Artist Biographies – Sorted by Last Name – G – I
G –
Chris Gabrin – notable album cover credits include – Elvis Costello – My Aim Is True, This Year’s Model and The Very Best of Elvis Costello; Ian Dury – New Boots & Panties!! and Do It Yourself; The Radiators – Cockles & Mussels: The Very Best of the Radiators; The Searchers – The Searchers; Buzzcocks – Love Bites and Another Music In A Different Kitchen; The Cure – Staring At The Sea: The Singles
(b. U.K.) Studied photography at Bournemouth & Poole College of Art (in Poole, U.K.), graduating in 1970. Worked for photographer John Garrett for several years, leaving in 1975 to build his own photo studio in the Camden Town area of London and set out as a freelancer. Met owners of Stiff Records and was hired to shoot majority of the label’s acts, including Elvis Costello, The Damned, Ian Dury, Nick Lowe and others. Expanded practice to include work for U.S. record labels as well, working with Blondie, The Buzzcocks, The Stranglers, George Thorogood & The Destroyers and many more. On a number of these projects, Gabrin worked alongside designer Barney Bubbles. With the advent of the music video in the early 1980s, Gabrin worked to expand he and his studio’s capabilities in order to take advantage of the opportunities in that area.
Music videos he’s directed include – John Mellencamp – Little Pink Houses and Tumblin’ Down; Culture Club – Time and Church Of The Poisoned Mind; Quiet Riot – Party All Night; Pat Benatar – Painted Desert; The Cure – The Hanging Garden and Wham! – Wham! Rap. Chris also directed and co-directed a number of episodes of the popular 1980s Channel 4 (U.K.) rock music studio show (hosted by Jules Holland) titled The Tube, which featured performances by both established musical acts (Clapton, Simply Red, The Cure, etc.) and emerging talent of the day (a-ha, Spandau Ballet, Julian Cope and others).
Other TV/film work included directing Number (starring Dennis Waterman, Glynn Edwards and Rula Lenska) in 1986 and The Laughing Prisoner (a spoof on the popular Prisoner series) in 1993. He also directed the “year in the life” documentary on popular 80s act Level 42 titled Fait Accompli: Onstage Offstage Backstage. Since that time, Gabrin’s photography has been included in a number of publications and museum/gallery exhibitions.
His fine art photography is represented by Snap Galleries in London – http://www.snapgalleries.com/photographers/chris-gabrin/
David Gahr – notable album cover credits include – Bob Dylan – The Essential Bob Dylan and Love & Theft; Joan Baez – In Concert Part 1 & 2 and Farewell, Angelina; Laura Nyro – New York Tendaberry; George Thorogood & The Destroyers – Move It On Over; Van Morrison – Bang Masters; Firefall – Essentials and Greatest Hits; Gregg Allman – No Stranger To The Dark; Tom Paxton – Outward Bound; Pete Seeger – Folk Songs For Young People; Rufus Wainwright – Rufus Wainwright; Ministry – With Symphany; Bruce Springsteen – The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle; Janis Joplin – In Concert; Billy Joel – Cold Spring Harbor; Miles Davis – A Tribute To Jack Johnson
(b. September, 1922 in Milwaukee, WI, USA; d. May, 2008) Although he had earned an advanced degree in Economics from the Univ. of Wisconsin, after returning to the States after his stint in Europe during World War II, he found work in a record store in NYC where he met many talented musicians and, as a hobby, took their photos. As time went on, he realized that he had both the passion and the talent to begin a career as a professional photographer and, in 1958, he took on his first assignments, shooting album cover images for artists including Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan for Moses Asch at Folkways Records.
As the folk music scene in New York City grew in the early-mid 1960s, Gahr was in the right spot at the right time, being on hand to photograph both established and emerging stars. Gahr’s photos of Bob Dylan at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival served as documents to the emergence of folk/rock, while his shots of Joan Baez, Johnny Cash, Judy Collins, Buddy Guy, Emmylou Harris, Phil Ochs, Odetta, Tom Paxton, Pete Seeger, Mary Travers and Junior Wells, among many others, provided his music industry and editorial clients (inc. Crawdaddy, Life and Time magzines) with memorable illustrations of the most-popular acts playing the city’s clubs and larger music venues.
In addition to his music-related work, Gahr was commissioned by several national publications to take portraits of iconic talent in the fine art and entertainment worlds, with shots of Salvador Dali, Willem de Kooning, Jasper Johns, Georgia O’Keeffe, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenberg and others featuring prominently in his porfolio. Other artists photographed by Gahr for magazine and book covers include Miles Davis, John Lee Hooker Janis Joplin, John Lennon, Arthur Miller, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, Laura Nyro, Dolly Parton, Bruce Springsteen and Muddy Waters.
In 1968, David released his own impressively-illustrated book covering the folk music scene in the U.S. titled The Face of Folk Music (published by Citadel Press and written by Robert Shelton). With writers Paul Nelson and Tony Glover, Gahr released The Festival Songbook in 1973, an illustrated songbook. His photos have been included in solo and group exhibitions world-wide, including multiple shows at the Morrison Hotel Gallery, Staley-Wise Gallery and Museum of Modern Art in NYC and the Who Shot Rock & Roll travelling photo exhibition that was staged in museums throughout the U.S. from 2009 to 2012. In 2014, the US Postal Service released a new “Forever” stamp in their “Music Icons” series that featured a colorized version of one of Mr. Gahr’s B&W photographs taken in 1970 of the late Janis Joplin.
More information on this artist is available at his web site – http://www.davidgahr.com/
Jeff Gaither – notable album cover credits include – Hirax – Assassins of War and Noise Chaos War; Various Artists – Panther: A Tribute to Pantera and Thrash Of The Titans 2; Agoraphobic Nosebleed – Altered States of America; The Strap-Ons – $4 Whore and Punk On Punk Crime; Lucid Nation – Public Domain: The Best of Lucid Nation; Death Therapy – Forward To Death; Low Twelve – This Side Toward Enemy; My Own Victim – Leadhead; Lazarus – Loud & Hairy; Electric Frankenstein – Already Dead
(b. 1960 in Louisville, KY, USA) Raised (actually, “Hell-raised”, according to his site bio) in Louisville, KY, Jeff Gaither was exposed to art at an early age, as both his mother LaDonna, and his Aunt Linda were “always drawing, painting, involved in theater or other art in some form or fashion.” His aunt also shared her fascination with young Jeff of horror movies, taking him to films such as The Exorcist and Night of the Living Dead and buying him copies of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine. However, it was an intensely personal event – a savage attack on his mother and his aunt by his estranged step-father when Jeff was 12 years old – that seemingly stoked in him a pre-occupation with all things dark, bloody and macabre.
While his artistic talents took a while to develop, his love of horror and true crime materials continued to expose him to the skills of the artists that contributed imagery to publications/films in those areas and, in the early 1980s, Gaither found himself working for an artist named Ed “Big Daddy” Roth, who shared Jeff’s love of the grotesque, creating artwork featuring wild creatures and designs for custom cars in which these creatures would ride. One creature, named “Rat Fink”, would gain world-wide attention and, during the five years Jeff worked with Roth, he learned much about custom design, drawing, sculpture and the marketing of such mind-bending products.
Since that time, working as an independent artist, Jeff has applied his talents to the design and illustration of hundreds of recordings, along with band merchandise, posters, skateboard decks, etc. He expanded the scope of his work to include covers/illustrations for publications including Wired, Velocity, The LEO Weekly, The World of Fandom, Art? Alternatives, Louisville Music News, the Louisville Courier-Journal and, for over 10 years, he created the official poster for the annual Forecastle Music Festival, which is also where he met his now-wife Stacey, a festival staffer.
He tends to work late at night, and alone, and still fancies himself an expert in serial killer history, involvong himself in the annual “true crime” fiction and art convention called Dark History and being featured in a 2014 documentary by film-maker John Borowski titled Serial Killer Culture that features interviews with artists, musicians and collectors of serial-killer-related art and memorabilia.
Over the years, his work has also been featured in books (such as the 2004 book Art of Modern Rock: The Poster Explosion), set designs for seasonal productions by the Salvation Army and in gallery shows in Kentucky, New York, Philadelphia and Los Angeles.
More about this artist is available on his website at http://www.jeffgaither.com/index.html
Geoff Gans – notable album cover credits include (5X Grammy nominee) – Various Artists – Monterey International Pop Festival (nom); Various Artists – Songs of the West (nom); Aretha Franklin – Soul ’69, Live At Fillmore West and Queen Of Soul: The Atlantic Recordings (nom); Frank Zappa – Beat The Boots (nom); Edgar Winter – Collection; Gary Glitter – Rock’n’Roll: The Best of Gary Glitter; The Monkees – Listen To The Band; NRBQ – Message For The Mess Age; Richie Havens – Cuts To The Chase; Iron Butterfly – Heavy and Metamorphosis; The Velvet Underground – Loaded; Paul Simon – Graceland and Live In New York City; Credence Clearwater Revival – Willy & The Poor Boys, Green River, Bayou Country and Cosmo’s Factory; R.E.M. – Eponymous; Bob Dylan – Love Sick, Things Have Changed, Masked And Anonymous, Dylan and The Bootleg Series, Vols. 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10
(b. 1961, California, USA) Like so many successful album cover artists, designer/musician Geoff Gans began his career in the graphic arts in So. California creating posters and related imagery for his own band as well as other local bands. In the mid-1980s, his work was noticed by the local “underground” newspaper – the L.A. Reader – who offered Geoff a job as a designer and then art director for the paper, where he stayed until he was snatched up by Miles Copeland’s I.R.S. Records, a major indie label who was in need of someone with Geoff’s obvious talents to serve as the head of their art department.
Working with his I.R.S. team on a host of label projects for the next 10+ years, Gans then moved on to his last “corporate” job – that as the Creative Director for archival re-issue powerhouse Rhino Entertainment – where he was responsible for the design of all packaging and marketing graphics for the company and its long roster of clients. Notable projects he produced during this period include The Lost Lennon Tapes (based on the long-running radio/music documentary series of the same name) and the Grammy-nominated Monterey International Pop Festival package.
In 1997, Geoff broke off to work on his own as an independent designer/art director, working for a number of happy label customers including Arista, Capital, Contemporary, MCA, Motown and many others. In 2009, Gans joined forces with noted printing/packaging specialist Gary Gonzales and co-founded a company they call Rare Cool Stuff Unltd. which, according to their site, “specializes in consulting, creating and producing top-quality books and packages of rare, cool art, music, photography, video and more.” The client list for their design-meets-ecological music packaging solutions includes musical acts (Bob Dylan, John Fogerty/CCR, Paul Simon, etc.), music and book publishing companies and music/art-related publishers and galleries. Their first project was to produce a limited-edition coffee table book documenting the history of the artwork featured on releases of the NY-based jazz label Prestige Records titled Prestige Records: The Album Cover Collection (pub. 2009, Concord Music Group).
Other books featuring Geoff’s artwork and designs include One Love: Life With Bob Marley & The Wailers by Lee Jaffe & Roger Steffens (2003, W.W. Norton & Co.) and R.E.M. – Talk About The Passion by Denise Sullivan (1998, De Capo Press). In addition to the five noted Grammy Nominations, Gans won an ALEX Award (a music industry packaging honor) in the “Best Vinyl Package” category in 2009 for his work on Bob Dylan: Rolling Thunder (client – Classic Records). The package – a three-LP boxed set – featured (in addition to the records) a 7″ blue vinyl single, a 70-plus page perfect bound 12″ x 12″ book, a reproduction of the original tour poster, two show tickets and a hand bill.
More information on this artist is available at his web site – http://www.rarecoolstuff.com/gansdesign.html
Joe Garnett – notable album cover credits include – The Doors – Full Circle; Captain Beyond – Captain Beyond; Grand Funk Railroad – Phoenix; Deep Purple – Stormbringer; Seals & Crofts – Sudan Village; Spirit – Son of Spirit; New Riders of the Purple Sage – Oh, What A Mighty Time; Dave Mason – Split Coconut; Loggins & Messina – Full Sail; Percy Faith – Black Magic Woman; Aretha Franklin – Sparkle; Bloodrock – Live; It’s A Beautiful Day – It’s A Beautiful Day at Carnegie Hall; REO Speedwagon – This Time We Mean It
Born in Plainview, TX, Joe was one of five children and got his start as an artist around the age of two, “scribbling on books and walls”, with art as a way of getting attention in a large family. His alcoholic father left when Joe was 11, but a local philanthropist who’d been impressed with the boy’s work stepped in and paid for his enrollment at the age of 13 in the Famous Artists Course correspondence school . Although he was less-than-interested in his regular public school work, he was able to enroll in a program that let him attend school for half the day and work at a job as a sign painter in town the rest of the day.
After completing his correspondence school coursework at 17 and graduating high school, Garnett enrolled in courses at Texas Tech University and took on a job as an artist for a local advertising agency, learning that although painting was his first love, commercial work was going to pay the bills. He continued his art studies at the Chicago Art Institute, worked a while in Detroit and then moved to Los Angeles in 1965 to complete his studies at the Chouinard Art Institute (now part of the California Institute of the Arts). He met his first wife, another art student, while in school and they married six months after graduating.
In the early 1970s, Joe became the first staff illustrator at the Pacific Eye & Ear design studio, working on projects for a number of music industry clients and, 18 months later, had built up a strong-enough reputation that he felt he would be able to establish his own freelance practice. He approached A&M Records with his portfolio and was immediately given work and, as word spread about his talents, he was given new commissions by music clients at Capitol, Columbia and Warner Bros. Records, automotive clients including Chevrolet, Honda and Toyota and various movie studios, creating movie posters for the films Diner, the Burt Reynold’s hit Hooper and Monty Python’s Life of Brian.
When Charlie Chaplain returned to the United States for a final farewell, A&M Records (which was located on the site of the former Chaplain Studios) commissioned Joe to design a flag featuring Chaplain’s face that would fly over the studio during his visit. With his reputation riding high (with one-man shows of his art in galleries in LA and Canada), Joe admitted that he’d become a bit arrogant, started drinking seriously and began offending clients “who wouldn’t bow down to him”. With changes taking place in the music industry (i.e., younger talent coming in) and his relationships with his clients souring when he started demanding his original works back, his career quickly spiraled downward. Fighting alcoholism and depression, Joe hospitalized himself and gave up drinking, but it was too late to save his marriage and what remained of his career and, since painting reminded him of the darker side of his personality, he gave that up as well.
