he was really in touch with people – he understood how they thought, how they felt and how they acted. Ernie felt different businesses require different solutions…but they all need an attitude, a heart and a soul. Ernie could provide that connection. In 1989, Ernie added an unlikely account to his client roster – Nestlé USA. Over the next decade, his work helped over 20 brands in Nestlé’s five divisions post double-digit sales growth.
More recently, Ernie was Senior Creative Director and Co-Owner of Y & M Associates in Los Angeles, an agency known for its breakthrough business solutions fueled by keen strategic focus and unparalleled creative design. He sat at the helm of this cutting edge boutique and his eye, and hand, touched and guided every client’s assignment. He remains a leader in this industry.
Today, Ernie Cefalu is the owner and Senior Creative Director of HornBook Ink, where he is retained by four Fortune 100 companies as their in-house Creative Director, with Cott Beverage (the #1 non-name brand beverage company in the World), HSBC Financial, Chang Beer (Southeast Asia’s #1 Beer), Coca Cola and Energy Club being the most recent additions to Ernie’s client roster, and with the recent releases of new albums by Alice Cooper and Burton Cummings, this brings the total number of albums designed to date to over 210.
To see more of Ernie’s work – and to purchase an original work from his collection, please visit his web site at http://www.originalalbumcoverart.com
Central Station Design (Matt Carroll, Paul Carroll, Karen Jackson) – notable album cover credits include – The Happy Mondays – Delightful/45 E.P., Squirrel & G-Man Twenty-Four Hour Party People Plastic Face Carn’t Smile (White Out), Madchester Rave On E.P.; Bummed, Yes Please! and Pills ‘n’ Thrills & Bellyaches; Shaun Ryder – Amateur Night In The Bigtop; Black Grape – It’s Great When You’re Straight
U.K. design firm created a number of record covers for Factory Records along with graphics and animations for several Michael Winterbottom films, including 24 Hour Party People, The Look of Love and The Killer Inside Me.
A more-complete biography about this organization and its principals will be posted soon.
More information on this organization is available via its web site at http://www.centralstationdesign.com/
Dean Chalkley – notable album cover credits include – Dizzee Rascal – Showtime and Boy In Da Corner; Valerie June – Pushin’ Against A Stone; Simply Red – Big Love; Chrissie Hynde – Stockholm; Alice Jemima – Everything Changes;
(b. 1968 in Essex, U.K.) In addition to his work for music industry clients such as Sony Music, Universal Music, Warner Music Group, XL Recordings and others, Dean’s an in-demand commercial photographer with a long list of clients including Adidas, BBC, Bvlgari, Channel 4, Levis, Fred Perry, Levis, Ray-Ban, Vanity Fair, Virgin and many others. His work’s been seen in publications such as NME/New Music Express, The Observer Magazine and The Sunday Times Magazine, to name only a few…
A more-detailed biography on this artist will be posted soon. In the meantime, more information on this artist can be found on his web site at – https://www.deanchalkley.com/about/
Kim Champagne – notable album cover credits include – ZZ Top – Recycler; Paul Westerberg – 14 Songs; Jane’s Addiction – Nothing’s Shocking; Various Artists – Just Say Yo; Paul Simon – Graceland; Aerosmith – Pump; Red Hot Chili Peppers – Blood Sugar Sex Magik; BoDeans – Black & White; The Replacements – All Shook Down; Elmore James – The King of Slide Guitar
Art Director and Designer for Warner Brothers Records, with a long list of album design and art direction credits during the 1980s and 1990s. Her packaging work has earned her two Grammy Award nominations – one in 1992 for ZZ Top’s Recycler and another in 1994 for 14 Songs by Paul Westerberg.
A more-complete biography about this artist will be posted soon.
Art Chantry – notable album cover credits include – Soundgarden – Louder Than Love and The Classic Album Selection; Love Battery – Dayglo, Far Gone and Between The Eyes; The Reverend Horton Heat – Smoke ‘Em If You Got ‘Em; Mono Men – Wrecker!, Ten Cool Ones and Sin & Tonic; Mudhoney – Blinding Sun; The Presidents of the United States of America – The Presidents of the United States of America; The X-Rays – Double Godzilla with Cheese; Man Or Astro-Man? – Live Transmissions From Uranus; The Beatles – Beatles Tapes, Vol. 3 and Vol. 4; The Mooney Suzuki – People Get Ready; Southern Culture On The Skids – Countrypolitan Favorites
Art Chantry Design Co is located in the Tacoma, WA area. He’s been creating designs for album covers, promo posters and related products – mostly by hand – for clients in the entertainment industry since the late 1970s. He has lectured extensively about design and the design industry at schools, universities and professional organizations over the years and has complied a collection of essays and blog posts into a book titled Art Chantry Speaks: A Heretic’s History of 20th Century Graphic Design.
In March, 2017, Chantry was bestowed with the 2017 AIGA Medal, an honor “awarded to individuals in recognition of their exceptional achievements, services or other contributions to the field of design and visual communication.” Since 1920, this professional design organization has chosen to honor several people each year with this award that recognizes both significant individual examples of innovative design and/or an entire career’s overall impact on the field and, in this particular case, Chantry’s original designs for music industry clients – their posters, album covers and other related projects – have established him as a talent that continues to influence new designers and intrigue new clients looking for something unique and memorable for their own projects. When your work has been featured on covers for everyone from The Beatles to Soundgarden and The Mooney Suzuki, you’ve certainly proven that you have the chops to be one of the best in the business.
A more-complete biography about this artist will be posted soon. In the meantime, you can read Art’s profile on the AIGA site at http://www.aiga.org/2017-aiga-medalist-art-chantry
More information on this artist is available on his web site – http://www.artchantry.com/
George Chin – Notable album cover work examples – Blackmore’s Night – Fires At Midnight and Past Times With Good Company; Accept – Eat The Heat; Judas Priest – Rising In The East; Paradise Lost – Shade of God; Guns N Roses – Use Your Illusion 1 and Use Your Illusion 2; AC/DC – Live; Sepultura – Blood Rooted; Ozzy Osbourne – Prince Of Darkness; Bruce Dickinson – Alive; Izzy Stradlin – 117 Degrees; Iron Maiden – many covers (back/inside photos)
(b. ?) George Chin started his photographic career while still at college in 1979. Gaining access to black artists at that time was relatively easy because, unlike today – apart from Bob Marley – they had little media coverage. George began honing his photographic skills on artists such as The Jackson Five, Parliament & Funkadelic, Jimmy Cliff, Peter Tosh, Manu Dibango, Toots & The Maytals, Dennis Brown and the 2-Tone bands – Specials, Selecter, Madness, etc.
Next came the New Wave of British Heavy Metal scene, spearheaded by Diamond Head and Iron Maiden together with the New Romantics and bands like Duran Duran, Culture Club, Spandau Ballet, The Thompson Twins, etc. It was an exciting time and George was soon very busy shooting these bands and others for magazine and record company clients in the UK, Europe and Japan.
During rock and metal’s halcyon days of the late 1980’s, George was one of the early contributors to Kerrang! magazine and worked for all the major publications of those genres in the UK, Europe, USA, and Australia. Also during this time, George toured the world extensively as the official tour photographer for many of the biggest bands of that era – Guns n’ Roses, Aerosmith, Iron Maiden, Bon Jovi, Skid Row, Motorhead, Anthrax – while at the same time working exclusively with Terence Trent D’Arby and a young Whitney Houston whenever she toured the UK.
By 1990, George’s reputation was so high that he landed the prime job for any music photographer at the time; i.e., official tour photographer with the Rolling Stones on their Urban Jungle Tour of Europe. Then, early in 1991, Axl Rose invited George to join Guns n’ Roses in Rio de Janeiro to photograph them exclusively at the “Rock in Rio II” festival at the Marcana Stadium, following that with the “Get In The Ring Tour” of the USA in 1991 and the Use Your Illusion world tour through to 1994.
Next followed a stint with Aerosmith in 1994 -1995 for the Get A Grip world tour and again in 1997 for the Nine Lives tour of Europe. At the end of 1997, for personal reasons, George took a break from touring and worked in the studio doing editorial and record company sessions shooting bands as diverse as Blur and Iron Maiden. In 2000, after a three year hiatus of no overseas tours, George went to Rio de Janeiro to hook up with Guns n’ Roses again at Rock in Rio III where the new GnR were headlining to 250,000 people (also photographing the entire set of Oasis). In 2002, Axl again invited George to go to the Far East for a short tour followed by the aborted autumn tour of the USA (which ended in a riot in Philadelphia!).
After that, George settled down in the U.K. with his young family, preferring to work with bands touring the UK/Europe and those based in the UK. The list, by no means complete, of acts he has worked with includes Ashanti, Beyonce, Black Sabbath (reunited), Cream (reunited), Eric Clapton, Cher, Coldplay, Deep Purple, Depeche Mode, H.I.M., Jay-Z, Joss Stone, Judas Priest, Annie Lennox, Madonna, Metallica, Morrissey, New York Dolls, Oasis, Paul McCartney, Pink, Primal Scream, Queen + Paul Rodgers, REM, Rolling Stones, Scissor Sisters, Shakira, Simple Plan, Soulfly, and Sting.
George continues today to work for bands, record companies, and editorial clients using the latest digital cameras and imaging technology meeting today’s demands for instant delivery of the images needed for press, promotion/advertising and the Web.