In 1993, he moved back to Plainview, TX to take care of his ailing mother and, unable to get work in advertising, first took on work waiting tables at a local restaurant, then as an aircraft repairman/painter and later got a job as a jailer for 3 years at the Floyd County Jail. While later working as a security guard in a meat-packing plant, the creative part of Joe’s personality could not be suppressed and so he took to writing poetry, publishing a book of his poems and, getting pleasure from that effort, he reluctantly returned to art, realizing then that it could bring him joy instead of pain. He began reading the books by philosophers (most notably, Carl Jung) and on spirituality and, in doing so, learned to deal with his demons. He married a childhood friend of his sister’s, Ethelyn, in 1996 and as he states on his site, once he retired, Joe began “painting full-time unless errands or chores interrupt. And I found that my purpose in life is finally coming into sharp focus — painting is what God intended me to do. When I have a paintbrush in my hand, I’m full of joy. I study painting across the whole spectrum of art history, looking for clues as to where I should next put my focus. I’m very open to being influenced by these studies and am exploring everything from realism to pop art and back to abstractions.”
Joe now lives in Lockney, Texas (just down the road from Plainview) with Ethelyn and their beloved cat, Casey and offers selections of new works for sale on his web site.
More information about this artist is available on his Facebook site – http://facebook.com/joseph.garnett2
Malcolm Garrett – notable album cover credits include – Duran Duran – Duran Duran, Rio, Seven & The Ragged Tiger and Greatest; Culture Club – Colour By Numbers; Boy George – Sold; Peter Gabriel – Us; Simple Minds – New Gold Dream and Live In The City Of Light; Buzzcocks – A Different Kind Of Tension, Product, Trade Test Transmissions and Operator’s Manual; The Grid – 4,5,6; Nusrat Fateh Ali Kahn – Mustt Mustt, Shahbaaz and Devotional Songs; Brian Eno – More Blank Than Frank
(b. 1956 in Northwich, England ) After initially attending St. Ambrose College, in 1974 Garrett took courses in typography at the University of Reading, transferring in 1975 to Manchester Polytechnic, where he studied graphic arts until 1978. Coincidentally, Garrett studied alongside another student named Peter Saville, who’d also go on to a successful career as an album cover designer. Post-college, Malcolm began his career in design by forming a company in London that he named Assorted Images, where he served as Creative Director from 1978 – 1994. There, he offered his clients a variety of design services, helping them with imagery for corporate identities, promotional materials, TV graphics, etc., with a client list that began early on with punk/new wave acts such as the Buzzcocks and Duran Duran, expanding rapidly to include other acts including Boy George/Culture Club, Peter Gabriel, Magazine and Simple Minds.
In 1994, recognizing the opportunities provided by new digital tools and emerging “new media” platforms, Garrett joined forces with fellow designer Alasdair Scott to launch a new multi-media design/production studio in Shoreditch called AMXdigital. While at AMX, Garrett received a Prince Philip Designers Prize nomination from the Design Council in 1998 to recognize him for his ongoing efforts in design for business and society and, in 2000, he was given the designation of Royal Designer for Industry (RDI) from the Royal Society of Arts – the first designer ever selected for this honor from the field of interactive media and design. When, in 2001, AMX merged with another firm to form a new company (Arnold Interactive), Malcolm left to take on a role for several years as an art director for a Toronto, Canada-based firm named I-mmerson working on interactive films where, in 2003, he was included in Design Week magazine’s annual “Hot 50” list of the people and organizations making the biggest impact on the UK design scene.
Garrett returned to London in 2005 to serve as Creative Director at Applied Information Group (the “other” AIG!), a company that worked to apply good design to complex information. He remained there until 2011, ultimately teaming up with former Associated Images partner Kasper de Graff to launch a new design consultancy called 53K which, after a 2013 merger with Foreground Digital, became IMAGES & Co., the company where he currently serves as Creative Director.
Garrett has been extremely involved in the growth of interactive entertainment and education, taking leadership roles in a number of organizations both in the UK and world-wide that are dedicated to these and related subjects. He has served on many committees, advisory boards and councils that promote and showcase the latest efforts in design, collaborative design and design education. Malcolm is an ambassador for the Manchester School of Art and serves as co-curator of the annual Design Manchester festival. In 2013, Garrett was elected as the Master of the Faculty of Royal Designers for Industry (every two years, a new Master of the Faculty is elected by the past Masters).
His commitment to education is exemplified by his role as a Visiting Professor at Central St Martins College, part of the University of the Arts in London. Mr. Garrett has also been honored with honorary Doctorates of Design from Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen and University of the Arts, London. Garrett has co-authored (with Kasper de Graff) two books on Duran Duran – 1984’s Duran Duran Their Story and 2005’s Duran Duran Unseen – while in 2006, he co-authored a book about computer-based design/art titled The Digital Canvas: Discovering the Art Studio in Your Computer.
More information on this artist is available either on his personal web site – http://www.malcolmgarrett.com/ or his company’s web site – http://www.images.co.uk/
Philip Garris – notable album cover credits include – Grateful Dead – Blues for Allah and Beyond Description: 1973 – 1989; Bob Weir & Kingfish – Kingfish; Toto – Toto, Hydra, The Seventh One and The Collection; Various Artists – Strawberries & Cream, Vol. 1 A Los Angeles – based artist and illustrator who worked with several musical acts in the 1970s and 1980s, including Toto and the Grateful Dead.
Lemi Ghariokwu – notable album cover credits include – Fela Kuti – Alagbon Close, Kalakuta Show, Monkey Banana/Excuse-O, Live In Amsterdam, Beasts Of No Nation and Opposite People; Antibalas- Talkatif; Akoya Afrobeat – P.D.P.; Seun Kuti & Egypt 80 – From Africa With Fury: Rise; Tony Allen – Jealousy/Progress
(b. 1955 in Lagos, Nigeria) A self-taught artist who became enthralled with album cover art while at secondary school after seeing such works as Roger Dean’s cover for Woyaya by Osibisa and Pedro Bell’s series of covers for Parliament Funkadelic, he never thought that, one day, he’d be designing sleeves himself. In 1974, he saw the cover for Afrobeat music pioneer Fela Kuti’s latest release and decided that he would create his own version of it. A local journalist saw his work and was so impressed that she set up a meeting between Lemi and Fela, who then commissioned the artist to create the cover for his late 1974 release titled Alagbon Close, the first of 26 album and single covers he’d do between 1974 and 1992. Lemi soon took on a number of new clients including CBS, EMI, Ivory Music, Kennis Music and, throughout the decade of the 1980s, Polygram Records in Nigeria, where he served as a consulting designer/art director for them and took part in the production of more than 2000 covers for them. Since then, over the past 40 years, has designed hundreds of other covers for a wide variety of international music stars, including Antibalas, Lucky Dube, James Iroha, Bob Marley, Miriam Makeba, E.T. Mensah, Kris Okotie, Osita Osadebe and Gilles Peterson, to name just a few.
Ghariokwu’s work attracted much attention from art/music lovers in the West and has been featured in a number of solo and group retrospectives and exhibitions. His 2002 painting titled Anoda Sistem is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and, during his first trip to the U.S. in 2003, he was able to see 13 of his works presented in a show titled ” Black President: The Art and The Legacy of Fela Anikulapo Kuti “, on display there. Surfware clothing designer Shawn Stussy commissioned Lemi to create a new logo and designs for special edition T-shirts to help the company celebrate their 25th anniversary in 2004, followed soon by another commission from the President of MTV. The “making of” this particular work, titled “Everybody’s Gotta Be Somebody”, was covered in a documentary film of the same name by film-maker Aaron Koenigsberg.
Other shows featuring Lemi’s work include Digital AfroPopArt: Politics, Life & Lyrics, presented at the Arc Gallery in London in 2009, while in 2011 he participated in a group show titled Another Music at the Kunsthall in Oslo, Norway. When the folks producing and promoting the hit Broadway musical Fela needed something eye-catching to draw attention to the show, they hired Lemi to custom paint a bus re-christened “the Fela Bus” – a true show-stopper! More shows would follow in London, Paris and Lemi’s own country of Nigeria. In 2014, Lemi created the poster art for Alex Gibney’s documentary film, Finding Fela, and to mark his own “Diamond Jubilee” – i.e., his 60th birthday in 2015, Ghariokwu plans on publishing a book about his artwork, to be followed by a retrospective show.
To learn more about this artist, please visit his website at http://lemighariokwu.wordpress.com
Ghostshrimp (AKA) David James Bandit – see listing under “David James Bandit”
H.R. Giger – Notable album cover work examples – Emerson Lake & Palmer – Brain Salad Surgery; Debbie Harry – Koo Koo; Steve Stevens – Atomic Playboys; Danzig – How The Gods Kill
(born February 5, 1940 in Chur, Switzerland; died May, 2014) Giger was a Swiss surrealist painter, sculptor, and set designer. The son of a chemist who’d hoped that his son would follow him into the family business, Giger instead moved to Zurich in 1962, completing his studies in Architecture and Industrial Design at the School of Applied Arts in 1970. While still a student, he produced his first works of art (with a focus on ink drawings and oil paintings) and had his first solo public exhibition in 1966. In 1968, he directed his first film (titled Swiss Made) and followed in 1969 with the publishing of his first poster. In the late 60s, he discovered the airbrush found it the perfect vehicle for his unique freehand painting styles, experimenting full-on and developing some of his soon-to-be-best-known creations – his fantastic bio-mechanical “dreamscapes” which would inhabit his books and, later, the films (his own, and for others) he created creatures and set designs for.
During the 1970s, his books of paintings, along with his films Tagtraum (1973), Giger’s Necronomicon (1975) and Giger’s Alien (1979) and magazine illustrations for Omni magazine helped bring his talents to a world-wide stage. Director Ridley Scott saw his work titled Necronom IV and subsequently brought Giger on to design the creatures and surrealistic sets for his film Alien, for which Giger won an Academy Award for “Best Achievement for Visual Effects” in 1980. Giger’s work in the film business continued to include designs for Poltergeist II, Alien 3 and Species.
In addition to his talents as a graphic artist, Giger also worked in sculpture, creating 3D versions of his fantasy characters and landscapes. In 1988, the first Giger Bar opened in Tokyo, Japan, with a second location opening in his hometown of Chur, Switzerland in 1992. While the artist was unhappy with the way his visions were realized in the first Bar (which since has closed), he was more fully-involved with the Chur location and worked with the city’s top architect, with the resulting environments continue to astound visitors to this day. In 1998, Giger’s dreams for a fully-realized environment where he could show off both his works and those of the many other artists that are included in his personal collection came true with the opening of the HR Giger Museum in the historic walled city of Gruyeres, Switzerland. A 4-story building complex housed in the beautiful Chateau St. Germain. In addition to a huge display of Giger’s paintings, sculptures, furniture and designs for films and television, the collection on display includes works by Dali, Dado, Fuchs, Sandoz, Joe Coleman and many others. The museum also includes an impressive Giger Bar, which features a series of giant skeletal arches covering the vaulted ceiling.
Giger’s work was also featured in the video games Dark Seed and Dark Seed II and has been included in a number of major museum shows including a 2004 exhibition at the Museum Halle Saint Pierre in Paris (during which he was awarded the prestigious La Medaille de la Ville de Paris award), a 2005 show at the National Technical Museum in Prague and two shows in 2007, the first at the Bunder Kunstmuseum in Switzerland and the second at the Polytechnic University in Valencia, Spain. More shows followed in 2009 (Frankfurt, Germany and San Sebastian, Spain), 2010 (Tampere Art Museum, Finland) and 2011 (Kunsthaus Wien, Austria). 14 books on Giger’s art have been published, including HR Giger’s Biomechanics (1993), Necronomicon and Necronomicon II (1993), Giger’s Alien (1994), Species Design (on his creatures for the movie by the same title) 1996, HR Giger’s Tarot Set (2000), and HR Giger (Icons) 2002. The artist lived and worked in Zurich with his wife, Carmen Maria Scheifele Giger, who oversees activities at the H.R. Giger Museum.
More information on this artist is available at – www.hrgiger.com
Steven R. Gilmore – notable album cover credits include – A Perfect Circle – Thirteenth Step and Three Sixty; Skinny Puppy – The Greater Wrong of the Right, Live, Weapon and Band Over; Nickelback – How You Remind Me; Machine Head – The Burning Red; Phantom Communique – The Wolf & The Sheep; Film Soundtracks – The Lord of The Rings: The Two Towers, 300, Watchmen and The Dark Knight; Iggy Pop – The Anthology; OHGR – Undeveloped; Jim Kaufman – A Party of One
(b. September, 1957 in Victoria, BC Canada) Steven is a self-taught designer and artist whose connections and inspirations brought about via his background as a Vancouver club DJ led him to his career creating art and graphics for entertainment industry clients. His role as in-house designer for Vancouver-based label Nettwerk Records began in 1984 and allowed him to perfect skills as a designer/art director during the next ten years, creating album packaging for Nettwerk artists including A Perfect Circle, BT, Nickleback and Skinny Puppy, among many others. In 1994, Steven left the Pacific NW to start a life in Southern California, opening his own firm – SRG Design – and expanding his client base to include movie studios such as Miramax Films, 20th Century Fox and Warner Bros., along with other clients from big (Coca-Cola and the Ritz Plaza Hotel in Miami, working alongside famed designer Philippe Stark) to not-so-big (the Merry Karnowsky Gallery and the Holy Body Tattoo modern dance troupe).
His work has been featured in many international design magazines (ID Magazine, Insite, Publish, etc.) and several books, including Roger Dean’s Album Cover Album; Band ID: The Ultimate Book of Band Logos (by Chronicle Books) and 1000 Music Graphics (published by Rockport). In 2000, Steven also penned and designed a book for RotoVision’s “Electronic Workshop” series titled Photo-Graphics.