More information on this artist is available on his website at http://www.georgechin.com
Glen Christensen – notable album cover credits include – Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers – Damn The Torpedos; Toto – Toto IV; Tom Waits – Foreign Affairs; Joni Mitchell – Hejira, Mingus, Shadows & Light, Wild Things Run Fast, Dog Eat Dog and Night Ride Home; The Sopwith Camel – The Sopwith Camel; The Soul Searchers – We The People; Ocean – Give Tomorrow’s Children One More Chance; Sha Na Na – The Golden Age of Rock N Roll; Gladys Knight & The Pips – Imagination; Carly Simon – Playing Possum and Another Passenger; Judy Collins – Judith; Eagles – Their Greatest Hits 1971-1975; Lita Ford – Out For Blood; Stephanie Mills – Merciless and I’ve Got The Cure
Glen Christensen worked as an Art Director for several record labels early on in his professional career, including Buddah Records, Elektra/Asylum Records (beginning in 1973) and 20th Century Fox Records. He received two nominations for a Grammy Award for “Best Album Package” – the first came in 1975 for his work with photographer Norman Seeff on the package for Carly Simon’s Playing Possum, with the second coming the following year (1976) for his work on Joni Mitchell’s Gold-selling release Hejira (again, with Mr. Seeff as photographer).
In 1978-79, Glen worked with fellow designer John Van Hamersveld to publish the book Record Album Art, released by Syracuse University Press as an accompaniment to an exhibition about album cover art titled Record Album Art and the Recording/Artist put on at Syracuse U’s Joe and Emily Lowe Art Gallery (part of the College of Visual & Performing Arts there) organized by curator Nancy Alder. This show went on a tour of other museums/galleries after its premiere in Syracuse.
Glen later founded Glen Christensen Design on Hollywood’s Sunset Strip, where he “continued to provide creative design for the entertainment industry, as well as for nonprofit organizations, including the California Community Foundation”. In 1994, Glen released another album cover-related book titled Compact Disc Packaging & Graphics 2 (Rockport Publishing) and, more recently, working along with his wife, photographer/editor/publisher Virginia Christensen, they went on to establish an organization called Digital Arts: California which, according to its web site, “offers artists—as well as art curators, collectors and patrons—a unique new showcase. While most art shows are internet-only or gallery-only, Digital Arts: California holds international, juried exhibits that are both.”
For more information on this artist, please visit his web site at http://www.digitalartscalifornia.com/wordpress/
Willie Christie – notable album package credits include – Fripp & Eno – No Pussyfooting and Fripp & Eno; King Crimson – USA, Live In Newcastle (12/8/72) and In The Court Of The Crimson King (An Observation By King Crimson); Cherry Vanilla – Venus D’Vinyl; Pink Floyd – The Final Cut and Discovery; Cliff Richard – Silver and From The Heart; Roger Waters – The Tide Is Turning (After Live Aid); Greg Lake – The Anthology: A Musical Journey
(b. November, 1948, U.K.) to a family of British peerage, a cousin to the both Mark Dundas (4th Marquess of Zetland) and Lord David Dundas. Growing up in the English countryside, schooling at Eton and developing a passion for film and photography while, beginning at the age of 19, helping out his sister’s photographer boyfriend while his regular assistant was away (that boyfriend being the famed British fashion photographer David Anthony). Soaking in all he could that year, he then landed a job with another top fashion shooter – Cliver Arrowsmith – and built up his experience and a portfolio of his own work behind the lens.
Arrowsmith’s photo director at British Vogue was Grace Coddington and she’d taken note of Christie’s talent as a solo artist, eventually offering him the chance to shoot editorial/cover projects on his own (he’d go on to shoot a dozen covers for the magazine). While his career as a photographer took several years to kick into high gear, his portfolio expanded with commissions from publications including Harpers, Honey, Over 21 and Queen (among others) and had the opportunity to photograph a variety of celebrities from the entertainment world, including actors Catherine Deneuve, Cary Grant and Douglas Fairbanks Junior and musicians such as David Bowie, Grace Jones, King Crimson, Cliff Richards and the Rolling Stones.
Willie and Grace’s professional relationship would later blossom into a romance and a brief marriage (1976 – 1980) and in the early 1980s, his early love for film-making pushed him into switching his focus to that medium, with his sister’s Carolyne’s latest love – Pink Floyd songwriter/bassist Roger Waters – asking him to direct several music videos for the band’s album The Final Cut, which also sported Christie photos on the record’s packaging. He’d also produce TV commercials for several fashion houses, several which would go on to win ad industry awards including the Clio Award, the Creative Circle Awards (UK) and the Lion Award at Cannes (amongst others).
In 1998 he filmed his adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s The Whisper and, in 2011, helped curate a career retrospective called the Limited Edition Collection which put many images from his archives on public display for the first time in 30+ years. His work is featured in a number of other publications, including Wonderful Today by Pattie Boyd, Nick Mason’s Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd and Coddington’s own autobiography called A Memoir. In 2023, he released (on ACC Art Books) a book and career overview titled WILLIE CHRISTIE: a very distinctive style: Then & Now, which offered a forward by his ex, Grace Coddington).
More information on this artist can be found on his website at http://www.williechristie.com/home/
Peter Christopherson – notable album cover credits include – notable album cover credits include – Pink Floyd – Animals, Wish You Were Here and A Nice Pair; Peter Gabriel – Peter Gabriel I – “Car”), II – “Scratch” and III – “Melt”
(b. February, 1955 in Leeds, U.K.; d. November, 2010 in Bangkok, Thailand) Known to his friends as “Sleazy”, Peter was exposed to excellence early on as his father Derman was an honored professor of engineering at several prestigious universities before becoming Master of Cambridge’s Magdalene College (1978-1985) and, as a result, was bestowed an OBE and Fellowships with both the Royal Society and the Royal Academy of Engineering. A multi-talented artist, Peter studied computer programming, theater design and film/video production in the United States at SUNY Buffalo (New York) and applied that knowledge to all his creative endeavors, building electronic equipment and digital samplers that allowed him to more fully-explore his musical experiments that would ultimately be an important part of his future work.
Christopherson’s first work was a commercial artist, designer, and photographer, joining Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell’s Hipgnosis design firm in 1974 first as an assistant and, later, becoming the company’s third partner. In addition to his album cover work, Peter designed the logo for the UK fashion label BOY London and worked with fashion/music impresarios Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood on photo/design work for the Sex Pistols and the pair’s London fashion boutique SEX. He would then apply his talents to creating memorable music videos (over 40 credits) for clients including The Firm, Coil, Marc Almond, The The, ELO, Erasure, Ministry, Soft Cell, Nine Inch Nails and Rage Against The Machine, production of scores of TV commercials and would also direct three films – The Doom Generation, Nowhere and 1997’s Lost Highway.
In 1975, Christopherson joined experimental musicians and visual artists Genesis P-Orridge, Chris Carter and Cosey Fanni Tutti as a founding member of the pioneering “industrial” group Throbbing Gristle. Their notorious performances (which included nudity, onstage vomiting and disturbing visuals and lyrical content) drew outrage from the establishment (as one writer quipped, “even the punks threw things”) while inspiring other leading-edge musicians going forward (Joy Division, Marilyn Manson and Trent Reznor were all notable fans). Christopherson was also one of his generation’s first openly gay musicians – railing against homophobia – and would go on to participate in many more innovative musical (Coil, Hirsute Pursuit and an unfinished project with Trent Reznor) and multi-media projects (Psychic TV) before and after his move to Thailand in 2005. Several years after his death, a book was published titled Peter Christopherson: Photography that offers a career retrospective of his work in photography.
You can read his obituary in The Guardian via this link – https://www.theguardian.com/music/2010/nov/28/peter-christopherson-obituary
Don & Ryan Clark – Invisible Creature – notable album cover credits include – Foo Fighters – The Pretender, Long Road To Ruin and Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace; Sixpence None The Richer – Lost In Transition; Atreyu – A Death Grip On Yesterday; The Not Its – Tag, You’re It! and We Are The Not Its; Kutless – Live From Portland and To Know That You’re Alive; The Fold – Secrets Keep You Sick (Grammy nom, 2007); P.O.D. – When Angels And Serpents Dance; Hawk Nelson – Hawk Nelson…Is My Friend (Grammy nom, 2008); Pennywise – Reason To Believe; Young The Giant – Young The Giant; Bullet For My Valentine – Scream Aim Fire; Machine Head – The Blackening; Chris Cornell – Carry On; Fair – The Best Worst-Case Scenario (Grammy nom, 2006); Norma Jean – O God, The Aftermath (Grammy nom, 2005)
(Don – b. May, 1975; Ryan – b. June, 1979 in San Jose, CA) It seems as though the brothers Don and Ryan Clark have known that they were going to pursue careers in the arts ever since they were young boys doodling on their school notebooks. Inspired by both their father – a talented woodworker who spent hours in his home workshop – and their late grandfather, Al Paulsen, an illustrator who spent 28 years doing work for NASA, the boys were also greatly influenced by the punk rock scene and its do-it-yourself approach to style and the arts. In 2000, the pair moved from Sacramento, CA to Seattle and, after a series of dead-end jobs, they combined their talents and passions and joined a friend to form the design team at Asterik Studio, where they would go on to work on a number of design projects.
At the same time, their metal band Demon Hunter began to attract larger crowds and asked the brothers to devote themselves to the group’s recording and touring schedules. While the juggling of two careers might have sunk other, less-dedicated talents, Don and Ryan fed off of the energy of pursuing both of their passions and somehow managed to enjoy the demands of both of their careers. In 2006, the two parted ways from their chums at Asterik and formed their own design company, which they called “Invisible Creature”. As they’ve stated on their web site, ” the duo have poured all of the creative passion and heart that two heavily tattooed, God-fearing mama’s boys can muster into their latest venture, a lumbering giant set to pounce upon the art world”.