For more information on this artist, please visit his web site at http://www.srgdesign.com/
Hugh Gilmour – Notable album covers include – Tony Iommi – Fused; Whitesnake – Live at Donnington and Good To Be Bad; Glenn Hughes – This Time Around; Hawkwind – Live ’74; Motorhead – Stone Deaf Forever! and Protect The Innocent; The Bonzo Dog Band – New Tricks; Marillon – This Strange Engine; Bruce Dickinson – Tyranny of Souls, Anthology and Alive; The Strangles – Sessions; Black Sabbath – Greatest Hits
(b. June, 1969 – U.K.) Hugh Gilmour began his career in design doing freelance work in the early 1990s and, from 1993-97 he worked as a Senior Designer at Castle Communications in Surrey. In 1997, he took the job as Art Director at Diablo Design Ltd, Fox Studios, in London, where he was responsible for design projects for a number of music industry clients including EMI Records, Eagle Rock Records, JVC Japan and Sanctuary Music Management.This relationship with Sanctuary resulted in an offer to become Head of Design at Sanctuary Records Group, UK, which he accepted in 1998 and took over management of a team of in-house and freelance designers, working on a wide range of design and production projects for the company. For the next three years, Hugh and his team were responsible for creating packaging and promotional materials for a long list of clients including Black Sabbath, David Bowie, Alice Cooper, Deep Purple, ELP, Fleetwood Mac, Iron Maiden, The Kinks, Motorhead, The Sex Pistols, Status Quo and many others. Additionally, he was responsible for packaging design for the Isle Of Wight Festival and Get Carter soundtrack packages, along with DVD packages for films including Dune, Conan The Destroyer and Blue Velvet.
This expanded resume gave Gilmour the confidence to launch his own graphic design firm in London in 2001 where, since then, he’s managed projects for clients including the BBC, Capitol Records, Demon Vision, Eagle Rock, EMI, JVC, Sanctuary Records, Sony/Columbia and 2Entertain Ltd. Special projects he’s completed include a logo for Iron Maiden signer Bruce Dickinson’s aircraft maintenance business in Cardiff, Wales and recordings by David Coverdale/Whitesnake and Glenn Hughes. He’s also become a well-regarded writer, producing liner notes for a number of record projects and publishing a number of articles on design and packaging in the popular music press.
Gilmour has also lectured on packaging and graphic design for Moscow University and, returning to complete his formal education, he received his Master of Arts (with Commendation) in 2005 from the Communication Design School at London’s Kingston University. In addition to designs for music/entertainment industry clients, Hugh also does the designs and artwork for his own metal band – Pig Iron (http://www.pigiron.info/home.html) – where he plays bass guitar.
For more information, you can visit this artist’s web site at http://www.gilmourdesign.co.uk
Lisa Glines – notable album package credits include – Kenny Rogers – Christmas; The Spinners – The Chrome Collection; Various Artists – Woodstock: Back to the Garden, The Motown Box, Yo! MTV Raps, Magic Moments: The Best of 50’s Pop, Get Down Tonight: The Disco Explosion; Roberta Flack – The Very Best of Roberta Flack; Marc Cohn – Greatest Hits; Bettye Levette – Child of the Seventies; Eels – Useless Trinkets and Meet The Eels; ELP – Live at the Mar y Sol Festival ’72 and Live At Nassau Coliseum ’78; Eric Clapton – Forever Man; The Doors – The Singles; Deep Purple – A Fire In The Sky; Faith Evans & Notorious B.I.G. – The King & I; Grateful Dead – Spring 1990 (The Other One), Pacific Northwest ’73 – ’74 and Giants Stadium 1987-1989-1991 and In And Out Of The Garden: Madison Square Garden ’81 ’82 ’83
Nominated four times (2014, 2018, 2020 and 2023) in the “Best Boxed or Special Limited-Edition Package” Grammy category for her work on hit packages for the Grateful Dead (Spring 1990: The Other One, Pacific Northwest ’73 – ’74 and Giants Stadium 1987-1989-1991), Lisa and her collaborators Doran Tyson and Dave Van Patten were awarded a Grammy in 2023 for their work on In And Out Of The Garden: Madison Square Garden ’81 ’82 ’83. Lisa has served as the Senior Art Director for both the Rhino Entertainment Company/Rhino Records and her own studio called The American Art Kitchen.
A more-complete bio will be posted as additional information is made available. In the meantime, for a look at this artist’s Grammy-related info, please visit https://www.grammy.com/artists/lisa-glines/18433
Carl Glover – notable album cover credits include – Marillion – Somewhere Else, Brave, Radiation 2013, Anoraknophobia, Marbles and Happiness Is The Road, Vols. 1 & 2; Porcupine Tree – On The Sunday Of Life, Deadwing, Stupid Dream, The Incident and Warszawa; The Pretty Things – Psychedelic Years: 1966 – 1970; Blackfield – Blackfield II; Ian Anderson – Homo Erraticus; Gentle Giant – Octopus and In A Glass House; Steven Wilson – Insurgencies, Hand.Cannot.Erase, Grace For Drowning, Get All You Deserve and 4-1/2; North Star – Curved Air; Bass Communion – Cenotaph, Reconstructions & Recycling and Wild Opera; Marvin Ayres – Harmogram Suite; OSI – RE:Free; King Crimson – Frame By Frame, Vroom and Thrak
(b. 1961 in Dartford, Kent, UK) As a teenager and voracious music consumer in the 1970s, Carl was immediately drawn to recordings at the many music/record fairs he attended that sported covers he felt provided him with a context by which he could understand the musicians and the songs they created. While he was at school (the Hundred of Hoo Secondary Modern in Hoo St. Werburgh, Kent) and excelled at both art and English, at the age of 14 he became determined to pursue the goal of designing album covers and, after graduating in 1980, he enrolled in foundational arts courses at Medway College of Design in Rochester. He followed that with degree courses in Communication Design at Maidstone College of Art in Kent, where he graduated in 1984 and was Head of the Student Union there as well.
After completing his schooling, Carl began his career in mid-1985 with a position at the arts/culture/business publication i-D Magazine, followed by three years at the Mainartery design firm creating LP covers, primarily for dance music and chart-related material. In 1988, Carl join record package designer Bill Smith’s BSS Design Studio, where he remained until 1999, creating several notable covers including Remasters for Led Zeppelin, King Crimson’s Vroom and Thrak and Brave for Marillion. In 1999, he also launched his own studio (freelancing in his spare time) while also joining the in-house design department at Getty Images, where he spent several years as a senior designer and then Art Director. Moving full-time to his own studio in the Summer of 2003, he’s since produced dozens of covers for musical acts including Bass Communion, Steven Wilson, Marillion, the Rolling Stones and Marvin Ayres, among many others.
Throughout his career, Glover’s work has been praised by clients and industry peers alike, with his work on the Led Zeppelin Remasters package winning an AMID (Association of Music Industry Designers) award in 1991 and King Crimson’s Frame by Frame winning a special packaging AMID award in 1992.
His designs and photographs have also served as the bases for projects including (since 2002) his collaboration with Danish artist Lasse Hoile on a series of prints, including several that grew from the pair’s work with musician Steven Wilson (winning a Prog Award in 2015 for Steven Wilson’s Hand.Cannot.Erase special edition packaging), and a collection of scarves featuring Carl’s designs and photos for the This Way To Heaven design products store/site .
Carl’s works have been featured in exhibitions in Norwich in October, 2005 and September, 2011, Leamington Spa in October 2011, the INDEX show with Lasse Hoile at the Royal Albert Hall in London in September, 2015, and the second INDEX show, held in Greenwich in January, 2016. The 2015 special edition book titled INDEX features a fine collection of imagery crafted by Glover and Lasse Hoile for Steven Wilson and his various projects, including Porcupine Tree, no-man, Bass Communion, and I.E.M., with another book on the docket for release soon.
In 2017, Carl teamed with UK print publisher The Flood Gallery to create a special series of poster prints to commemorate their “Classic Album Sunday’s” tribute to Michael Jackson’s Off The Wall, featuring a photo taken by photographer Jim McCrary in 1979.
Carl’s now based in Greenwich, London where, according to his company web site, “in his spare time he collects photography from around the world by scouring junk shops and flea market and has a library of over 10,000 images.”
More information on this artist is available on his website at http://www.alephstudio.co.uk/
Barry Godber – Individual Achievement Award inductee (2013) and the artist that created the cover painting for King Crimson’s Court of the Crimson King
(b. 1946; d. 1970), an artist, computer programmer and a co-worker of Peter Sinfield (King Crimson’s lyricist, lighting designer and art director) at English Electric/ICL Computers, Godber trained at the Chelsea Art School (U.K.) and was asked, after listening to several tracks on the record that Sinfield had shared with him, to contribute the cover image for the band’s debut album (released in October 1969 on Island Records). He painted the album cover, titled Portrait of 21st Century Schizoid Man, in 1969 but would never appreciate the impact the cover art would have because soon after the record’s release (in February, 1970), Godber died of a heart attack.
This work – with the Schizoid Man on the cover and the Crimson King (AKA – Beelzebub) on the inside – would then be his only album cover painting, and the original is owned by guitarist Robert Fripp, who remarked in a 1995 interview with French magazine Rock & Folk that the image reflected the music and, if you cover the smiling face, the eyes show an incredible sadness….
Movie trivia buffs will notice that this same image was re-created on a wall featured in the widely-panned 1987 film Surf Nazis Must Die.
A tad more bio information is available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Court_of_the_Crimson_King
Martyn Goddard – notable album cover credits include – The Jam – In The City, Sound Affects and Classic Album Selection: Six Albums 1977 – 1982; The Who – Who Are You; Blondie – The Best of Blondie; The Soundcarriers – Harmonium and Celeste; Barclay James Harvest – Live Tapes; The Comsat Angels – Waiting For A Miracle; The Cure – Three Imaginary Boys; Ian Anderson – Walk Into Light
After earning a diploma in Photography from Harrow College of Art & Technology in Middlesex, U.K., Martyn went to work assisting acclaimed photographer Gered Mankowitz before beginning his solo career shooting images for Radio Luxembourg’s schedule and feature magazine Fab 208. He soon added assignments for various publications and record labels covering the New Wave music scene in the late 1970s – early 1980s, adding clients including both the Sunday Times and Sunday Telegraph magazines and You Magazine, providing portraits and editorial imagery on subjects in the acting, literary and political worlds along with such musical stars as AC/DC, Blondie, The Cure, Ian Dury, Genesis, The Jam, Jethro Tull, Elton John, Queen and, later in the 80s, UB 40 and Wham! (he joined the duo’s entourage while they were on their ground-breaking tour of China).
Looking for a new challenge, Martyn put work for the music business on the back-burners and accepted a job with Car Magazine, bringing his unique style and technical prowess to the publication and their stories about automobiles (and other forms of personal transportation) and travel. He soon added work for Automobile Magazine as well and, in 1987, was honored for his work by being named a Fellow of the British Institute of Professional Photography that year. Since then, he’s done work for commercial clients in all aspects of industry in the U.S. and U.K., adding clients such as Business Week and Car & Driver magazines and car companies including Audi, Chrysler, Fiat and Hyundai (along with Triumph Motorcycles, of which he’s a proud owner). His travel stories have included some music-related trips as well, following “blues trails” from Chicago down to the Deep South.
He’s received many accolades for his work, including Hyundai’s “Automotive Photographer of the Year – U.K. in 2002, 2003, 2005 and 2006; Audi’s Car Photographer of the Year in 2010; and a “Highly Commended” designation by the Guild of Motoring Writers (U.K.) in December, 2012 for two features published in Octane Magazine.
Exhibitions featuring Goddard’s work include – ‘Blondie in Camera’ Images of the Rock Band at the Mirandie Gallery, London; ‘People of our Time’ at the National Gallery, London; ‘The Automobile’ at the Boilerhouse Museum, London and “Rock & Roll and Speed” at the Exposure Gallery in London. In 2009, he also released a photo book that has all the music and automotive images from the Rock & Roll and Speed exhibition held at the Exposure Gallery. A more-complete biography about this artist will be posted soon.
More information on this artist is available on his web site at http://www.martyngoddard.com/
Kyle Goen AKA Kyledidthis – notable album cover credits include – Jay-Z – Vol. 3: The Life & Times of Shawn Carter; Hanson – This Time Around; Sum 41 – Half Hour of Power; Ja Rule – Pain Is Love and The Last Temptation; Foxy Brown – Broken Silence; Jimmy Fallon – The Bathroom Wall; Erykah Badu – New Amerykah, Pt. 2: Return of the Ankh; Lil Wayne – The Carter IV; Hinder – Welcome To The Freak Show; Florence + The Machine – MTV Unplugged; WZRD – WZRD; Ariana Grande – Yours Truly; KiD CuDi –Satellite Flight: The Journey To The Mother Moon; The Secret Sisters – Put Your Needle Down; Melanie Fiona – The Bridge and The MF Life
(b. 1967 in Bakersfield, CA, USA) After receiving his Bachelors in Fine Arts with a specialization in Painting in 1992 from the Pratt Institute in New York City, Kyle immediately began to use his talents to visualize his feelings about social injustice and political malfeasance, creating a popular image in response to the “not guilty” verdict given to the four LAPD officers who’d beaten Rodney King (and triggered the riots in the city that year). Titled “By A Jury of One’s Peers”, this image was used on a variety of protest-related merchandise, posters and art installations. More poignant artwork would follow each time Goen looked to get the public to think harder about abuses he found in our government, our politics and our culture in general, with one of his best-known works being stickers and posters protesting the results of the presidential election in the U.S. in 2000 (“Elect A Madman – You Get Madness”).
In 2001, Goen addressed the nurturing and impact of cultural icons in his series titled The King of Pop, recounting the transformation of Michael Jackson from childhood pop star to an always-mutating, cosmetically altered world-wide idol. Then, in 2004, Kyle participated prominently in an instillation at the White Box Gallery in New York (organized by a curator from the Guggenheim Museum) that satirized the Republican National Convention held in New York that year, while for his “Flags of Iraq” project produced in 2009, Goen morphed and modified U.S. flags to create Iraqi flags.
More recently, in 2013, Kyle created a huge (26′ x 70′) art piece made from 1600 red-tinted flags that spanned a Brooklyn street as part of the 2013 DUMBO Arts Festival in NYC. From a distance, the horizontally-suspended portrait – titled “Who’s Chelsea Manning? – displays the face of the famous (infamous?) trans-gender convict and won the Best In Show prize that year (BTW – the artist chose to use 1600 flags as a reference to the street address of the White House).
Since embarking on his career in design, Kyle’s fine art work has appeared in a number of solo and group exhibitions in galleries and museums world-wide. most-notably in the Yo! What Happened To Peace? anti-war/pro-peace travelling exhibit that toured the world from 2003 through 2010, stopping at 17 cities during that time. Other shows/exhibits featuring his work have been staged in Cambridge, Charleston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Milan, New York, Rome, San Francisco, Tokyo and Washington, D.C., among others. To share his thoughts about art and its effect on popular culture, Kyle has also lectured extensively, speaking with students at the Urban Academy, New York University and the Parsons School of Design in New York, NY.
More information on this artist is available at his web sites – http://www.kylegoen.net/ and http://kyledidthis.tumblr.com/
Jeff Gold – notable album cover credits include – Suzanne Vega – Solitude Standing and Days of Open Hand (Grammy award winner); John Hiatt – Chronicles and Bring The Family; Flying Burrito Brothers – Flying Along: The Best of the Flying Burrito Brothers
Jeff served as VP at A&M Records and then EVP/GM of Warner Bros. Records from 1990 until 1998. Nominated four times for Grammy Awards, he won one in the “Best Album Package” category for his work as the Art Director for Suzanne Vega’s Days of Open Hand. Other label clients included Paula Cole, Janet Jackson, Madonna, The Police, Prince, Red Hot Chili Peppers, R.E.M., Soundgarden and Cat Stevens, among others. Gold was also instrumental in the decision to stop the manufacture and use of CD “long boxes” as an interim step between the selling of LPs and CDs at retail. Jeff knew that artists didn’t want to be associated with the environmental waste caused by the over-sized cardboard packages, while retailers didn’t want to spend money changing their LP-sized bins to something that would accomodate CD jewel cases. Gold convinced label management to use extra money spent on these strangely-shaped packages to provide financial incentives/rebates to retailers who would re-configure their store fixtures to sell smaller CD packages.
A long-time collector of records and music memorabilia, these passions also fed his work as a music historian/researcher, leading Gold to launch a new business called Recordmecca soon after leaving Time/Warner’s employ. Since that time, Jeff has established himself as one of the best-known experts in the area, consulting regularly with collectors, museums and other institutions and helping both acquire and authenticate collections and curate exhibitions of these items. Results of his research efforts have included the discovery of tapes and acetates of music from artists including Bob Dylan, The Stooges and the Velvet Underground that, since have been released for sale. He’s also helped produce reissue and archival records for the Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix and Gram Parsons. Exhibitions he’s helped curate include “Beatlemania!” at Seattle’s Experience Music Project Museum in 2004 and the travelling exhibit called “Bob Dylan’s American Journey: 1956 – 1966”, which enthralled fans in Cleveland, Minneapolis, New York and Los Angeles from 2006 – 2008.
Gold has appeared as an expert authenticator/appraiser on TV, being seen on both PBS’s History Detectives and VH-1′s Rock Collectors and, as a writer, he’s authored 101 Essential Rock Records: The Golden Age of Vinyl, From the Beatles to the Sex Pistols (published in 2012 by Gingko Press) and was profiled in the book Vinyl Junkies by Brett Milano (published in 2003 by St. Martin’s Griffin Press,) and Simon Reynold’s 2011 book Retromania: Pop Culture’s Addiction To Its Own Past (Faber & Faber).
More information on this artist is available on his web site – http://recordmecca.com/about/
Burt Goldblatt – ACHOF Early Influencer – notable album cover credits include – Johnny Smith – Moonlight In Vermont; Charlie Mariano Quartet – Mariano and Charlie Mariano Plays; Carmen McRae – Carmen McRae; Duke Ellington – Historically Speaking, The Duke ; Robert Johnson – King of the Delta Blues Singers; Dionne Warwick – Here Where There Is Love; B. J. Thomas – I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry; Ella Fitzgerald – At Newport; Chico O’Farrill – Pure Emotion; and many other Columbia Records artists – over 3,000 cover credits!
(b. 1924, Dorchester, MA; d. August, 2006) After serving in the Army in World War II, Burt Goldblatt enrolled in classes at the Massachusetts College of Art and, after graduation, took on a job at a printing company, where he learned everything he could about that trade, from making plates to type-setting to photography and more. Responding to an ad he’d seen in the Boston papers for a freelance artist at Columbia Records, the jazz-loving Goldblatt took on the assignment and, in the early 1950s, created his first album covers. A couple of years later, he relocated to NYC, working for Columbia’s CBS Television network and taking on many various assignments where a man of his broad talents could excel – working on broadcast graphics, promotional materials and, of course, many record covers for the labels that made up the Columbia family. It was noted that, in 1955 alone, he produced the covers for over 200 LPs.
Creating and also following design cues of the day, Burt used a number of different methods to create memorable covers for his clients, alternating between – and sometimes combining – illustrations and photographs, creating collages and, in one case, even used an X-Ray as the basis of his image. Over the years, he’d expand his list of clients to also include several gospel and pop/rock musical acts but, with the increased focus on the newer rock and pop acts (vs. his beloved jazz), he retired from designing for the recording industry in the 1970s to concentrate on writing books (including a number on his favorite subject – jazz, of course) – and before he died in 2006, he’d written and/or co-authored over a dozen books, including Starring Fred Astaire (1973), Burt Goldblatt’s Jazz Gallery One (1982), Cinema Of The Fantastic (1974) and The Only Game In Town: An Illustrated History Of Gambling (1976).
Lynn Goldsmith – Notable album cover credits include – Frank Zappa – Sheik Yerbouti and Broadway The Hard Way; Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers – Damn The Torpedos; B-52s – Wild Planet; Ted Nugent – Scream Dream; Talking Heads – The Name of This Band is Talking Heads; Yanni – Steal The Sky and The Collection; Grand Funk Railroad – Shinin’ On; Hall & Oates – Private Eyes and Live At The Apollo with David Ruffin and Eddie Kendricks
(b. February, 1948 in Detroit, Michigan, USA) After spending her early years in Detroit, Lynn moved to Florida and graduated from Miami Beach High School. Proving to be quite the student, she attended college at the University of Michigan and completed her studies (Magna cum Laude) in three years with B.A. degrees in both English and Psychology. Graduating in 1968, Lynn then took on a job at Elektra Records and later, in 1971, she joined famed stage/light show producer Joshua White as a director for his latest endeavor called Joshua TV, creating spectacular backdrops for rock concerts.
A self-taught photographer, she used her new skills and keen eye and applied them to TV, directing ABC’s In Concert series and becoming – the youngest woman director ever to do so – a member of the Director’s Guild of America. After producing a documentary on the band in the early 1970s called We’re An American Band, Lynn’s entrepreneurial spirit and natural skills as a manager led her to become co-manager of Grand Funk Railroad (who she also did the album art for). A couple of years later, she decided to devote her time and energies to photographic pursuits and began to build portfolios of images of many of the time’s best-known rock and roll acts – The Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Marley, Patti Smith, Bob Dylan and Michael Jackson.
In the mid-1970s, she launched her own photo agency – specializing in celebrity portraiture – called LGI, a business she’d run for the next 20 years. At the same time, the multi-talented Goldsmith took on a stage persona – Will Powers – and recorded and performed her own material on an album titled Dancing For Mental Health after signing with Island Records (a single from the album, “Kissing With Confidence”, received much critical acclaim and hit #3 on the UK singles charts). The videos she created for the record were so well-done and artistic that they’ve been used by schools, universities and even the U.S. Dept. of Labor to inspire and educate viewers of these productions.
Lynn sold LGI to Corbis in 1997 and has since devoted her time to her photographic endeavors, working with a wide range of clients in the entertainment and publishing industries, with a resume that boasts photographs on over 100 albums and editorial images in publications including Elle, Interview, Life, Newsweek, The New Yorker, People, Rolling Stone, Sports Illustrated, Time and many others.
During her career, she has been honored with a number of awards, including those from NPC International, the Art Director’s Club, numerous medals from the International and TV Film Festival in NY and the prestigious Lucien Clerque Award in 1986. Her works have been included in solo and group exhibitions in museums, public spaces and galleries worldwide, most-notably in the collections of the Canadian Museum of History, Chicago Museum of Contemporary Photography, the Museum Folkwang in Essen, Germany, The Kodak Collection, NYC’s Museum of Modern Art, the Norton Museum, the Museum of the Moving Image and The Smithsonian. Her works were featured prominently in the Who Shot Rock & Roll rock photography exhibition that has travelled to exhibitions world-wide and have been included in many acclaimed specialty publications such as Rolling Stone magazine’s The Illustrated History of Rock and Roll, Life Magazine’s The First 50 Years: 1936-1986, America 24/7 and in six volumes of the A Day in the Life series.
Books of her work include The Police (published in 1983 by St. Martin’s Press), New Kids On The Block (1990, Rizzoli), PhotoDiary (1995, Rizzoli), Springsteen: Access All Areas (2000, Universe), The Police: 1978 – 1983, with intro by Phil Sutcliffe (2007, Little, Brown & Co.), Rock And Roll, with foreward by Iggy Pop (2007, Harry N. Abrams), Lynn Goldsmith: The Looking Glass (a signed, limited-edition publication, released in 2011 by Insight Editions) and Rock and Roll Stories (2013, Harry N. Abrams)
To find out more about this artist, please visit her web site at http://lynngoldsmith.com/menu.html
Jean-Paul Goude – Notable album cover credits include – Grace Jones – Warm Leatherette, Nightclubbing, Living My Life, Slave To The Rhythm, A State Of Grace and Hurricane/Hurricane Dub; Grand Funk Railroad – Born To Die; Christina – Sleep It Off; Various Artists – Hip City [Harmless]
(b. 1940 in Saint-Mandé, France) The son of two show-business professionals, with his mother, a former dancer on Broadway, running a dance school that impressed the young lad with a love of dynamic movement and form. Looking through the American magazines they received at home, he was so inspired by the artistry shown in the ads and cover images that he decided at a young age that he wanted to grow up and create them as well, so he enrolled in the Ecole National Superieure des Arts Decoratifs in Paris (the country’s top art and design college) to study design and illustration.
Early on in his career as an illustrator, while he was still in his mid-20s, he received a visit from Harold Hayes at Esquire Magazine, who was in Paris looking for talent that might help him with the magazine’s 75th Anniversary issue. When asked whether Goude might be able to recommend someone for the post of Art Director (to replace one of Goude’s inspirations – designer George Lois), Goude suggested himself and, a few days later, he was offered the job! Picking himself up and moving to New York, he worked at the publication for the next seven years, creating a portfolio of creative illustrations for a wide range of stories by the magazine’s illustrious list of contributors, including Truman Capote, Gore Vidal and Tom Wolfe (including a fascinating collage piece he created in 1972 featuring China’s Chairman Mao floating in a river with a rubber Donald Duck toy).
In the late 1970s, Goude met model/signer Grace Jones and the two formed a multi-faceted (business and romantic) relationship to which Goude applied his various creative talents, supervising her image, stage performances, music videos, album covers, television commercial appearances and more to produce a formidable public persona for his muse. Their relationship also produced a son named Paulo and while their romance lasted only until the mid-1980s, they continue a friendly working relationship.
Goude continued to expand his work in the fields of TV and print advertising and music video direction, with his first television ad in 1982 for Lee Cooper Jeans cut from a 10-minute operetta he filmed set to Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. Other clients included Cacharel, Chanel, Kodak and Perrier. One memorable example is his critically acclaimed 1985 ad for the Citroën CX-2 automobile during which a car (driven by Jones) drives in and out of the mouth of a huge robotic Grace Jones head. Some of his best-remembered print ads have been created as part of an ongoing commission by the Galeries Lafayette department store chain.
Books featuring Jean-Paul’s artwork include 1982’s Jungle Fever (which features a memorable cover image of Grace Jones posed in a tiger cage); the career retrospective titled So Far So Goude (2006); The Goude Touch: A Ten-Year Campaign for Galeries Lafayette (2010) and Jean-Paul Goude (co-authored by Edgar Morin), published in 2011 to accompany a major 40-year retrospective (titled Goudemalion) of work on exhibit at the Musée des Arts Decoratifs in Paris in 2011-12. In addition to the museum and gallery exhibitions that were staged to coincide with the publications of his books, his work (photos and videos) was included in the Who Shot Rock & Roll photo exhibition that travelled throughout museums in the U.S. from 2009-2013.
For more information on this artist, please visit his web site at http://www.jeanpaulgoude.com/
Paul Raymond Gregory – Notable album cover credits include – Molly Hatchett – Devil’s Canyon, Silent Reign of Heroes, Locked and Loaded, Warriors of the Rainbow Bridge and Justice; Saxon – Crusader, Killing Ground, Lion Heart, Into The Labrynth and Sacrifice; Uriah Heep – Spellbinder Live and Chapter & Verse; Freedom Call – Stairway to Fairyland, Crystal Empire, Eternity and Dimensions; Blind Guardian – A Night at the Opera and A Traveler’s Guide to Space & Time
(b. 1949, Derby, U.K.) The son of a local builder, Paul showed signs of artistic talent at an early age and, while encouraged by his teachers at school, he did not receive any formal training in the arts. Following his passion for art, painting and the fantasy books of author J.R.R. Tolkien after leaving school, Paul purchased two old cottages in the Derbyshire village of Spondon, where he opened his own gallery (“Gallery Paul”) and spent time studying, promoting and selling the works of his contemporaries. He painted his first works inspired by Tolkien’s worlds in the late 1970s and, around the same time, was introduced to the gentleman in charge of the painting department at the Sotheby’s auction house in London (Peter Nahum) who, after seeing Gregory’s new works, offered to exhibit his collection at the company’s offices throughout the U.K.. After a particularly successful showing at the Edinburgh Festival, Paul was then asked to curate an exhibit of his works at London’s largest venue for the arts, The Barbican in 1984. Later that year, when Nahum left Sotheby’s to establish his own gallery, he then became Paul’s patron.