With a hunger for everything from Miles Davis to the Misfits, Jim Flora to Storm Thorgerson, polished photo illustration to cartoon monsters, avid collectors of toys, art and music and accomplished musicians (in the band Demon Hunter, Don was on guitars until 2009, and Ryan is still handling vocal duties), the Clarks’ wide range of experience allows them to relate directly to what their clients want to accomplish, from elaborate special packaging to jaw-dropping surrealistic imagery and other outside-the-box ideas and concepts. The Clarks’ unique points of view and skill sets have been applied to projects for a diverse client list, from record companies including A&M, Atlantic, Elektra, EMI, Epitaph, Geffen, RCA, Reprise, Rhino, Roadrunner, Sony, Tooth & Nail (where Ryan has added the role of Art Director for the label to his work schedule!), Universal and Warner Brothers; publishers such as Billboard, Esquire, Fantagraphics, Google, Inc Magazine, The Economist, The New York Times and Wired; media companies including Live Nation, MTV and Nickelodeon; and consumer companies such as Chipotle, LEGO, Nike, Nordstrom, Seattle’s Best Coffee, Target, T-Mobile, the Bumbershoot festival and the Experience Music Project Museum.
Today, their artistic accomplishments have inspired a cult-following the world over and accolades from a number of respected and renowned design publications, and they were nominated in four successive years (2005-2008) for Grammy™ awards for their work in music packaging and design. The duo’s aesthetic has had a strong impact on modern music products, as is evidenced by their work for a wide range of merchandising companies, retail mall stores and music magazines. As much as they have inspired others, Don and Ryan continue to inspire each other, as well. As their web site bio also states – “Lurking in the depths of imagination. Rising from concept to physical realization. Invisible Creature emerges, precise and delicate as it is ferocious and tenacious, as the design studio for the millennium.” Certainly, a design team worth keeping close watch on…
To learn more about the brothers and their latest efforts, please visit their web site at http://www.invisiblecreature.com
Danny Clinch – Notable album cover credits include – Afghan Whigs – Black Love; Ol’ Dirty Bastard – Trials and Tribulations of Russell Jones and Definitive Ol’ Dirty Bastard Story; Simon & Garfunkel – Old Friends: Live On Stage; Pete Yorn – Life On A Chain and Musicforthemorningafter; Sparklehouse – Distorted Ghost; Luscious Jackson – Electric Honey; The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion – Now I Got Worry; Daniel Lanois – Shine
(b. 1964, Toms River, NJ, USA) After graduating from his local high school in 1982 and attending Ocean County College, Danny Clinch decided that he was interested in the arts and, in particular, photography. Looking to further his education in this area, an ad in a photo magazine introduced him to the New England School of Photography in Boston, MA and, after a visit to the campus, he enrolled there, graduating in 1985. Soon after, he participated in two workshops, including one in Yosemite staged by the Ansel Adams Workshops and lead by photographer Annie Leibovitz. Recognizing his potential, Annie invited Danny to intern for her in 1986 and, after that period, hired him on full-time as her assistant.
While he was assisting, Danny also took the occasional side assignment, focusing on the local Boston music scene. In 1992, Spin Magazine hired him to shoot a NYC-based hip-hop act and, intrigued by what he saw was an emerging market, he brought his portfolio to Steve Karr of Def Jam Records. Karr was impressed with what he saw and offered Clinch the opportunity to shoot rising stars including L.L. Cool J and Public Enemy and it was having these acts in his portfolio that opened doors for him over time, soon allowing him entree into the burgeoning alt-rock world and other music industry areas.
By 1995, Danny was able to take on a myriad of portrait and concert photo assignments, including those with the Afghan Whigs, Beck, The Beastie Boys, Rage Against The Machine, Sonic Youth and the Tibetan Freedom Concert (attending and photographing every TFC event ever since, with a collection of these photos included in his 2000 book titled When The Iron Bird Flies). With his subject really appreciating his sensitivity to their needs – both as clients and as subjects – he has since been able to expand his client roster greatly, adding such names as Bjork, Blind Melon, Johnny Cash, Dave Matthews Band, Phish, The Smashing Pumpkins, Bruce Springsteen and Tupac Shakur.
In addition to Spin Magazine, his photographs have appeared in a variety of well-known publications including GQ, National Geographic, The New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair. Besides his 2000 book, his portraits and other photographs were also brought together in a 1998 compilation titled Discovery Inn.
Expanding his talents beyond photography, in 2003 Danny founded his own film company in NYC called Three on the Tree Productions and his projects there have included films on subjects such as the 2004 Bonnaroo Festival, Bruce Springsteen (Devils and Dust – 2005, for which he received the first of his 2 Grammy nominations), Pearl Jam, Michael Stipe, Van Morrison, John Mayer (2009’s Where The Light Is – Grammy nom #2) and, more recently, Sara Bareilles (Live At The Fillmore) and 2011’s Live At Preservation Hall: Louisiana Fairytale. Quite active also in the music video arena, Danny has also directed videos for Mellissa Etheridge, Foo Fighters, John Legend, Willie Nelson and Tom Waits, among many others.
His photography has been included in a number of solo and group shows including the Who Shot Rock & Roll travelling exhibition (launching in Brooklyn, NY in 2009), the 2012 Silver & Brass Gallery show in New Orleans and a number of shows curated by the Morrison Hotel Gallery. He’s also served as the official portrait photographer for the annual Grammy Awards shows since 2002.
For more information on this artist, please visit his web site at http://www.dannyclinch.com/
Edward Colver – notable album cover credits include – 58 – Diet For A New America; D.I. – On The Western Front; Black Flag – Damaged; Circle Jerks – Group Sex and Wild In The Streets; Bad Religion – 80-85 and How Could Hell Be Any Worse?; Bangles – All Over The Place; Alice Cooper – A Fistful Of Alice; Freakhouse – Beautiful Misery; Ice Cube – Greatest Hits; Snoop Doggy Dogg – The Doggfather; The Used – Art Work; CH3 – Fear Of Life; Dancing Hoods – Hallelujah Anyway; The Gun Club – Fire Of Love
(b. June , 1949, in Pomona CA.) Named after an ancestor who came to America from Cornwall, England in 1635, Edward Curtiss Colver is the son of a father (Charles) who was a wounded WW2 vet and a forest ranger for 43 years, in charge of a 17,000 acre experimental forest called Tanbark Flats that was located in the San Gabriel foothills near San Dimas, CA. The family lived there early on, moving later to Edward’s grandparents’ farmhouse in Covina. Upon his retirement from the Forest Service, Edward’s father – a proud Republican – was presented with the “Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Award” by President George H. W. Bush at the White House and, subsequently, the tallest peak southwest of Mount Baldy was named after him by the U.S. Forest Service (Colver Peak, elev. 5512 ft.).
Possessed with a passion for the Arts, Edward was impressed early on by Dadaist and Surrealist imagery – particularly the works of So. CA. native Edward Kienholz – and the music of innovative and controversial composers such as John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Edgar Varese. Mostly self-taught as a photographer, he did enroll briefly in night classes on the subject at UCLA, where he studied beginning photography with a young Eileen Cowin. His teachers were impressed with his talents and so he took that as a sign that he should begin to work professionally and, briefly thereafter, an image of his was published in BAM magazine.
Drawn into the burgeoning L.A. punk music scene beginning in 1978, Colver became a fixture at the clubs there and, nightly for nearly five years, the 6’4″ Colver and his camera were there to document the acts, the fans and their raw energy, taking photos (according to his site biography) “with black and white Kodak Tri-X film, a 35mm camera with a 50mm lens and ‘no fucking auto-focus.’ ” With his friend and fellow photographer Robert Hill, the pair had great fun snapping photos and then retreating to a dark room Colver had set up, spending days developing their film and making prints. In total, Edward photographed more than 1,000 area punk shows and capturing the essence of the cultural extremes that existed at the time in So. CA but, by early 1984, when thrash bands emerged on to the music scene, Colver quickly lost interest. He liked the “fun” that was part and parcel to the hardcore punk scene but, with that now gone, he quit covering the punk scene and took on other freelance photo jobs, including one with his friend Carlos Grasso, who was the art director for the MTV series titled I.R.S. Records Presets The Cutting Edge, where he’d shoot still photos of the happenings on the show’s set.
Since then, selections from his huge archive of photos from the era have been featured in hundreds of publications, including many books on the history of punk rock, in films such as American Hardcore and in a broad range of music packages. Keeping busy solely on the strength of his talent and industry connections (“he has never advertised, he does not solicit work and his phone number has always been unpublished”, according to his site), Colver’s work has been included in a number of exhibitions in galleries and museums around the world, most recently in shows such as “ROCK/FIGHT: A Photographic Exhibit” at the Morrison Hotel Gallery in Los Angeles (2013); “Too Fast to Live, Too Young to Die” at the Subliminal Projects Gallery in Los Angeles (2011); “The Eye of the LA Punk Scene” at the Hibbleton Gallery in Fullerton, CA (2010) and “Who Shot Rock & Roll: A Photographic History, 1955 to the Present”, a touring exhibition that opened at the Brooklyn Art Museum in October, 2009.