It was also in 1984 that Paul met members of the heavy metal band Saxon and was then commissioned to produce his first (and the first of a dozen for the band over the years!) album cover painting. Since that time, Paul has continued his work on the rest of his Tolkien series (first completed in 2003 and then updated ever since), with exhibitions in France, Sweden and the U.K. Fans of Paul’s work can watch a documentary film – titled Ring Quest – about Gregory’s paintings that were inspired by J.R.R Tolkien’s books. The film is narrated by actor Julian Sands. http://vimeo.com/17917508
Paul also was one of the founders (in 2001) and, with his family, still produces “Bloodstock”, which is billed as the largest heavy metal music festival in the U.K.. In 2012, Gregory published a limited-edition book on his artwork titled Beyond Time and Place: The Art of Paul Raymond Gregory which includes a limited-edition print of one of his works.
To learn more about this artist and his work, please visit his web site at – http://www.studio54.co.uk/
Brian Griffin – Notable album cover work examples – Joe Jackson – Look Sharp!; Iggy Pop – Soldier; Depeche Mode – A Broken Frame and Construction Time Again; Psychedelic Furs – Mirror Moves; Elvis Costello – Spike; Echo & The Bunnymen – Heaven Up Here and Ocean Rain; Ultravox – Vienna; Deke Leonard – Before Your Very Eyes;
(b. 1948 in Birmingham, U.K.; d. January, 2024 in U.K.) Considered by many to have been one of Britain’s greatest living portrait photographers, everything to do with the intersection of art and music was very much part of both Brian’s professional and social life. From his early work with Stiff Records, through his close collaborations with Echo and the Bunnymen and Depeche Mode, to his late-career works done in collaboration with “cutting edge” musicians, his photography and film-making skills were always been in demand. His photo shot for the cover of Depeche Mode’s 1982 album, A Broken Frame, was featured on the cover of Life Magazine’s special issue, The Greatest Photographs of the ‘80s.
Over the years, Brian’s worked with a select group of music industry clients including – Kate Bush, Brian Eno, George Martin, Simple Minds, Joe Jackson, Billy Idol, Elvis Costello and The Attractions, Psychedelic Furs, Peter Gabriel, King Sunny Ade, Echo and The Bunnymen, Siouxsie and The Banshees, Depeche Mode, Iggy Pop, Devo, Peter Hamill, Graham Parker, Ian Dury and the Blockheads and Sir Paul McCartney.
Brian’s work was featured in a special exhibition at the 2014 Fotofestiwal in Lodz, Poland – here’s a link to the catalog for that show – https://issuu.com/fotofestiwal/docs/brian_griffin_aukcja_auction_fotofe?e=0
To see a special Featured Artist Portfolio we published in 2013 on Brian and his work, please click here.
In 2015, British film-maker Michael Prince released a documentary on the life and work of Brian Griffin titled Face To Face, taking its name from a 2010 exhibition staged in Birmingham, U.K.. To learn more about this film, please visit its web site at – https://www.facebook.com/bg.facetoface
Always a friend to me and the ACHOF, Brian died on January 29, 2024 at the age of 75.
For more information on this artist, please visit his Instagram page at https://www.instagram.com/brian_griffin_photographer/?hl=en or his website at http://www.briangriffin.co.uk/
Rick Griffin – Notable album cover work examples – Quicksilver Messenger Service – Quicksilver Messenger Service; Grateful Dead – Aoxomoxoa, Wake Of The Flood, Dylan & The Dead and Reckoning; Man – Slow Motion and Maximum Darkness
(b. 1944 – d. 1991) Richard Alden Griffin was born near Palos Verdes, CA, in the heart of surf-obsessed Southern California. The son of an engineer and amateur archaeologist who exposed young Rick to the Native American and Southwestern influences that would be seen later on in his work. An avid surfer, Rick began producing drawings of surfers and surf culture – including hot rods and motorcycles – while still in high school, ultimately producing a comic strip titled Murphy that was picked up by Surfer Magazine in the early 1960s. In 1964, he started studies at Chouinard Art Institute (later to become CalArts) and met another artist, Ida Pfefferle (who he would later marry) and a group of local creatives known as The Jook Savages who, after some travel, he met up with in San Francisco, where he also was treated to his first viewings of the psychedelic art that would inspire him from that point on.
His first art exhibition was on display during an anniversary celebration for the Psychedelic Shop on Haight Street, where his talents were discovered by local event promoters including Chet Helms, the impresario of the Family Dog concerts at the Avalon Ballroom. In 1967, he joined forces with other local talents including Stanley Mouse, Alton Kelley, Victor Moscoso and Wes Wilson to found the Berkeley Bonaparte poster publishing company, and their client list expanded to include Bill Graham Productions and his Fillmore West theater. Griffin’s artwork for musical acts including The Charlatans, Jimi Hendrix and the Grateful Dead would feature elements of all of his life experiences, including skulls, insects, surfing cues, wild colors and lettering – the perfect combination of items we now associate with “proper” psychedelic artwork. Rick’s “Flying Eyeball” posters would become one of those best-known to represent the era.
Griffin returned to Southern California in 1969, eventually settling in San Clemente and focusing his efforts on his work for the comic industry, with his work appearing in the best comic compilations of the day, including Snatch, Tales From The Tube, Zap! and, later on Man From Utopia. Film maker John Severson commissioned Rick to design a poster for a new film titled Pacific Vibrations (where he also appears) and he included images of both his wife and soon-to-be-born daughter Adelia in the finished artwork.
After making a decision to devote himself to Christianity, Griffin swore off his previous lifestyle and focused his efforts on new works, undertaking a project during which he created hundreds of drawings and paintings for The Gospel of John, published by Marantha! Music, a Christian record label, as well as many album covers during the 1970s-80s. Travelling to Europe in 1976, Griffin staged exhibitions of his artwork in the U.K. and Amsterdam, during which he found time to surf the waves of the Atlantic Coast of France and Northern Spain.
His music industry-related work continued into the 1980s, when he provided logo and album cover designs for the British rock group The Cult, guitarist Neal Schon and his buddies in the Grateful Dead. Rick’s career was cut short in August, 1991 when he was thrown off his Harley-Davidson motorcycle near Petaluma, CA, while trying to pass a van that decided to turn left while Griffin was passing. He sustained major head injuries and died three days later at the age of 47.
More information available at – www.rickgriffinink.com
Bob Gruen – Notable examples of album package credits include – KISS – Dressed To Kill; John Lennon & Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band – Sometime in New York City; Raspberries – Raspberries; Labelle – Labelle; Yoko Ono – Approximate Infinite Universe; Ramones – It’s Alive and Loud Fast Ramones; The Clash – Live at Shea Stadium; John Lennon – Mind Games, Icon and Walls & Bridges; The Fall – Reformation Post T.L.C. , Ryan Adams – Rock N Roll
(b. 1945 in New York, NY). Bob Gruen is one of the best-known and respected photographers in the Music/Entertainment business. After John Lennon and Yoko Ono moved to New York City in 1971, Gruen became both their friend and personal photographer and was allowed to record moments in their personal and professional lives. Two of his best-known images are ones he took of Lennon flashing a “peace sign” while standing in front of the Statue of Liberty, the other featuring Lennon on a rooftop wearing a now-iconic “New York City” t-shirt. As chief photographer for Rock Scene Magazine in the 1970s, Bob specialized in candid, behind the scenes photo features. He toured extensively with the emerging punk and new wave bands including the New York Dolls, Sex Pistols, Clash, Ramones, Patti Smith Group and Blondie. This seminal body of work reflects a profound commitment and long-standing personal friendship with the artists. His wealth of personal experiences and uncanny memory provide some of the most illuminating and comprehensive histories of rock youth culture.
Bob has captured the top acts in the music world for over 40 years, gaining world-wide recognition for his works featuring major acts such as Led Zeppelin, The Who, The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Bob Marley, David Bowie, Muddy Waters, Tina Turner, Elton John, Aerosmith, Madonna, Kiss & Alice Cooper. In 1989, he documented the epic trip to Russia of the “Moscow Music Peace Festival” featuring Ozzy Osbourne, Motley Crue and Bon Jovi.
For many years Bob was the official photographer for the New York New Music Seminar, covering dozens of aspiring new bands in the course of a summer week. In the spring of 2007 FAAP University in Sao Paulo, Brazil presented an installation of Gruen’s work. Titled ROCKERS, the exhibition attracted 40,000 visitors. His works are featured in a number of books including The Sex Pistols: Chaos, The Rolling Stones – Crossfire Hurricane, The Clash, John Lennon – The New York Years, Rockers: The Exhibit, New York Dolls Photographs by Bob Gruen and Rock Seen – Bob Gruen. He’s also produced a number of DVDs, including All Dolled Up – A New York Dolls Story, New York Dolls – Lookin’ Fine on Television and Ike & Tina – On the Road 1971-72.
Biographical information excerpted from Mr. Gruen’s bio on his web site at – www.bobgruen.com
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Mick Haggerty – Notable album cover work examples – David Bowie – Let’s Dance, Never Let Me Down and Tonight, The Police – Ghost In The Machine, OMD – The Pacific Age ; Supertramp – Breakfast In America; ELO – Face the Music, The Goo Goo Dolls – Gutterflower, The Smithereens – 11 and Steve Winwood – Roll With It
Born and educated in England, since 1973 he has lived and worked in Los Angeles. As a freelancer, as well as in his roles as the Art Director for both Virgin and Warner Bros. Records, he has put together a hugely impressive list of accomplishments, developing memorable designs and videos for a wide variety of musical artists. He has also influenced many of today’s best new designers in his role as teacher and Chair of the Design Department at the Otis/Parsons School of Art & Design in the LA area. Mick humbly notes that ” that making images for music offered a working class kid from the suburbs of London an amazing escape route, and I jumped at it.”
In 1979, Mr. Haggerty won the Grammy Award for “Best Album Package” along with the late Mike Doud, as the art director for Supertramp’s Breakfast in America. Again in 1983, Haggerty, (along with Ginger Canzoneri – the GO-GO’s manager) was again nominated for a Grammy Award for “Best Album Package” for The Go-Go’s Vacation. He’d then go on to earn nominations for record covers including The Pointer Sisters Steppin’ and Glassjaw’s Worship and Tribute. He’s also designed covers for OMD, PiL, Simple Minds, Richard Thompson, Roxy Music, Jimi Hendrix, Jerry Lee Lewis, Keith Richards, Roy Orbison, Jellyfish, Ziggy Marley, Hall & Oates and, more recently, Josh Groban, Disturbed, and Michael Buble.’
As a graphic designer now turned full-time fine artist, Mick now spends every day he has in his studio making art. “Making art for its own sake is the most pure form of joy I have found”, he says.
To see more of Mick Haggerty’s work, please visit his website at http://www.mickhaggerty.com/
Ross Halfin – notable album cover credits include – Metallica – Metallica, Garage Inc. and Master of Puppets; Paradise Lost – One Second; Loudon Wainwright III – BBC Sessions; 50 Cent – 21 Questions; Black Sabbath – Greatest Hits: 1970-1978; The Who – Live At The Isle of Wight Festival (1970); Led Zeppelin – Early Days: The Best of Led Zeppelin Vol. 1, Early Days & Latter Days, Vols. 1 & 2 and How The West Was Won; Thin Lizzy – Waiting For An Alibi: The Collection; Rory Gallagher – Stage Struck; Iron Maiden – 2 Minutes To Midnight
(b. August, 1957, U.K.) While his original plan was to work as a painter and having studied fine art in the 1970s at the Wimbledon School Of Art, with influences ranging from William Blake to Norman Rockwell to Mike McInnerney (painter of the famous Tommy cover for The Who), Ross apparently (according to his site bio) “found art college too pretentious and creatively stifling” and instead chose to pursue another passion – “sneaking his cameras into concerts by the likes of The Who, AC/DC, Led Zeppelin, Man and Free” along with emerging punk acts such as Adam Ant, Blondie, The Clash, The Jam and The Sex Pistols (among many others) and selling those shots to the magazines covering the music scene at the time (Melody Maker, the NME and Sounds, where he met writer Geoff Barton, who he’d team up with in 1981 to launch a magazine focused on hard rock/metal music – Kerrang! ).
Throughout his career, his talents have been called upon by a number of big name musical acts – AC/DC, Black Sabbath, Def Leppard, Iron Maiden, former Beatles George Harrison and Paul McCartney, Metallica, Motley Crue, Rush, UFO, The Who and others – to document their tours, producing photos for their tour guides and publicity efforts and, later on, a number of photo books, working on numerous occasions with writer Barton and Peter Makowski, who he’d collaborate with on a photo journal called Powerage.
Halfin remains a regular contributor to publications including Classic Rock, Guitar Aficionado, Lid Magazine, Mojo, Q and Rolling Stone, working all over the world on assignments for clients both inside and outside the entertainment world. Books featuring Halfin’s work include Def Leppard: The Definitive Visual History (2011), The Ultimate Metallica (2010), What Are We Doing This For? (with Iron Maiden, 1988), The Photographer’s Led Zeppelin (1995), Chaos Ad: Rock In The 90s (1997) and, in 2010, he was intimately involved in the production of Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page’s photographic autobiography (Jimmy Page By Jimmy Page) for world-renowned art book publishing house Genesis Publications. In 2011, Ross released a book chronicling some of his own world travels titled Sojourner: Ross Halfin Travels which, according to the publisher, “is a collection of beautifully esoteric photographs taken by Ross in quiet moments, often while on tour with these bands.”
More information on this artist is available on his web site – www.rosshalfin.com
Simon Halfon – notable album cover credits include – Paul Weller – Paul Weller, Hung Up, Out of the Sinking, Wild Wood, Stanley Road, Peacock Suit, Brand New Street, He’s The Keeper, Days of Speed, Illumination, As Is Now, Wake Up The Nation, Hit Parade and 22 Dreams ; George Michael – Fast Love, Faith, Older, Five Live, This Is Not Real Love, Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1 and Twenty Five ; The Jam – Snap!, Live Jam and Direction Reaction Creation : The Style Council – Café Bleu, Introducing The Style Council, Our Favorite Shop and The Sound of the Style Council; Oasis – Heathen Chemistry, Don’t Believe The Truth and Stop The Clocks; Roger Waters – The Wall: Live in Berlin; Madness – Mad Not Mad and Utter Madness; Jody Watley – Intimacy and Affection ; The Who – WHO
When this U.K.-based graphic designer was attending Durham University at the end of the 1970s, he met Paul Weller and The Jam at a concert there and that meeting served to motivate young Simon to seek out a career in the music business, ultimately using his innate talents to design memorable album cover imagery for leading musical acts including The Style Council, Oasis, Madness, George Michael, The Who and many others.
A more-complete biography on this artist will be posted soon.
A 2020 Kickstarter project funded the production of a limited-edition book – titled Cover To Cover – that takes readers through the details of Halfon’s 40+ year career – https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/simonhalfon/cover-to-cover-the-designs-and-photography-of-simon-halfon
Dave Halili – notable album package credits include – The Specs – Changes to the Few; Body Count – Body Count and Born Dead; Ice-T – Home Invasion and Ice-T VI: Return of the Real; The Debonaires – Groovin After Sundown; Laughin’ Nose/DBX – Laughin’ Nose/DBX; No Doubt – Tragic Kingdom; Various Artists – California Ska Quake
(b. April, 1968 in Fullerton, CA) – The son of an aerospace engineer, young Dave’s capabilities as an artist were first on display while he was a student at Ladera Vista middle school, where students were required to cover their textbooks with a protective wrapping and Dave chose to use the brown paper bags from local supermarkets for this purpose, decorating these wrappers with drawings he did of Bruce Lee, Jimmy Page and fantasy figures from his own imagination. When other students saw what he was producing, they’d commission him to custom design covers for themselves (at $2 a pop), with this work ultimately leading him to produce other works to sell – t-shirts, B-Boy dancing pants, customized jackets, etc. The school district then hired him to produce graphics for a series of anti-drug/alcohol posters for distribution/display at other schools in the area, which put his talents as an artist on display in a much-larger area.
In his junior year in High School, he began taking additional art-related courses there, which he considered a waste of time and lead him to apply to study simultaneously across the street at Fullerton College, where he then studied print-making techniques and, not stopping there, he also signed up to take advantage of a local Regional Occupational Program/technical trade school, where he’d expand his knowledge base via courses in graphics set-up, lettering/fonts and other typography, compositional layout and commercial product design. It was this advanced coursework that cemented his goal to do this sort of work as a career and so, when in his Senior year, he was hired by a local real estate firm to produce brochures for them, he formally began his career in illustration. An assistant producer for the TV show Married…With Children was asked by the show’s EP Michael Moye to find a source for their own custom t-shirts and, after seeing Halili’s designs, hired him on to produce those products for both that show and, later, for another Fox series titled Pump It up.
Since that time, after opening his own design studio (“Halili Style Graphics & More”) at the age of 20, Dave has worked to develop graphics for dozens of clients in the music/entertainment business, including fellow St. Jude Hospital (Fullerton, CA) “alum” Gwen Stefani and her band No Doubt, Stone Temple Pilots, Fishbone, and other notables of the So. CA music scene (including stage designs for the early iterations of the Lollapalooza Music Festival). Dave also established strong working relationships with many in the burgeoning hip-hop scene in Southern California (and elsewhere), including N.W.A., Everlast and the Rhyme Syndicate, joining Ice-T in 1988 as the “Official Designer/Graphic Dude”, where he created the template for all the 12″ DJ singles on Rhyme $yndicate Records and collaborated together weekly from 1988-1996 to design all the clothing and related promo materials. As a lifetime member of Afrika Bambaataa’s Universal Zulu Nation, he’s helped promote the careers of many other influential rap/hip-hop acts, including Kurtis Blow, Donald D, Keith Sweat and Afrika Islam. Other record labels whose products sport Dave’s works include Epic Records, Interscope/Trauma, Moon Ska, Priority, Sony/ EMI, Virgin, Warner Bros and other indie labels.
Perhaps most-notably, Dave collaborated with rapper Ice-T to produce the album art for what would turn out to be one of the most-controversial records of all time, that being Body Count’s debut album (which features Ice-T in his hard rock/metal best). Not long after the record’s 1992 debut, the then 26-year-old Halili’s artwork became famous the world over after then-Vice President Dan Quayle and conservative stalwart Charlton Heston promoted it as an example of American youth culture headed towards Armageddon, pushing Warner Brothers Records to shelve the release, upon which Ice T quit the label and released the record (and Home Invasion) – with Dave’s artwork in-tact – on his own label. Since that time, the pair has worked together to design and launch products on the Rhyme Syndicate’s label that are sold via retail and mail order.
Dave’s artwork has been featured in numerous articles, books (such as Chuck D Presents This Day in Rap and Hip-Hop History, author Glenn Fosbraey’s An Exploration of Hatred in Pop Music: Viva Hate, James Sherry’s Heavy Metal Thunder: Kick Ass Cover Art from Kick Ass Albums; Ice-T’s 1994 book The ICE Opinion, which includes the rapper’s thoughts about his controversial album covers, and the 2022 Bloomsbury release Body Count: 33 1/3) and in museum collections including the Norman Rockwell Museum and Smithsonian Institution’s Hip Hop celebration.
Read more about this artist and his work via both his Instagram page – https://www.instagram.com/davehaliliart/ – and his LinkedIn page at https://www.linkedin.com/company/halili-style-graphics-&-more/about/
Geoff Halpin – Notable album cover work examples – Nutz – Nutz; Badfinger – Wish You Were Here; Vangelis – Heaven & Hell; Elton John – Captain Fantastic… (lettering); Paul McCartney – Wings Over America (lettering); Boomtown Rats – Boomtown Rats; Squeeze – Cool For Cats
Completing his art college studies in the late 1960s, Halpin was asked to help staff and manage an ad agency’s graphic design studio in Zambia. Returning to London in 1971, he found work in the music business there, creating album cover designs, logos and lettering for a number of musical acts (Paul McCartney, Elton John and The New York Dolls, to name a few) and soon expanded his client base to include many leading advertising agencies, working for 10 years at the Identica London agency creating corporate ID packages for brands including Universal Studios, McDonald’s and Johnnie Walker.
Working now as an independent designer with a focus on corporate logos and custom typefaces, in 2012 he collaborated with the Carter Wong agency on the redesign of the venerable Norton Motorcycle logo. Over the past 40 years, his efforts have been published in many graphic design publications and books on album cover design and were rewarded with several D&AD Design Awards and a number of music industry design awards as well. He was asked to participate in the judging of several major design awards, including those for D&AD, Design Week, European Design Awards and Scottish Design Awards. Geoff is a Fellow of The Royal Society of Arts and, as an educator, he has lectured at many leading British Art Colleges and has participated in the D&AD Education Program.
More information available via his Instagram page at – https://www.instagram.com/geoffhalpindesign/?hl=en or on his LinkedIn page at https://www.linkedin.com/in/geoffrey-halpin-b0abb820/
Richard Hamilton – artist/art director – The Beatles – The Beatles (White Album) – Individual Achievement Award inductee 2015
(b. April, 1922 in Pimlico, London, U.K.; d. September, 2011, U.K.) Growing up in a working class family in London, Richard dropped out of school to get work as an apprentice in an electric parts company where he discovered a talent for drawing which lead him to sign up for classes in painting at the St. Martin’s School of Art. Moving from there into the Royal Academy School system, he worked during WWII as a draftsman before returning to school to finish his studies. His first shows were at London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), where he befriended Pop artist/sculptor Eduardo Paolozzi and, with a host of talented co-conspirators, formed “The Independent Group” at the ICA. Another contact made via the ICA brought him to a job teaching, which provided Hamilton with the time/resources to focus on his own favorite artist – Marcel Duchamp – from which he produced a series of his own paintings (first exhibited in 1955) done as an homage to the French artist, along his own version of Duchamp’s 1934 work Green Box, published in 1960.
For another Independent Group art show (This Is Tomorrow) in London in 1956, Hamilton produced a collage titled Just What Is It that Makes Today’s Homes So Different, So Appealing?, a work that, according to an article on Hamilton found on TheWhiteAlbumProject.com site, “is considered by some critics and historians to be the first work of Pop Art. The piece has all the human senses cast in various modes; the purpose of the picture was to ‘provoke acute awareness of the sensory functions in an environmental situation’”. His stature within the art world/academia grew after this show and he was then able to take on more Royal College of Art assignments (where he’d meet artists Peter Blake and David Hockney and, later on, teach Roxy Music’s Bryan Ferry and another famed album cover designer, Nick DeVille).
Travelling to the U.S. for the first time in 1962 (after the tragic death of his wife in a car accident), he met many of the leading artists of the day including Duchamp (whom he’d later curate a show for at the Tate Gallery) before returning to England to continue his work. After hooking up with art dealer Robert Fraser, who’d show Hamilton’s work via his Indica Gallery in London, he’d meet Beatle Paul McCartney, who asked Richard to produce designs and a collage/poster for the band’s 1968 release simply titled The Beatles, better known these days as the White Album (Hamilton claimed to have been paid the equivalent of just $316 for this commission). What he created was the antithesis of Peter Blake’s Sgt. Pepper’s cover – a simple white sleeve embossed with the band’s name and stamped with a serial number as if to indicate that it was one of millions of copies (which, in fact, it was).
Since that time, Hamilton’s work has been shown in a number of exhibitions around the world. His output continued to impress, including a painting that featured a radio receiver and parts from a computer (in fact, during the 1980s, Richard was hired by two European high-tech companies to design the cases for their computers). A desire to produce a portfolio of illustrations based on the James Joyce book Ulysses which began in the late 1940s culminated in a 2002 show at the British Museum (Imaging Ulysses) of the over 100 works of art he’d go on to create. His output slowed to a trickle in the 1990s, although the artist did represent the U.K. at the Venice Biennale in 1993, taking home the Golden Lion award for best artist (sharing it with Spanish artist Anthoni Tapies) and, in 2014, the Tate Gallery staged a comprehensive retrospective of Hamilton’s work from across his career in a show called Richard Hamilton.
http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/richard-hamilton
Guido Harari – notable album package credits include – Santana – Zebop!, Shango and Viva! Santana; Andrea Bocelli – Sacred Arias and Romanza; Kate Bush – Rubberband Girl, And So Is Love and This Woman’s Work; Soft Machine – Softs; Klaus Schulze – Moondawn and Mirage; David Crosby – Thousand Roads; Paul McCartney – Tripping The Live Fantastic; Frank Zappa – Strictly Genteel; Lou Reed – Live In Italy, Animal Serenade and The Very Best of Lou Reed; Simple Minds – Streetfighting Years and Live – In The City Of Light; Bob Dylan – Real Live
(b. 1952 in Cairo, Egypt) Moving to Italy with his family at the age of six, young Guido took a liking to both music and photography early on, influenced by the work of 1950s-60s photojournalists who covered the rock and jazz music scenes, and began his career in the field himself in the early 1970s, contributing shots to European publications including Ciao 2001, Gong and Rockstar.
Since that time, Harari has photographed stars in the music and entertainment worlds, with credits for shots of international stars such as Andrea Bocelli, Kate Bush, Paolo Conte, David Crosby, Bob Dylan, B.B. King, Ute Lemper, Paul McCartney, Michael Nyman, Luciano Pavarotti, PFM, Lou Reed, Santana, Simple Minds and Frank Zappa, among many others. He has curated several exhibitions focused on music photography, such as Strange Angels, Wall Of Sound and Remain In Light and, in 2011, founded a gallery in Alba (Piedmont), Italy called Wall of Sound, where his work and that of other well-known photographers can be seen and purchased.
Wall of Sound Editions has also published a nice range of music/photo-related books (with Guido showing off his own graphic design talents here as well), including a series on the legendary Italian singer-songwriter Fabrizio De André (E poi, il futuro in 2001, Una goccia di splendore in 2007 and Fabrizio De André & PFM. Evaporati in una nuvola rock with Franz Di Cioccio in 2008), the unique theater group led by Pippo Delbono (Barboni. Il teatro di Pippo Delbono in 1999) and singer/songwriter Tom Waits (“Tom Waits. Le fotografie di Guido Harari in 2012). To celebrated the 50th anniversary of “the Summer of Love”, Harari published Stone Free: The Summer of Love 50th and the Psychedelic Poster Art and, more recently, he’s released tomes on photos of Bruce Springsteen, David Bowie and his long-time collaborator, Kate Bush (The Kate Inside, which spans the period from 1982 to 1993 when he shot her official press photos for landmark albums like Hounds Of Love, The Sensual World and The Red Shoes).
More information on this artist is available on his web site at http://www.wallofsoundgallery.com/en/about.php
George Hardie – Notable album cover work examples include – Led Zeppelin – Led Zeppelin and Presence; Climax Blues Band – Rich Man; Pink Floyd – Dark Side of The Moon and Wish You Were Here; Genesis – Lamb Lies Down on Broadway; Alan Parsons – I, Robot; Black Sabbath – Technical Ecstasy; 10 ccs – How Dare You
(b. 1944) Born near Chichester, UK, the son of a career Navy man and grandson of Martin Hardie, an art authority and Keeper of Prints at the Victoria and Albert Museum, Hardie attended London’s St. Martin’s College of Art & Design and graduating in 1970 with a Masters in Design from the Royal College of Art (RCA). While attending the RCA, he was asked by a friend in the music business help with a couple of projects – first, to create some lettering for a Jeff Beck album and then to design and illustrate album cover artwork for the debut recording by Led Zeppelin (for which he was paid £60). After graduation, he joined the staff at Nicholas Thirkell Associates (later to become NTA Studios) and began a collaborative effort with another studio – Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell’s Hipgnosis – to create a series of album cover designs, including two for Pink Floyd – Dark Side of The Moon (1973) and Wish You Were Here (1975) – and works for Black Sabbath, 10cc, Alan Parsons and another for Led Zeppelin (Presence, in 1976).