A book titled Blight at the End of the Funnel (published in 2006 by Last Gasp) serves both as catalog to Colver’s 25-year retrospective show at the Grand Central Art Center Gallery at Cal State Fullerton, and as an impressive compendium to his career. Today, he lives with his wife Karin (and a small collection of pets) in a 1911 Craftsman House in Los Angeles. Edward began collecting pottery, art, and furniture in the Arts & Crafts and Art Nouveau styles as a young man (featured prominently throughout his house) and has amassed a collection of vinyl records that today numbers in the many thousands.
More information on this artist is available at his website – http://edwardcolver.com/
George Condo – Notable album cover credits include – Phish – Story of the Ghost; Kanye West – My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (5 covers); Danny Elfman – Serenada Schizophrenia and The Danny Elfman & Tim Burton 25th Anniversary Box Set
(b. 1957 in Concord, NH, USA) Pursuing both his love of music (by studying guitar, lute and viola da gamba) and the visual arts, George Condo looked to further his knowledge in the areas of Art History and Music Theory by enrolling at the University of Massachusetts in Lowell (near Boston) and finding work in a silkscreen shop. While in the Boston area, George joined a band called The Girls (whose other members included an avant-garde musician and an abstract painter), releasing a single titled “Jeffrey I Hear You/Elephant Man” in 1979. When Jean-Michel Basquiat’s band Gray came to play in the area, Condo’s band opened for them and the two multi-talented artists began a close friendship. Encouraged by Basquiat to move to New York City to expand his opportunities in the art scene there, Condo left school for NY in 1980 and, soon after his arrival, he took on a series of jobs – including one in a gallery – and founded a new band called Hi Sheriffs of Blue.
One of his responsibilities at the gallery was to promote events there and, after artist Andy Warhol was impressed by a press release he’d read, he hired George to work as an in-house documentarian of daily life at Warhol’s Factory studio. Soon after, Condo’s talents as an artist were revealed and he was asked to help in the production of a series of prints titled “Myths”. After finishing his stint at the Factory several months later, George, along with Basquiat and another emerging East Village, NYC artist – Keith Haring – focused their efforts on developing a hybridized style of painting they called “Artificial Realism”, one which helped lead a revival in painting going forward (interestingly, a few years later, Warhol bought some Condo paintings at a show and, via their mutual friend Haring, were re-introduced, with Condo hoping at the time that Warhol wouldn’t recognize him as the kid he’d hired as studio help).
Condo moved to Paris in 1985 to be closer to the home of the many European Old Master painters and to enjoy life there, along with his buddy Basquiat. The two talents weren’t, on occasion, above expressing themselves with examples of adolescent behavior, such as the time they tossed a stink bomb into the Les Bains Douches nightclub and enjoying the view of the customers fleeing the stench that ensued. Working to improve upon his own unique style of painting and gaining wide acceptance for his talents outside the U.S., Condo stayed and painted in Paris for the next 10 years (after both Basquiat and Haring had tragically died), finally moving back to NYC’s upper East Side in 1995 with his wife (Anna, a film-maker) and his two children (Eleonore and Raphaelle), establishing his studio in a townhouse just a few blocks away from their own townhouse where he continues to work to this day.
Throughout his career, Condo has been asked to lecture on a variety of topics at many prestigious institutions including: Columbia, Harvard and Yale Universities, The Pasadena Art Center, San Francisco MOMA and The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. His work has been featured in countless magazine and book publications, including author William S. Burrough’s novella titled Ghost of Chance (Whitney Museum of Art, 1991) and books featuring his own paintings, such as George Condo: Existential Portraits (2006, Holzwarth Publications), George Condo: One Hundred Women by Stacey Schmidt (2005, Hatje Cantz Publishers) and George Condo: Mental States by Ralph Rugoff (2011, Hayward Publishing).
Condo’s paintings have been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions in galleries and museums since his first in 1983, including two Whitney Biennial shows (1987 and 2010) and a career-spanning retrospective titled “Mental States” which visited museums in the U.S. and Europe in 2011. His works are in the permanent collections of many museums including the Albright-Knox Museum, Buffalo, NY; The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY and The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY. He’s received many awards for his contributions to the arts as well, including one in 1999 from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, OMI International’s Francis J. Greenberger award in 2005, and the Annual Artist’s Award from the ArtsConnection organization in New York.
In 2000, director John McNaughton released a documentary film titled Condo Painting that tracked the artist’s year-long work on a painting titled Big Red and included footage of Condo’s collaborations with William S. Borroughs.
Updated information on this artist can be found at the Skarstedt Gallery (NYC/London) site at http://www.skarstedt.com/artists/george-condo/
Lee Conklin – Notable examples of album cover work – Santana – Santana (AKA – “Santana Lion”)
Lee Conklin was born July 24, 1941 in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, and grew up mostly in Monsey, New York. Lee’s dad was a house builder, his mom was a nurse and he was the youngest child in a family of three brothers and three sisters. Lee graduated from Spring Valley High School in 1959 and attended Calvin College in Grand Rapids Michigan for several years, where he studied philosophy and history and met his wife Joy. They lived in Florida for a while before Lee was drafted into the army where he served for a year as a cook in Korea and then. afterwards, moved to California.
In 1968 they found themselves in San Francisco during the ‘Summer of Love’ and Lee found work producing a series of posters for Bill Graham and the Fillmore, as well as for other promoters and venues. Since that time, they have lived in various parts of Northern California (with son Quinn and daughter Caitlin) and Lee is now a fulltime artist working out of his home studio in Columbia, California where he continues to create his incredibly-detailed works of poster art (which, according to Lee, he calls “New Age cheesecake”!). He once said that “I made it my mission to translate my psychedelic experience into paper. The afterglow was always the most creative time for me.”
Lee famously hand-drew the incredibly-detail pen-and-ink images he’s best known for but, once having tried his hand on computer-based drawing, he was hooked. On digital production techniques, he’s stated that “I think there may be a prejudice against digital media. It sounds so easy, ‘computer generated’ and it is true that now anyone can produce professional looking graphics. My challenge has always been to subvert the poster form to whatever my muse insists. No matter what the medium. I always resented the tedium of cutting overlays for colors. Colorizing is a lot more fun nowadays. The hard part of digital is all the choices available. It takes at least as much time for me to design a poster on PC as on paper. I feel lucky to have had it both ways”.
Conklin’s Fillmore posters remain amongst the most-popular with today’s poster collectors, a true testament to his talents. To see more of Lee Conklin’s current work, please visit his website at http://www.leeconklin.com
Brian Cooke – notable album cover credits include – Mott The Hoople – Wildlife; Clair Hamill – One House Left Standing; Amazing Blondel – Fantasia Lindum; John Martyn – Inside Out; Steve Miller – Miller/Coxhill; Various Artists – The Front Line; Tangerine Dream – Stratosphere;Tapper Zuki – Tapper Roots; Jethro Tull – Live; Michael Chapman – Life On The Ceiling; Stiff Little Fingers – HANX; Ken Lockie – Dance House
(b. July, 1947 in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, UK) Cooke’s interest in photography began at an early age when he began taking pictures of steam locomotives operating in the area and, at the age of 13, took on a part-time job at Crofts Photo Services in Scarborough. After attending primary/high schools in North Yorkshire, young Brian signed up to take photographic course work at the Hull College of Art from 1963-1966 and started his first job as a photographer at Walkers Studios, a local studio in his home town. On returning to Scarborough in late 1966, he added to his work load when he started to ‘roadie’ for a local group called The Mandrakes (whose singer was the not-yet-famous Robert Palmer), for which his brother played bass. It was not long before he took over the role of manager and photographed his band, along with others who played locally. Moving to Middlesbrough in early 1968 to work as a photographic technician and part-time lecturer at the Teeside College of Art (where he met a graphic esign student named Marylin, who would go on to become his wife a few years later), it was the work he did as a rock photographer that motivated him (and his new wife) to move to London in 1971, setting up their own studio that they called Visualeyes, Ltd.
His chum Robert Palmer introduced Brian to Island Records’ head honcho Chris Blackwell, who then hired Cooke to provide photo/design services for the label and, picking up additional work from other local record companies, Brian and Marylin’s portfolio soon expanded to include work for Mott The Hoople (Ian Hunter), Traffic (Steve Winwood), Vinegar Joe (Elkie Brooks & Robert Palmer), Fairport Convention and Roxy Music /Bryan Ferry (Brian recalls that his favorite album cover from this period is the one he created for John Martyn’s Inside Out, which was one of his first experimental covers using multiple images, silver masks and some very complicated instructions for the printer!).
In 1975 Visualeyes purchased a small photographic laboratory in London’s Covent Garden and relocated their operations there, expanding their service offerings for both local and international clients to include the volume reproduction of photographs for press and public relations and, for many years, Visualeyes would hold the position of London’s premier laboratory servicing the entertainment industry. In 1976, Brian partnered with fellow photographer/designer Trevor Key to form Cooke Key Associates, which became the design agency for Virgin Records (designing the famous Virgin logo, still in use today) and, over the years, earning design credits for hundreds of album covers/related imagery for Virgin and other companies, adding clients including Rory Gallagher, Jethro Tull, Mike Oldfield, Sparks, Tangerine Dream, Ten Years After and Peter Tosh. Working alongside designer Jamie Reid on projects for the Virgin-signed Sex Pistols, Brian and Trevor were invited to join the band on their infamous June 7, 1977 “Jubilee boat trip” on the Thames, having made a day-glo banner which they hung over the side of the boat.