Working independently and in collaborations since the early 1980s (with design firms including Pentagram, The Partners and Trickett & Webb), Hardie worked with a wide range of clients and garnered widespread recognition for his stamp designs for the Royal Mail, including the Channel Tunnel commemorative stamps in 1994, the Millennium stamp (for which he won a D&AD design award) and the Magic stamps in 2007.
An experienced educator, Professor George Hardie taught postgraduate students of graphic design at the University of Brighton’s Faculty of Arts and Architecture from 1990 through his retirement in 2014. He has run a number of design workshops world-wide and was a visiting professor at the University of Nagoya, Japan in 2006. In 1994, Hardie became a member of the Alliance Graphique Internationale (where he served as International Secretary from 2007-2010) and was elected as a Royal Designer for Industry by Britain’s Royal Society of Arts in 2005, an award given to design professionals who have shown “sustained excellence in aesthetic and efficient design for industry”. He is also a member of the Art Worker’s Guild in London.
His work has been exhibited extensively, including shows at the University of Brighton (1993′s “George Hardie Works” and 2017’s “George Hardie: 50 Odd Years”), Barcelona and in Ljublijana in 2008. His books – Available in Other Colours: the Illustrations of George Hardie: A Book of Scraps (1993, and winner of the graphic design section of the Pantone International Color Award that year). Denouement (1996) and Colour Atlas (1997) have been included in design exhibitions at the Pentagram Gallery and in Nagoya, Japan.
More information available at – http://arts.brighton.ac.uk/arts/news-and-events/articles/george-hardies-retirement
Frank Harkins – notable album cover credits include – Rage Against The Machine – Rage Against The Machine; Mariah Carey – Merry Christmas; Incubus – S.C.I.E.N.C.E and Enjoy Incubus; System of a Down – System of a Down; Afghan Whigs – 1965; Kelly Clarkson – Thankful; Staind – Illusion of Progress; Willie Nelson – Heroes; Train – Save Me San Francisco;
After receiving his BFA degree from the School of Visual Arts in New York City, Frank began his album art-related career in 1993 as a designer working for Mercury Records, where he designed packages for label artists including Bon Jovi, Brian McKnight, Joan Osborne and Vanessa Williams. In 1996, he moved on to a new role as an Art Director at Sony Music Entertainment, where he expanded his portfolio to include packages for major acts including Good Charlotte, Incubus, Michael Jackson, System of A Down and Train, among others. Continuing on in 2001 as a Senior Art Director at RCA Records during its transition from a unit of BMG into a Clive Davis-led division that later became part of the newly-merged Sony BMG, Frank led the design team for label greats including Kelly Clarkson, Daughtry, Bruce Hornsby and Katharine McPhee.
In 2006, Harkins moved over to become Senior Art Director at Sony Music where, for the next seven years, he created memorable covers for a broad range of label acts including Sara Barielles, Coheed & Cambria, Norah Jones, Elvis Presley, Staind and Luther Vandross, after which he was promoted to the role of Vice President and Creative/Design Director for Sony Music Entertainment’s Legacy Recording’s group – a position he’s held to this date. Leading a team of 10+ staffers and an impressive cast of freelance contributors, Frank’s team has created packages, promotional graphics/content and merchandise for major label acts including Mariah Carey, Johnny Cash, Miles Davis, Foo Fighters, Willie Nelson and Rage Against The Machine, to name just a few.
Frank was the winner of a Grammy Award in 2000 in the “Best Boxed Recording Package” category for the work on the packaging for Miles Davis & John Coltrane – The Complete Columbia Recordings 1955-1961
More information on this artist can be found on his web site at http://www.frankharkins.com/
Phil Hartman (originally, Hartmann) – notable album covers include – Poco – Rose of Cimarron, Cantamos, Legend and Seven; Steely Dan – Aja; America – America Live, Silent Letter, Hideaway, Harbor and History: America’s Greatest Hits; Pure Drug & Food Act – Choice Cuts; Crosby, Stills & Nash – logo used on several LPs; Firesign Theatre – Fighting Clowns
(b. September, 1948 – d. May, 1998). The fourth of eight children in the household of building materials salesman Rupert and Doris Hartmann, Phil Hartman was born in Brantford, Ontario, Canada and, at the age of 10, moved with his family to the U.S. Living first on the East Coast in Connecticut, the family later headed West, landing in California, where Phil attended Westchester High School. Post high school, he enrolled in art courses at Santa Monica City college, leaving in the late 1960s to work as a roadie for rock bands, but returning to classes at Cal State University, Northridge (CA) in 1972, where he graduated two years later with a graphic arts degree and entered the design world as a freelance designer of album covers.
While he enjoyed his work as a visual artist, in 1975 his desire for other ways to express his creativity pushed him into the LA-area comedy scene, where he worked on developing his improvisational and voice-acting skills by attending classes offered by The Groundlings theater troupe. Several years of training followed (paying for his training by trading out his design services) and, ultimately, he was asked to join the cast, soon becoming one of the cast’s featured actors. While there, worked with fellow comedic actor Paul Reubens to develop the “Pee-Wee Herman” character for the stage, film screen and television. You’ll remember Phil’s role as “Captain Carl” on the trend-setting, graphically-impressive Pee-Wee’s Playhouse television series, and he served as co-writer for the hugely successful film Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure.
Permanently leaving his design business behind, in 1986, Hartman joined the ensemble of actors starring on the long-running late-night comedy show Saturday Night Live and was a cast-member for 8 seasons, winning an Emmy Award for his work in 1989. After SNL, Hartman appeared both on-camera and as a voice actor on a number of different films and TV shows, including NewsRadio, The Simpsons, Houseguest, Coneheads, Jingle All The Way, Sgt. Bilko and Small Soldiers.
While his first two marriages ended in divorce, he married Brynn Omdahl in 1987, the couple having two children before his wife’s drug abuse took its toll on their marriage and, ultimately, brought an early and unfortunate end to Hartman’s life. On May 28, 1998, Hartman was murdered by his wife while he slept in their Encino, CA home, with his wife committing suicide shortly thereafter.
Many tributes and testimonials to Hartman and his talent followed this tragic incident. He was inducted posthumously into the Canadian Walk of Fame and was awarded the Cineplex Legends Award in 2012. Two years later, received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
William S. (“Bill”) Harvey – Notable examples of album art – Love – Love and Forever Changes; The Doors – The Doors, Waiting for The Sun, Strange Days, Soft Parade and Best of…; MC5 – Kick Out the Jams; The Stooges – Stooges; Tim Buckley – Happy/Sad and Lorca
(d. 1992) William S. Harvey served as both office manager and art director – working alongside label founder Jac Holzman – for Elektra Records from 1953 through 1973 (the label was sold to Warner Communications, with Holzman leaving in 1972 for a senior position at Warner). In his role of art director – beginning with the label’s 10th release – he was responsible for the design of most of Elektra’s (and sister label Nonesuch’s) album covers, logos and other related packaging designs (on a related note, the first nine record covers were done by Maurice Sendak, later of Where The Wild Things Are book fame).
Harvey established the label’s reputation in the industry as a design icon, taking as much care in the record’s package design sensibility as in the quality of the music delivered inside. Working with staff photographer Joel Brodsky for a number of years, the pair teamed to helped define the public imagery of pop culture icons such as The Doors (and Jim Morrison), Love and The Stooges.
Keeping it all in the family, William S. Harvey’s son, Bill Harvey, is also a talented graphic designer with music industry clients. In 2010, to commemorate the celebration of the 60th anniversary of Elektra Records, he produced a limited-edition poster featuring the label’s well-known logo and butterfly mascot.
More information available at – http://www.answers.com/topic/bill-harvey-miscellaneous-artist
Jann Haworth – notable album cover credits include – The Beatles – Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Ultimate Box Set;
(b. March, 1942 in Hollywood, CA) Born and raised in “Tinseltown” (i.e., Hollywood, California), it was her parents – Miriam Haworth, a distinguished sculptor, printmaker and painter whose works are included in the Smithsonian and Ted Haworth, an Academy Award-winning production designer and art director who worked on such films as Some Like It Hot, The Getaway, The Longest Day and Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train, among many others – who ensured that she’d be exposed to artistic talent in many forms and would certainly have a strong influence on her artistic development and aspirations. After experimenting with art in different forms as a youngster, Jann enrolled in classes at UCLA in 1959 and, two years later, moved to London to study art history at the Courtauld Institute of Art while also working in the studios of the Slade School of Fine Art. It was while she was at school that she started using some of the sewing techniques she’d learned from her mother to create soft sculptures – first of items found in still life paintings and then life-sized doll figures, many of which referenced American pop culture icons.
Establishing herself as one of the first female figures working in the British Pop Art movement, Jann had her first major exhibition in 1963 at the Institute of Contemporary Arts which were followed by shows at noted art dealer (and friend of the Beatles and the Stones) Robert Fraser’s gallery. In 1963, she met and married another Pop artist – Peter Blake – and, following up on a recommendation Fraser made to his Beatle friends that Haworth and Blake would be just the right team to create a memorable cover for their upcoming Sgt. Pepper’s album, the duo took on the commission that would ultimately win them a 1967 Grammy Award for Best Album Cover (Graphic Arts) at the 10th annual Grammy Awards (in addition to work in design/assemblage, Jann did the hand-tinting color work on the life-sized photos and added the soft sculptures of the “Old Lady” and Shirley Temple, who was decked out in a “Welcome The Rolling Stones” jumper. It was also Haworth who envisioned the band’s name written out in a flower bed).
In 1979, Jann and Peter founded a small arts-and-crafts-focused primary school in Bath, England known as The Looking Glass School. After the couple split later that year, Jann entered into a relationship with fantasy book author (Mystery Pig, Angel and others, featuring Haworth’s illustrations) and began to devote more time to raising six children. She’d take on commissions for book covers and, as an author herself, wrote three “how to” art books for children. In 1997, Jann won a fellowship that had her return to the U.S. to study quilt-making. Setting up camp in Sundance, Utah, she then went on to launch the Art Shack Studios and Glass Recycling Works (which offers guests/students classes in pottery, ceramics, printmaking, photography, glass-blowing and several other disciplines) and a charter school. In 2004, she reached back to her most-famous creation (i.e., the Sgt. Pepper’s cover) as inspiration for a huge public mural in downtown Salt Lake City known as SLC Pepper. The new image, completed in 2005 and done with the help of a slate of over 30 other artists, first featured a new set of “heroes and heroines of the 21st Century”.
In 2014, as part of the Recording Academy’s special coverage of “Trailblazing Women”, Jann was highlighted as the first woman to share in a Grammy Award for “Best Album Cover” (with her then-husband, Peter Blake) and in 2020, Haworth and her son, Alex Johnstone, worked with 178 people (including 30 professional artists) to create the piece, with the rest handled by community members) to create another masterfully-created collage, this time, in honor of 250+ women from the past and present who’ve helped shape the state of Utah’s history (and its future) as part of the state’s celebration of the 100th anniversary of the adoption of the 19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution, giving women the right to vote. The 5,000 square foot mural, created with support from a local bank, was, according to Ms. Haworth, “the most extraordinary of my career because of the arc of time during which it is being made.”
As of the date of this writing, Jann also serves as the Creative Director of The Leonardo Museum in SLC and continues to work as an advocate for feminist rights – particularly those to increase the representation of women in the art world.
Her work is found in the collections of noted art establishments including the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, DC; the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, MN; the Sao Paolo Museum of Modern Art in Brazil; the Museum Folkwang in Germany, the Utah Museum of Fine Arts in Salt Lake City, UT as well as several museums and galleries in the U.K.. Her work has been featured in dozens of solo and group shows, including exhibitions in Amsterdam, Milan, Paris, Rome, Bilbao, London and many other cities throughout the world (a complete listing of these shows can be found on her website at http://www.jannhaworth.com/exhibitions.html ).
More information on this artist can be found on her web site at http://jannhaworth.com/
Jeri & John Heiden AKA Smog Design – Notable album cover credits include – Madonna – True Blue, Like A Virgin and Like A Prayer; P!nk – The Truth About Love, I’m Not Dead and Try This; Eagles – The Very Best Of, Long Road Out Of Eden and Selected Works; k.d. lang – Ingenue, Shadowland, Absolute Torch and Twang, Hymns of the 49th Parallel and Reintarnation; a-ha – Hunting High and Low and Scoundrel Days; Don Henley – Cass County and Building The Perfect Beast; Sheryl Crow – The Globe Sessions, C’mon C’mon and 100 Miles From Memphis; Sting – Mercury Falling; Elvis Costello – Spike, The Beloved Entertainer; Ben Folds and Ben Folds Five – Rockin The Suburbs and The Sound Of The Life Of The Mind; Rod Stewart – Storyteller and The Great American Song Book; Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers – MOJO and Hypnotic Eye; Janet (Jackson) – All For You and Damita Jo; Christina Aguilera – Back to Basics and Stripped; Britney Spears – Circus; The Decemberists – What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World, Florasongs and The King Is Dead; Stone Temple Pilots – Purple and Tiny Music
Jeri Heiden – Creative Director – After moving at age 10 from New Jersey to California’s Central Coast, Jeri’s passion for design was nurtured during field trips down to Los Angeles, where she was exposed to art and architecture, and by her high school art instructor, who helped her look at art and design from all different angles. She continued on to study graphic design and packaging at both Pepperdine University and the Art Center College of Design in the LA area, where she was introduced to a number of creative people, many of whom she’s worked with over the years. In 1982, she started her career in the music business, spending the next 17 years working in design/creative roles at Warner Bros Records and A&M Records, with her hand in the design and production of over 450 record albums.
Her good work on designs for the recordings of such artists as Christina Aquilera, Sheryl Crow, k.d. lang, Madonna, Rod Stewart and many others was highlighted with six Grammy Award nominations (the first in 1986) for album packaging and design, with a win in 2024 (and her first with John) in the “Best Boxed Or Special Limited Edition Package” category for the package they created for the critically-acclaimed 20-LP collection For The Birds: The Birdsong Project.