In 1981 the Cooke Key partnership was disbanded and Brian joined the film union, taking on projects with film/video production companies taking “stills” with the two main partners deciding to concentrate on photography, rather than the management of designers that had become their daily chore. Brian joined the film union and concentrated on the taking of ‘stills’ during the shooting of film and video productions. Soon dissatisfied with the treatment of stills photographers, Brian resolved to take a more influential role in the production process and in 1985 he set up a film and video production company called Hotshot Productions with another long term friend, film and video director Doug Smith. While concentrating on film and video work, Brian still undertook photography for commercial clients, preferring to undertake commissions that allowed for a high degree of creative initiative.
In the mid-eighties a growing interest in computing took Brian into the field of electronic imaging. At first he established a slide bureau at Visualeyes, producing images for business presentations and expanding desktop publishing. A 1990 digital photo-printing project for ICI Image Data allowed him to apply all of his image-making talents to the table and the project was so well-received that it convinced him that digital imaging was the future for photographers. Over the next decade, Brian and his Visualeyes team would lead the way in digitally-based image making/processing/delivery services, with many notable photographers realizing the advantages and capabilities of partnering with this agency to produce and share their photo prints (e.g., in March, 1998, photographer Richard Hamilton worked with Brian to produce his first “giclee” prints). In 1995, Brian launched another company – Digital Asset Solutions – and developed an internet-based system called Photo Order that’s used by photo labs and photographers to enable online photo sales. The latest version of the Photo Order Internet software family is Photo Order Press, which is used by another of Brian’s companies – NewsPrints Ltd., launched in 2002 – to offer Photo Sales Marketing Systems to newspaper publishers. This allows newspapers such as The Telegraph, Independent, Guadian and many other content ownersto sell their news and archive pictures to a worldwide market.
More information on this artist is available on his web site at http://www.briancooke.com/
Michael Cooper – Notable album cover work examples – The Beatles – Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band; The Rolling Stones – Satanic Majesties Request
Michael Cooper (b. 1941 – d. 1973) was a British photographer who is best-remembered for his shot for The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (working with designer Peter Blake) and his lenticular image for the cover of Their Satanic Majesties Request for the Rolling Stones that same year (1967).
Via his relationship with London art dealer Robert Fraser, Cooper was introduced to the top personalities in the worlds of art, literature and music – many of whom became his clients – including Eric Clapton, Marianne Faithfull, Andy Warhol, David Hockney, William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg. Unfortunately, Cooper was swept up in the excesses that often accompanied these crowds and, in 1973, died of a heroin overdose.
His portfolio has been featured in a number of books, including Blinds and Shutters (1989), The Early Stones, Legendary Photographs of a Band in the Making 1963-73 (1993) and Michael Cooper: You Are Here – The London Sixties (1999). A retrospective exhibition of his photography was held at the Atlas Gallery, London in September, 2003. More information is available at – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Cooper_(photographer)
Anton Corbijn – notable album cover credits include – Depeche Mode – Songs of Faith and Devotion, Exciter and Sounds of the Universe; U2 – War, The Unforgettable Fire and The Joshua Tree; Bee Gees – One Night Only, Still Waters and Number Ones; Fine Young Cannibals – FYC; REM – Automatic For The People; Art of Noise – Who’s Afraid Of?
(b. May, 1955 in Strijen, the Netherlands) The son of a Dutch Reformed Church minister and a nurse, Anton Corbijn moved with his family from Strijen to Hoogland and then settled in Groningen where, in the early-1970s and, enamored with both music and photography, he borrowed a camera from his father to photograph local music events, including concerts by Solution and, later, local musician Herman Brood & His Wild Romance. Enrolling in an 18-month photography program at a local technical college in 1974, Corbijn moved to Amsterdam after graduation where worked as an assistant to rock photographer Gijabert Hanekroot and immersed himself into the burgeoning punk scene, taking on assignments for Dutch music magazine OOR until moving to London in 1979.
Working independently, his first regular commission was with the music weekly NME where, over the next 6 years, his images of musical acts were often featured on the front cover. During that time, he produced many well-known images of acts including U2, Joy Division, PiL, David Bowie, Captain Beefheart, Miles Davis, Depeche Mode and many others. He was also a regular contributor to the music/lifestyle monthly The Face. His repertoire grew to include assignments for album cover images (he’s done over 100 in his career), stage set designs and, beginning in 1983, the then-burgeoning field of music videos. While he worked primarily as a photographer on his early album cover assignments, he soon began to get more heavily involved in the designs when he felt that his photos were not being used to their best effect (as he puts it in a quote on his web site – ” I don’t advertise myself at all as a designer, it just floats in and out of what I am working on but it helps me understanding that element of communication more by doing it myself”).
After completing his run at NME in 1985, he added a number of clients in the publishing world, including Elle, Esquire and Rolling Stone and expanded his range of subjects to include other celebrities in entertainment and artistic fields. He had worked almost exclusively in black & white, finally moving into color photography in the late 1980s. His list of subjects includes a virtual “who’s who” in the world of celebrities, featuring shots of actors (Gerard Depardieu, Dennis Hopper, Robert DiNiro), directors (Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Quentin Tarantino), writers, models and many more top musicians. He’s produced over 60 music videos and won two MTV Music Video Awards in 1994 for his work on Nirvana’s Heart-Shaped Box.
Corbijn’s work has been included in literally hundreds of exhibitions around the world, both individual and group shows and retrospectives. Examples of these shows include The Cool & The Crazy Images of Punk group shows at the Govinda Gallery, Washington, DC and the Earl McGrath Gallery, New York in 1996, Anton Corbijn: Photographs of U2 at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, OH in 2003, a 2006 solo show at the Gallerie Lelong in Zurich and two retrospective shows in Russia Moscow and St. Petersburg in 2008.
Books of his work include Famouz (1989, with an accompanying exhibition that travelled to many stops in Europe and Japan), Strangers (1990), Allegro (1991), Grönemeyer, Photographien von Anton Corbijn (1993), Star Trak (1996), 33 Still Lives (1999), Stripping Girls (2000, with Marlene Dumas), Werk (2000), A. Somebody, Strijen, Holland (2002), Everybody Hurts (2003), U2 & I (2005), In Control (2008), Inside The American (2010), Inwards and Onwards (2011) and Waits (2012, featuring photos of Corbijn with his friend, musician Tom Waits).
The June 7, 2022 premiere of Corbijn’s documentary film – Squaring the Circle (The Story of Hipgnosis) – about the famed album cover design studio Hipgnosis (starring Roger Waters, David Gilmour, Nick Mason, Peter Gabriel, Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, Paul McCartney, Aubrey Powell, Noel Gallagher and others) was the recipient of a tremendous amount of positive press and overall fan excitement. For more information on this artist, please visit his website at http://www.corbijn.co.uk/
Ryan Corey – notable album package credits include – Eagles – Complete Greatest Hits, The Very Best of the Eagles and History of the Eagles; Electric Light Orchestra – Live, Zoom, Mr. Blue Sky: The Very Best of ELO and Wembley or Bust; Jeff Lynne/Jeff Lynne’s ELO – Long Wave and From Out of Nowhere; Donald Fagen – Morph The Cat; Vanilla Fudge – Box of Fudge; The Doobie Brothers – Live from the Beacon Theatre; Jerry Garcia – Garcia Live (series, Vols 1-9); Alice Peacock – Who I Am; Joe Cocker – Hymn for my Soul and Hard Knocks; Guns N Roses – Chinese Democracy; Christina Aguilera – Keeps Getting Better; Don Henley – The Very Best of Don Henley; Journey – Live in Manila; Cher – Closer to the Truth; Garbage – Strange Little Birds and Not Your Kind of People; Mudcrutch – 2; Joe Walsh – Analog Man; Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers – Hypnotic Eye; Dylan Gardner – Adventures in Real Time
(b. 1975 in Del Mar, California) Ryan was born and raised in Del Mar, California. He attended the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) and graduated in 2005 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Graphic Design. While he’d long been a fan of music industry-related design, it was an internship at the famed design firm SMOG Design while attending CalArts that would lead to a full-time gig doing this type of work after graduation (with his first project being The Very Best of the Eagles – a nice way to kick off a career, no?). During his 16+ years at Smog (he left in 2019 to work as a freelance designer), Ryan specialized in book design, music packaging, institutional communications and identity systems. In addition to his design skills, Ryan is also an accomplished type designer and illustrator, contributing fine typography and original artwork to many of his projects. His work has appeared in a number of industry publications including Step, I.D. and Communication Arts and has been included in a number of books on typography and graphic design. His work’s been recognized by the Art Director’s Club (winning a prestigious “Gold Cube” award from the group), has been included in the permanent collection of The UC Davis Design Museum and, in 2004, he received the prestigious Adobe Design Achievement Award from Adobe Systems. More information on this artist can be found on his LinkedIn page at https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-corey-4b117bab/
Ron Coro – Notable album cover credits include – Bob Dylan – Self Portrait and Blood On The Tracks; Don Henley – I Can’t Stand Still; Taj Mahal – Taj Mahal; Phil Everly – Living Alone; Billy Joel – Piano Man; Boz Scaggs – Silk Degrees; Tom Waits – Blue Valentine and Heartattack and Vine; The Byrds – The Notorious Byrd Brothers; The Cars – The Cars and Candy-O; Minnie Riperton – Adventures in Paradise; Cecilio & Kapono – Cecillio & Kapono; The Doors – Greatest Hits; Oregon – Out of The Woods; Loggins & Messina – Full Sail and On Stage
(b. April, 1946, Brooklyn, NY) Ron attended Art & Design High School in New York (graduating in 1963) and then the School of Visual Arts in New York, majoring in Advertising Graphic Design & Photography and graduating in 1967. First hired as a staff designer at Columbia Records, he rose through the ranks there, becoming Assistant Art Director in 1970 and moving to Los Angeles in 1972 to serve as West Coast Art Director for CBS Records. After 10 years with Columbia and its labels, he left to work as an Art Director with a hot design boutique called Gribbitt! until he was awarded a job heading the art department at Elektra/Asylum/Nonesuch Records in 1978, where he remained until early 1982. He then joined the staff of the acclaimed album cover design shop Rod Dyer Design as Senior Art Director, where worked on project through early 1984 before departing for a series of high-profile Art Director jobs at entertainment-based companies including Seiniger Advertising, Bacon-Reneric Design and the De Laurentis Entertainment Group, where he served as Executive Creative Director and produced a wide range of promotional materials.
Working through the early 1990s on projects in the advertising, theatrical/movie promotion and other entertainment arenas, Ron joined Saban Entertainment (best-known for their Power Rangers franchise) in 1995 as VP of Creative Services and oversaw the development and production of advertising and promotional materials and campaigns for the company’s TV and movie properties. After Saban, Coro entered into the world of academia, becoming an instructor at The Art Institute of Los Angeles where he worked develop the school’s graphic arts curricula and to train the next generation of students of the visual arts and design.
In 2005, Ron joined forces with three other music industry leaders to launch Chime Entertainment, a multi-media development, production, publishing and licensing company that worked with Warner Music to expand the careers of acts including Korn and Janet Jackson. Coro served as EVP and Creative Director there until his retirement in 2009. In appreciation of his many accomplishments throughout his career, Ron was honored with awards from a host of professional organizations, including the Art Directors Club of L.A., the Arts Society of L.A., the Society of Illustrators, the AIGA and the Printing Industries of America. He also won awards from a number of prestigious design and music industry publications including Rolling Stone Magazine, Creativity, Art Direction Magazine, CA Magazine and the Illustrators annuals. During his career, Coro and his crews were nominated for a total of eight Grammy Awards for album cover and packaging designs for musical acts including Leonard Bernstein/NY Philharmonic, Loggins & Messina, Boz Scaggs, The Cars, Oregon, Martin Mull, The Cats and Pieces of a Dream. He still lives in So. CA and is enjoying his retirement immensely. For more information on this artist, please visit – http://www.discogs.com/artist/1827260-Ron-Coro
Peter Corriston – Notable examples of album cover work include – Rod Stewart – Sing It Again, Rod; Led Zeppelin – Physical Graffiti; Badfinger – Ass; KISS – Dressed To Kill; The Rolling Stones – Tattoo You; Morning Dance – Spyro Gyra; Average White Band – Soul Searching and Person To Person
Based in the New York City area, designer/art director Peter Corriston has worked with a wide variety of artists (including fellow New Yorker Andy Warhol) and photographers (Fin Costello, Bob Gruen, Moshe Brakha and others) to produce award-winning designs for a broad range of music industry clients, including Pat Benatar, George Benson, Chick Corea, Mick Jagger, Jethro Tull, Led Zeppelin, the New York Dolls, Procol Harum, The Rolling Stones and Rod Stewart (among many others). Two of the four album covers he created for the Rolling Stones were quite controversial – Some Girls (co-created with Hubert Kretzschmar) made the press when it was first published using cut-outs of some pop culture figures (who weren’t happy to be on a Rolling Stones cover, thus causing the label to recall the original shipment and redesign the cover with replacement images) and Tattoo You (with photo by Kretzschmar), for which Corriston won a Grammy Award in 1981 for “Best Album Package”.
His work has been accepted into the permanent collection of the U.S. Library of Congress and he has received five Grammy nominations (including the one win). His expertise in dye cutting and print production has kept him busy, with recent examples of his work including the creation of a new branding package for Infinity Records and a series of designs he developed for the “Secret 7” fund-raising project, working with Universal Music UK and the Teenage Cancer Trust. A book was published by Duc in 2012 written by Oscar Sundara titled Peter Corriston.
More information available at – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Corriston
George Corsillo – notable album cover credits include – John Mellencamp – Words & Music, Rough Harvest, The Best That I Could Do, Chronicles, Mr. Happy Go Lucky, Big Daddy, Freedom’s Road and The Lonesome Jubilee; Luther Vandross – Busy Body, Give Me The Reason, The Night I Fell In Love and Any Love; Deep Purple – Perfect Strangers; Yoko Ono – Starpeace; The Runaways – The Best of The Runaways; Dolly Parton – 9 To 5 & Odd Jobs; Bon Jovi – Slippery When Wet; The Velvet Underground – Another View; Shalamar – Disco Gardens; Various Artists – Grease (Motion Picture Soundtrack)
(b. 1950 – ) George earned his BFA in Graphic Design from the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY and, after graduation, took a design job at Warner Communications’ Paperback Library, before moving on to the acclaimed Paul Bacon Studio (Editor’s note – over his 50-year career in design, Bacon has designed over 6500 book covers – including the covers for classic books including Portnoy’s Complaint, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Catch-22 and Slaughterhouse-Five, as well as over 200 jazz album covers for Blue Note and others). He served as Bacon’s assistant for three years until he was lured cross-country to a new position at the Gribbitt! Design Studio, working alongside other talented designers including Tim Bryant and Chris Whorf on record cover assignments for clients including Casablanca, Columbia, MCA, Motown and RCA Records.
Maintaining his contacts in the worlds of book publishing and music packaging, in the mid-1980s, George and his family moved back to the NYC area and opened a studio at 611 Broadway in Manhattan, coincidentally a studio previously belonging to artist Keith Haring and still displaying some of his work on the ceiling and walls of the space. Calling his business “Design Monsters”, Corsillo quickly accepted commissions to design the covers for the Warhol diary Famous For 15 Minutes and Less Than Zero by Brett Easton Ellis, followed by Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurty, Captains Outrageous by Joe R. Lansdale, Carrie Fisher’s Postcards From The Edge and Wired by Bob Woodward, among many others.
His client list on the music side of his business would grow to include acts such as Pat Benatar, Bon Jovi, Bob Dylan, the Eagles, Jefferson Starship and others, with two artists – John Mellencamp and Luther Vandross – working with George on nearly every one of their releases, as well as on ancillary items including tour books, merchandise and posters, set designs and music videos (e.g., he worked as the art director for Mellencamp’s 1991 feature film Falling from Grace). Moving his studio with partner Susan McCaslin from New York to the town of Westville (New Haven), CT, George and his team continue to produce a wide variety of impressive work in many areas, including web design and company logos/IDs.
You can see some of George’s work every Sunday, as he handles the colorizing of Garry Trudeau’s Doonesbury cartoon and also designs his cartoon books and posters. Examples of his work are included in books such as Doonesbury and the Art of G.B. Trudeau by Brian Walker (2010, Yale University Press) and the catalog that accompanied artist David Levinthal’s War Games exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery of Art and College of Art + Design in 2013.
For more information on this artist, please visit his web site at https://www.designmonsters.com/
David Costa – notable album cover credits include – Elton John – Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, Blue Moves, A Single Man, Reg Strikes Back and The One; George Harrison – All Things Must Pass (re-release), Concert For Bangladesh (re-release) Cloud Nine; ELO – Secret Messages; Traveling Wilburys – Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1 and Vol. 3; Jimi Hendrix – The Ultimate Experience (box set); Phil Collins – Dance Into The Light and Hits; The Who – Then & Now; Cream – The Very Best of Cream; Eric Clapton – From The Cradle, 24 Nights and Pilgrim; The Beatles – Let It Be…Naked and The Capitol Albums, Vol. 1; Steve Winwood – The Finer Things; Genesis – Turn It On Again: The Hits and Calling All Stations; Mark Knopfler – Golden Heart: Cat Stevens – The Very Best of Cat Stevens; Moody Blues – Time Traveler
(b. 1947 – U.K.) Born into a well-known show business family (his father was singer/radio celebrity Sam Costa), David Costa spent some of his formative years both studying fine arts at the University of East Anglia and commuting back and forth to London to partake in the opportunities afforded by the “swinging 60’s” lifestyle there. Beginning in the late 60s, Costa played guitar in a folk rock band called Trees (whose second album, titled On The Shore, featured an early album cover by Hipgnosis and was most recently sampled by Gnarls Barkley on the title track of their St. Elsewhere album) until, according to David, “I backed into the music design industry with an immense lie told under conditions of extreme poverty but, thankfully, believed enough by the great rock’n’roll art director Michael Ross and, thereafter, beginning somehow to perpetuate a career of mild distinction.”
In 1972, the aforementioned opportunity in the art department at Dick James Music (the publishing company who, with Brian Epstein, established Northern Songs Ltd. and administered the catalogs of the early Beatles and Elton John/Bernie Taupin) ultimately led to a sequence of many album sleeves for Elton John, initially collaborating on Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and subsequently – as art director at Rocket Records – art direction and design of several of his major albums over the years. Working to establish himself as a freelance designer, his first project was to re-design the label graphics for the UK arm of Warner Brothers Records.
Building a clientele outside of the music industry, Costa worked on a wide range of projects, including designs for re-launches of the Tina Brown-helmed Tatler magazine and The Field weekly newspaper, as well as covers and art direction for the Anglo-American literary publication Encounter.
In 1988, Costa established the Wherefore Art? design group, taking on a number of well-established clients in the music, book publishing and corporate worlds. Music industry projects have included packaging and merchandising designs for – as he quotes on his site, “…from Abba (kind of) to Zucchero (kind of)…”. Also included in his list of clients – The Travelling Wilburys, Steve Winwood, The Rolling Stones, The Moody Blues, Mark Knopfler, George Harrison, Genesis (the band) and Genesis Books (the fine art book publisher), Elton John, Phil Collins and The Beatles, along with many others.
Merchandising and tour book projects generated by the studio include projects for international artists such as The Rolling Stones, Beyonce, Destiny’s Child, Rihanna, Anastacia, The Spice Girls, Shakira, Shania Twain, Simon & Garfunkel, Take That, Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Police, and Alison Krauss and Robert Plant. In the book publishing world, Costa’s numerous projects have included Blinds and Shutters (the collection of photographer Michael Cooper’s work) and the 24 Nights fine art book (done with Sir Peter Blake) for Genesis Publications; Sometime In New York City (featuring Bob Gruen’s photography of John Lennon and Yoko Ono); Stuart, the biography of Stuart Sutcliffe; a limited-edition autobiography of the late Ravi Shankar titled Raga Mala, together with several monographs on the photography of Astrid Kirchherr, Bill Wyman and Gered Mankowitz. The team collaborated with The Beatles and Apple on the massive and award-winning The Beatles Anthology, as well as The Rolling Stones on projects including their 30- and 40-year retrospectives The Rolling Stones: A Life On The Road and Forty Licks.
Additional major retail books have included the exhaustive anthology Punk, Will The Circle Be Unbroken (in collaboration with the Country Music Hall of Fame), Martin Guitar Masterpieces (in association with the renowned manufacturer), No Direction Home, Robert Shelton’s original biography of Bob Dylan, and Starting at Zero, an assemblage by Jimi Hendrix in his own words begun in the 1990s and finally ready for publication Fall 2013.
Now based in Somerset, U.K., David’s more recent projects have included major limited-edition books celebrating Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run and the seminal photo sessions of Nick Drake, both for London’s Snap Galleries. Costa was also brought in to direct and design the book for the projected This Is It concert series for the late Michael Jackson in London which, sadly, was then hastily reworked to become the memorial book to accompany his funeral. He continues to work with Elton John, recently completing the substantial souvenir book to accompany his Million Dollar Piano shows in Las Vegas. David has also partnered with renowned photographer Gered Mankowitz to produce a series of limited-edition art prints based on Mankowitz’s archive of well-known rock and roll images.
For more information on this artist, please visit his website at – http://www.whereforeart.com/
Fin Costello – Notable album cover examples – Deep Purple – Made In Japan, Who Do We Think We Are and Burn; Manfred Mann – Solar Fire; Uriah Heep – Sweet Freedom; Rainbow – Richie Blackmore’s Rainbow and Rising; Twisted Sister – Under The Blade
Photographer Fin Costello was born in Glenamaddy in Galway on the Western shore of Ireland and moved to London when he was 19 where he worked as a sailmaker. He took up photography as a hobby in the mid-1960s and, discovering that he had a passion for it and the skills to match, began to shoot for editorial clients in the sports and music fields. His “big break” came in 1971 when he was asked to shoot a concert by the then-unknown band Argent. His photos were used for the band’s packaging and he soon was invited to photograph bands including Deep Purple, Uriah Heep and Rainbow. As his reputation grew, his client roster grew as well to include many pop, hard rock and metal bands, including Steve Winwood, Rush, KISS, Aerosmith, Judas Priest, Ozzy Osbourne, Whitesnake, Duran Duran, Twisted Sister, The Boomtown Rats and Status Quo. His photos have been included in many magazines, books and exhibitions, including a multi-media exhibition featuring 75 iconic rock photos he co-curated with musician/artist Tom Rogers titled “Pictures in Rock”. More information on the photographer is available at – https://www.facebook.com/pages/category/Photographer/Fin-CostelloPictures-in-Rock-719292074947658/
Marc Cozza – notable album cover credits include – UFO – The Essential UFO; Frank Sinatra – Sings His Greatest Hits and Special 3-CD Collection; Gang Starr – Step In The Arena and Hard To Earn; Five For Fighting – Message For Albert; Red Hot Chili Peppers – What Hits!? and Holiday Gift Pack; Von Groove – Von Groove; Black 47 – Black 47 and Fire Of Freedom; Paul Carrack – One Good Reason; The Specials – The Singles Collection
Past Art Director at Chrysalis/EMI Records; Past Partner at C.M.O.N. design studio; Past Principal at ME Cozza Studio; Past Art Director at Nike; Past Creative Director at Sandstrom Partners; Partner/Creative Director at CO Projects. Recent projects include designs for Ellington, Newman’s Own, Ann Sacks, SNL: The Game and Microsoft/ X Box
A more-complete biography about this artist will be posted soon. More information on this artist is available via his web site at http://www.co-projects.net
Brian Cross (AKA “B+” or “B Plus”) – notable album package credits include – Q-Tip – Amplified; Damian Marley – Welcome To Jamrock; The Pharcyde – Runnin’; House of Pain – Legend; DJ Shadow – Endtroducing… and Reconstructed; Madlib – Shades of Blue; Warren G – Take a Look Over My Shoulder; Blackalicious – Nia and Blazing Arrow; Company Flow – Little Johnny From The Hozpital; Mos Def – Black on Both Sides; Jurassic 5 – Quality Control; Dilated Peoples – Expansion Team
(b. 1966 in Limerick, Ireland) After earning a degree in painting from the National College of Art & Design in Dublin, Ireland in 1989, Brian moved to Los Angeles, CA to both continue his education (at Cal Arts) and immerse himself in the hip-hop scene there. A school project about the West Coast hip-hop scene titled It’s Not About A Salary: Rap, Race and Resistance impressed publisher Verso Books, who published a book by the same title in 1993 to much critical acclaim. According to Brian’s site, “His first album cover work was for the Freestyle Fellowship (Inner City Griots). Since then, he has done an estimated one hundred more for artists from Mos Def, Rza, Cappadonna, Q-Tip, Eazy E, Los Super Seven, Long Beach Dub All-Stars, Ozomatli, Jurrassic 5, Dialated Peoples, DJ Shadow, Company Flow, Blackalicious, Money Mark, David Axelrod, South Central Cartel, Warren G, Yusef Lateef, Madlib, J Dilla, Build an Ark, Cut Chemist, Damian Marley and Yesterday’s New Quintet.” Brian has worked as the photo editor/contributor to LA’s Rap Pages magazine (once owned by Hustler publisher Larry Flynt) and served in the same capacity for the renowned Wax Poetics music/art publication from 2004 to 2010.
He began to apply his visual talents to other media in 1997 when he partnered with photographer/producer/DJ Eric Coleman to form the Mochilla production company, which expanded into music videos, films and other commercial work. Cross was the director of photography for the 2010 Academy Award–nominated documentary – directed by elusive artist Banksy and starring some of the most-infamous street artists (Shepard Fairey, Invader and Banksy himself) – Exit Through the Gift Shop and has produced/directed several other widely-acclaimed films. In 2017, the University of Texas Press published Ghostnotes: Music of the Unplayed, a “mid-career retrospective of the world’s preeminent hip-hop/rap photographers which offers a unique visual mix tape of hip-hop artists, producers, and record dealers from the West Coast to the global African musical diaspora”. Photos included portraits of a wide range of subjects, including George Clinton, J Dilla, the Notorious BIG, Leon Ware and Brian Wilson, among others. Working with curator/historian Vikki Tobak, in 2018 B+’s early hip hop photos were included in a book they called Contact High: A Visual History of Hip-Hop, and the next year, the book served as the basis of a full-bore museum exhibition by the same title staged at the Annenberg Space for Photography in Los Angeles. Eager to share his skills and passion for his work with the next generation of artists, Brian also works as an Associate Professor in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of California, San Diego.
More information on this artist can be found on his web site at https://bplus.photography/
Robert Crumb – Notable album cover work examples – Big Brother & The Holding Company – Cheap Thrills; Earl Hooker – There’s A Fungus Among Us; Blind Boy Fuller – Truckin’ My Blues Away
Born in Philadelphia, PA in August, 1943 and, as the son of a career Marine, Robert and his family moved often, settling in Delaware after his father’s retirement in 1956. A loner in school, he started developing his drawing talent co-producing comic books with his older brother Charles and, a year after graduating high school, he moved to Cleveland, OH to live with a friend, finding production work at American Greetings Corporation. Within a year, he was promoted to commercial illustrator and drew hundreds of cards over the next few years. He met and married his first wife in 1964, staying in Europe for six months and mailing in his illustration work while he was away.
After a short breakup with his wife, Robert began experimenting with the psychedelic substances becoming popular at the time and travelled the U.S., making stops in New York, Chicago and Detroit and developing some of his best-known characters. In early 1967, he left Cleveland for San Francisco (soon followed by his wife) and settled in the Haight-Ashbury area of the city. He began to draw the first issues of his Zap “underground” comic books, selling them on the street and, in early 1968, birthing his son, Jesse. Notice of his talents began to spread and, in late 1969, he was offered a large advance to pen a book based on his “Fritz the Cat” character. He used the money to purchase a plot north of San Francisco and, in 1970, licensed that character to animator Ralph Bakshi for use in a feature film. Unhappy with the resulting output, he killed off Fritz in a comic book. Crumb kept busy for the next few years by drawing and travelling, but his personal life went through a number of changes – he left his wife for a new girlfriend – Aline Kominsky, who’d go on to become his second wife – and stopped smoking pot, turning to music instead for pleasure and playing banjo and mandolin in a Bay area band. In 1974, he began producing a comic strip for The Village Voice based on his “Mr. Natural” character. By 1981, he started a new comic magazine titled Weirdo that featured both his work and that of other comic artists. His daughter (with Aline) Sophie was also born around this time and, as he wanted to focus his time and attention on his own comics, he gave up his job editing Weirdo and later published the first of his Hup 1-4 series.
As the 1980s turned into the 1990s, the Crumb family decided that they’d had enough of the American life-style and exchanged some of his artwork for a house in the south of France, where they continue to live to this day (with his collection of 5000 78-RPM records). His life has been the subject of film (The Confessions of Robert Crumb, Comic Book Confidential and Crumb) and an exhibition built around his fully-illustrated book of Genesis has toured museums in the U.S. and Europe. He was inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 1991 and his works were featured in the Masters of American Comics exhibition at the Jewish Museum in NYC in 2006. While many books of his artwork have been published over the years, one of the most-comprehensive collections of his work – in 17 volumes of comics and 10 volumes of sketchbooks – was released by Fantagraphics. He remains a regular contributor to Mineshaft Magazine.
Biographical information excerpted from Mr. Crumb’s bio on – www.crumbproducts.com
Jim Cummins – notable album cover credits include – Wilson Pickett – Hey Jude and Don’t Knock My Love; Sam & Dave – I Thank You and The Very Best of Sam & Dave; Skinny Puppy – Too Dark Park and Spasmolytic; Aretha Franklin – Aretha in Paris
(b. 1944, New York, NY, USA) Photographer Jim Cummins’ album packaging-related work from the late 1960s through the early 1980’s include credits on (according to the artist) over 900 record albums. His record label clients included Atlantic Records, Capitol Records, Columbia Records, London Records, Mercury Records, Savoy Records and Springboard Records. In addition to the credits listed above, Jim’s photographs are seen on records by a “who’s who” of great rock, jazz and pop legends including Louis Armstrong, Chuck Berry, James Brown, Glen Campbell, Eric Clapton, Miles Davis, The Doors, Ella Fitzgerald, Roberta Flack, Jimi Hendrix, B.B. King, Led Zeppelin, Madonna, Buddy Miles, The Rolling Stones, Sly & The Family Stone, The Tempations, The Who and many, many others.
More information on this artist is available at http://cumminscollection.imagefortress.com/
Kevin Cummins – notable album package credits include – Morrissey – My Early Burglary Years, Your Arsenal and CD Singles, Vol. 2: 1991-1995; Lloyd Cole – In New York: Collected Recordings 1988 – 1996; The Jam – The Gift; Gene – The Albums; Buzzcocks – Another Music in a Different Kitchen, Love Bites, A Different Kind of Tension and Product; Joy Division – Unknown Pleasures and Best of Joy Division; Pretenders – Pretenders II; New Order – Power Corruption & Lies; The Fall – I Am Kurious Oranj; X-Ray Spex – Obsessed With You; The Birthday Party – Hits; Smashing Pumpkins – Mellon Collie & The Infinite Sadness; Michael Hutchence – Michael Hutchence; Manic Street Preachers – Forever Delayed; Various Artists – Caught Beneath the Landslide
(b. August, 1961 in Manchester, U.K.) After completing his formal education in photography at the area’s Salford college, Kevin dove headfirst into shooting the burgeoning local punk music scene. He expanded his portfolio via his coverage of performances at the city’s prestigious Royal Exchange Theatre and, according to his site bio, he “was soon in demand by major theatre companies across the UK, most notably The Royal Opera House, The Royal Northern Ballet, The Liverpool Playhouse, The Oxford Playhouse and The National Theatre in London.”
A proud Mancunian, Kevin was part of the team that establish the city’s City Life guide , Manchester’s ‘what’s on’ guide and was a founding contributor to The Face, the influential London style magazine founded by British journalist Nick Logan (and later home of another well-known contributor to record sleeve design, Neville Brody). Since moving to London in 1987, Kevin has contributed to many major UK publications (including Elle, Esquire, The Guardian, Maxim, Mojo, The Observer, Q, The Times, Vogue and many others) and spent 10 years as the chief photographer for the New Musical Express rock weekly, where his award-winning pictures provided the world with an insider’s view of the rise of the “Madchester”/Acid House and “Cool Britannia” scenes.
Since that time, Kevin has continued to be one of the world’s most in-demand music/portrait photographers, with his work being featured in and on scores of museum/gallery shows (examples include The Crucial 30. for The Hard Day’s Night Gallery in Liverpool, UK; Rock ‘n’ Roll at the Portland Museum of Art in Portland ME; Who Shot Rock ‘n’ Roll: A Photographic History 1955 – Present at NYC’s Brooklyn Museum and its touring show as well; See This Sound (Lentos Art Museum, Linz, Austria) and a career retrospective at the Centro Cultural Borges in Buenos Aires, Argentina, among many others), publications, record packages and several books, including The Smiths and Beyond (published by Vision On in March 2002); a 2008 limited-edition monograph of his photos of Joy Division (published by To Hell With Publishing and selling out prior to publication); Faber and Faber’s 2009 400-page book of Kevin’s photos titled Manchester: Looking For The Light Through The Pouring Rain; and several more on subjects such as New Order, Mick Jagger, Joy Division, Morrissey and the Manic Street Preachers. More recently, in 2020 a limited-edition book of Kevin’s photos of artefacts left on the late singer Ian Curtis’ grave (Memento Mori) was published and several new books on Joy Division, Mark E. Smith and The Fall, T-Rex’s Marc Bolan and 90’s British rock bands were all set to hit bookshelves (and web sites).
More info on this artist is available on his web site at http://www.kevincummins.co.uk/
Peter Curzon – notable album cover credits include – Blinker The Star – August Everywhere; Audioslave – Audioslave; Alan Parsons – A Valid Path and On Air; The Mars Volta – Frances The Mute; Pink Floyd – The Dark Side Of The Moon, Wish You Were Here, The Wall and Pulse; Anthrax – Stomp 442; 10cc – Mirror Mirror; The Cranberries – Wake Up & Smell The Coffee; Megadeth – Rude Awakening; The Offspring – Splinter; O.A.R. – Stories Of A Stranger; Umphrey’s McGee – Safety In Numbers; Ween – The Mollusk; Dream Theater – Once in a LIVEtime; MUSE – Black Holes & Revelations Past Designer at DesignKB Studio; Past Designer at Hipgnosis; Designer at StormStudios and Peter Curzon Design. Books include Eye Of The Storm: The Album Graphics of Storm Thorgerson (1999) and For The Love Of Vinyl: The Album Art of Hipgnosis (2008). A more-complete biography about this artist will be posted soon.
More information on this artist is available via his web sites at http://www.petercurzon.com and http://stormstudiosdesign.com/resume/
Merri Cyr – notable album cover credits include – Jeff Buckley – Grace/The Grace EPs, Sketches For My Sweetheart The Drunk and So Real: Songs From Jeff Buckley; Kim Richey – Glimmer; Faun Fables – Mother Twilight; Jen Chapin – Revisions: The Songs of Stevie Wonder and Ready; Cindy Bullens – Somewhere Between Heaven & Earth; Paula Cole – Amen; Sponge – Playlist: The Very Best of Sponge
(b. 1964) Merri’s life adventures in the Arts began when she was a teenager, leaving her childhood home in Adamsville, RI and heading to New York City to compete in a modeling contest, which she handily won and was subsequently photographed by famed photographer Richard Avedon. Her portfolio led to modeling assignments in New York and Paris, with these jobs feeding her fascination in the behind-the-scenes work of the crews that worked in fashion photography. Taking up the camera herself, she began to formally study photography at NYC’s Pratt Institute, ultimately earning a Bachelors of Fine Arts there in 1986.
Upon graduation, she began a career as a freelance photographer, taking on assignments for clients in the record industry and editorial publications, including fashion/lifestyle/entertainment indie magazine Paper, where she received an assignment to shoot photos for an article on a young musician named Jeff Buckley. The results of this photo shoot (and Buckley’s subsequent fame) served to launch Merri’s career as a photojournalist into greater heights and, since that time, she’s built an impressive portfolio of clients in and outside of the music business, with over 80 record cover credits and portraits taken of figures in many different musical genres, from guitarist Dick Dale, punk rock pioneers The Ramones, glam rock staples New York Dolls, indie bands including Ra Ra Riot and TV On The Radio, singer/songwriters Tracey Chapman and Suzanne Vega, hip-hop and rap acts Da Brat and Diggable Planets, Brand Nubian, Fountains of Wayne, Philip Glass and many others. Clients include Apple, Bang Magazine, Columbia Records, Deutsche Grammophon, Elektra Records, Entertainment Weekly, Maverick, Mercury, Mojo, Paper, People, Q, Rolling Stone, Sony Classical, Vox, Warner Brothers and many others.
Her photos have been included in exhibitions in the U.S., U.K. and Australia and, more recently, Merri has entered the world of photo-blogging with, as she states on her web site, a blog she titled “30 Second Portrait” which features, as the title would infer, portraits she’s staged/shot in 30 seconds or less. A Jeff Buckley photo book titled A Wished-For Song, Portrait of Jeff Buckley, which includes over 300 photos of Buckley, along with a series of interviews she conducted with the late artist, was published in 2002. Now based in Brooklyn, NY, Merri also teaches at the International Center of Photography in NYC.
For more information on this artist, please visit her web site at http://www.merricyr.com/
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