In 1999, she joined her husband, fellow designer John Heiden, in the design firm he’d launched several years earlier (with Kim Biggs) – SMOG Design – where they’ve continued to supply outstanding designs – including a large selection of logos – for clients both inside the music business and in the areas of film, TV, publishing and consumer products. Non-music industry clients have included Ammo Books, Disney/Pixar, Heirloom LA catering, Lightopia Marquis Phillips Wines and Sweet Briar College. Jeri’s contributions to the field of design have extended outside the studio as she has lectured on a wide variety of subjects and has served on a number of design juries.
Aside from her Grammy nominations and win, her work has also been recognized by the AIGA (where she was named an AIGA Fellow in 2010), the American Center for Design, the Art Directors Club and the Type Directors Club and in leading design industry publications including Communications Arts, Graphis, I.D. Magazine and STEP Inside Design. Her photo work was featured in The Graphic Eye, published in 2009 by Chronicle Books, with other projects featured in books including author Steven Heller’s 2000 book (published by Watson-Guptill) titled Letterforms: Bawdy, Bad and Beautiful: The Evolution of Hand-Drawn, Humorous, Vernacular, and Experimental Type and designer Richard Evans’ 2010 book Art of the Album Cover.
John Heiden / Founder + Creative Director – John was also raised on California’s central coast, with his high school activities including long-distance running and the creative arts including design, photography and printing. After college, John moved to New York to pursue an opportunity with the Elite Models agency, which also allowed him to travel through Europe extensively, soaking up the unique cultures that would influence his subsequent work. Returning to the Los Angeles area in the early 1980s, Heiden apprenticed at a small design firm there, fine-tuning his skills until he was offered a job as a graphic designer at Warner Bros Records, where he worked for 3 years. Partnering with the noted Rotterdam-based design firm Hard Werken to open his own design firm, he continued to work and, partnering with designer Kim Biggs, the duo opened SMOG Design in 1995, with his wife Jeri joining the firm in 1999.
As co-Creative Director, John focuses on photography, brand identities and book/record packaging and design, with his work noted by industry magazines Communications Arts, Design and I.D. Magazine along with trade groups AIGA and The American Center for Design.
For more information on these artists and their design firm, please visit their web site at http://www.smogdesign.com/about/
Bob Heimall– Notable album cover art credits include – Patti Smith – Horses, Carly Simon – No Secrets and Anticipation; The Doors – 13; The Stooges – Fun House; Harry Chapin – Heads & Tales; Barry Manilow – Live; Grand Funk Railroad – Caught In The Act; The Four Tops – Tonight; James Brown – Original Disco Man; John Lennon & Yoko Ono – Milk & Honey; Outlaws – Outlaws and Lady In Waiting; Bread – Manna and Best of Bread; Ted Nugent – State of Shock and Scream Dream; MC5 – MC5
Raised in Livingston, NJ, Heimall took up oil painting in high school with an affinity for the impressionist work of Claude Monet and Pablo Picasso. He attended the Newark School of Fine and Industrial Arts, where professors noted he could earn a living in commercial art, but would sacrifice the joys and creativity of fine art. After completing post-graduate work at NYU in 1965, Bob spent the next five years working at ad agencies in the winter and surfing in the summer until an employment agency placed him at Elektra Records. His portfolio as a graphic designer impressed the company and he worked up the ladder. “After that, I didn’t go surfing anymore,” he said. “I threw everything I had into a career, because I loved it.” Indeed, it was an enviable gig. He’d listen to a tape made at the end of recording sessions — before mixing, mastering and pressing — to interpret the music and make a graphic image for the album art. In one of his most important decisions, Heimall chose a stark, black and white photograph of Patti Smith with a jacket over her shoulder for her album titled Horses. The photo was taken by Robert Mapplethorpe, who was living with Smith at the time. Heimall added the simplest text he could find to keep the photo’s mood intact. The text went on the top third of the album, a standard visibility rule since records were sold in step-down bins at the store. Rolling Stone magazine chose it as one of the “Top 100 Album Covers of All Time”.
The advent of computers “changed everything,” said Heimall, who was used to laying out album art on a board. “I had to learn a whole new technology,” he said. Record company secretaries could take photos and enter album text on software, essentially sweeping work away from Heimall’s trained eye. And while the diminutive size of compact discs and iPod icons can’t match the grand canvas that LPs once had, Heimall is optimistic that listeners will download album art to accompany their tunes. “You still need a visible image,” he said.
After Elektra, Heimall worked for Arista Records, Polygram Records and launched his own studio in New York City, where he made artwork for a huge client roster, including – Atlantic Records, Capitol Records, GRP Records, Island Music, Polygram Music, Sony Music, the Bolshoi Ballet, Pioneer Electronics, Time Life Inc. and the Metropolitan Opera. “Robert L. Heimall: Paintings, Art Direction, Design, Photography” has been the credit on thousands of record album and book covers for artists including The Door’s, Carly Simon, Bread, Jim Croce, Harry Chapin, Cyndi Lauper, 4 Tops, John Lennon & Yoko Ono. He has been featured on “60 Minutes”, “Dateline”, and taught for 12 years at the Pratt Institute and the School of Visual Arts.
He has also won many awards for his work with the Art Directors Club of NY and LA, Society of Illustrators, AIGA, CA Magazine, NY & LA Type Directors Club and his work has been published in Graphis Magazine, as well as in many books on record album cover art. Bob was also nominated for a Grammy Award for “Album Cover of the Year” by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, and has been a judge for NARAS for many years.
For more information on this artist, please visit his web site at http://www.robertlheimall.com/
Olaf Heine – notable album package credits include – Kane – What If; On – Shifting Skin; Iggy Pop – A Million In Prizes: The Anthology and Icon; Sting – Brand New Day and Live In Berlin; Eagles – Long Road Out of Eden; Apocalyptica – Cult and Reflections; Junkie XL – Booming Back At You; Yonderboi – Splendid Isolation; Conjure One – Extraordinary Ways; The Calling – Camino Pallermo; Chris Cornell – Euphoria Morning; Scorpions – Eye II Eye; Bon Jovi – Have A Nice Day; Paul Van Dyk – The Politics of Dancing; Josh Groban – Closer; Fat Joe – All Or Nothing; Jerry Lee Lewis – Last Man Standing; James Blunt – All The Lost Souls
(b. 1968 in Hanover, Germany) After completing his studies in photography and design at the Lette Verein technical school of applied arts in Berlin, Germany, Olaf went on to establish himself as a much-in-demand portrait/commercial photographer (and, later, music video director), with his photos of celebrities in the worlds of entertainment and sports including Coldplay, Iggy Pop, Nick Cave, The Killers, Rammstein, Snoop Dogg, Sting and many others finding their way onto the pages of many of the world’s best known editorial/media outlets.
He’s published four books of his work (Leaving The Comfort Zone, I Love You But I’ve Chosen Rock and, more-recently, Brazil (which “traces Brazil’s soul with a demonstrable sensitivity for form and texture and brings to life the words of the legendary Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer”) and Rwandan Daughters (photos of mothers and daughters who’ve survived major traumas in their lives) and his photos have been included in group and solo shows in museums and galleries in Europe and the Americas.
More information on this artist can be found on his web site at https://olafheine.com/about
Jim Hendin – Notable album cover credits include – Rare Earth – Ecology and Fill Your Head: The Studio Album 1969-74; Marvin Gaye – What’s Going On; George Clinton – Sample Some of Disc, Sample Some of D.A.T. Vols 1 & 2 and Testing Positive; The Jackson Five – Diana Ross Presents: The Jackson Five
(b. 1941) Jim Hendin began his career working with commercial photographer George Kawamoto in 1961. Recognizing Jim’s potential, Kawamoto suggested that Hendin enroll at the Art Center School of Design in Los Angeles, where he was awarded a degree in Photography in 1967. After moving to Detroit, MI, to open his own studio, Jim then landed a great gig as the exclusive photographer at Motown Records. His studio became quite the attraction in his neighborhood as the locals there would be able to watch Hendin’s clients – Marvin Gaye, The Jackson 5, Martha Reeves & The Vandellas, Smokey Robinson, The Temptations and others – during their photo shoots and, if the musical acts so obliged, listen to an impromptu concert.
Over the years, his client base grew to include other commercial clients such as Gulf & Western, NCR and Universal Music. And while he retired from commercial work in 1997, Jim continues to work as an artist, developing his own unique approach to creating works of art based on his digital photographs. His work in this area is currently on display at a number of galleries and at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, OH.
To learn more about this artist, please visit his web site at http://hendinphoto.com/index.html
Tom Hingston/Hingston Studio – notable album cover credits include – Massive Attack – Singles 90-98, Mezzanine, Butterfly Caught, 100th Window and Collected; Nick Cave – The Road (Original Score, w/ Warren Ellis), Lovely Creatures, Push The Sky Away and Dig Lazarus Dig!!!; The Rolling Stones – Shine A Light and GRRR!; Erasure – Tomorrow’s World; Gnarls Barkley – St. Elsewhere; Robbie Williams – I’ve Been Expecting You, Sing When You’re Winning, Reality Killed The Video Star and Take The Crown; Grinderman – Grinderman; The Chemical Brothers – Further and Don’t Think
(b. 1973 – U.K.) Inspired by both the artwork found on his father’s collection of early jazz records, the imagery found in the pages of The Face pop culture magazine and a tour through a design exhibition at the V&A Museum featuring the work of designer Neville Brody, Tom Hingston took on the coursework required to earn a degree in graphic design at Central St. Martin’s College in London, England. After graduation, Tom worked for a short while as a freelancer before being offered an opportunity to work as a junior designer doing research for the previously-mentioned Neville Brody design shop, where he stayed for several years working on a wide range of projects before departing in 1997 to set up his own studio on Soho’s Brewster Street.
One of the first music-industry clients he landed was the British “trip-hop” band Massive Attack, itself lead by a graffiti artist-turned-rap-artist Robert Del Naja, who were looking for a cover for their new album titled Mezzanine. The cover Hingston designed around Nick Knight’s photography would soon be seen by a huge audience, with the 1998 release quickly hitting #1 on the charts before going on to sell several million copies (and, ultimately, landing on several “Best Album of All Time” lists in the 2000s).
Since then, Tom has gone on to work on projects for many people working in the music business including major acts such as Nick Cave, the Chemical Brothers, Lady Gaga, Grace Jones and the Rolling Stones, just to name a few. He expanded his talents into directing for film and video, working on jobs for clients in the music business (such as David Bowie, producing the music videos for later singles such as “I’d Rather Be High” and the posthumous release “No Plan” EP, and fellow album cover creator Anton Corbijn) and for brands in the areas of fashion (Christian Dior, Nike and Pepe Jeans), lifestyle products (Absolut vodka, Rolls Royce motorcars, Naim audio products and Mandarina Duck luggage) and technology (Nokia and Aesir, a telco that had him create ads, packaging, GUI icons – even a custom typeface).
The work of Hingston and his design team has been put on display in a number of galleries and museums (including a show at the Victoria & Albert, “where it all began” and a 2018 display at the Paul Smith store in London where 16 of Tom’s album covers were re-created as “lenticular” 3-D images) and has been honored in magazines and with a nomination for a 2018 Grammy Award in the “Best Special Limited Edition Package” category for his deluxe edition of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds Lovely Creatures release.
More information on this artist is available on his web site at http://www.hingston.net/
(James) Flournoy Holmes – notable album cover credits include – The Allman Brothers Band – Eat A Peach; Christopher Cross – Christopher Cross; The Marshall Tucker Band – The Marshall Tucker Band and Greetings From South Carolina; Dr. John – In The Right Place; The Charlie Daniels Band – Nightrider and Fire On The Mountain; The Outlaws – Hurry Sundown; Carole King – Touch The Sky; Paul Davis – Ride ‘Em Cowboy; Jim Glaser – The Man In The Mirror
(b. Spartanburg, GA) The son of two artistically-inclined parents (his father was a musician, while his mother taught ceramics), Flournoy showed promise as an artist at an early age, winning awards in school for his designs for the school logo and promotional posters (and the admiration of his friends for his work on their clothing!). He was encouraged to follow his passion for art and, attending school at the University of Georgia on a full scholarship, he received his BFA in drawing and painting. He studied at the University of Georgia under the painter James Herbert (who later would direct music videos for another student, Michael Stipe, and his band R.E.M.) and then with artists Donald Judd and surrealist Mati Klarwein, whose work was featured on album covers for Santana, Miles Davis and others.
After school (and a trip to the Woodstock Art & Music Festival), he travelled overseas, soaking in the many influences he found while hitch-hiking to various locations. With his art school classmate, W. David Powell, he then launched his own design/photo studio in Athens, GA called Wonder Graphics and, since the early 1970s, he’s creating designs/imagery for a wide range of clients. He’s worked for a veritable who’s who in Southern Rock music, including The Allman Brothers Band, Capricorn Records, Charlie Daniels, Dr. John, Kansas, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Marshall Tucker, The Outlaws, Sea Level, Wet Willie, Hank Williams Jr. and many others. Other well-known musical acts that have since benefitted from Flournoy’s talents include Aerosmith, Christopher Cross, The Grateful Dead, Carole King, Ted Nugent/Amboy Dukes, Bruce Springsteen, Derek Trucks and Widespread Panic.
His list of gig poster clients is quite impressive as well, adding names including Boston, James Brown, Jackson Browne, Sammy Hagar, The Jacksons and Billy Joel, among many others. Flournoy’s skills are not limited to drawing and painting – he’s also built an impressive portfolio of photographic work, with music industry clients including Miles Davis, Eagles, Al Green, Willie Nelson, Leon Russell and Sting.
Over the years, Holmes has received numerous awards and grants, including a Grammy Nomination in 1975 for his cover for Paul Davis’ Ride ‘Em Cowboy and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. His art is included in both private and corporate collections and has been included in museum and gallery exhibitions in the U.S. and U.K. Expanding his talents into the areas of film and music-making, Flournoy won a 2006 High Times “Stony Award” for Best Documentary in 2006 for co-directing the film Dreadheads and, as an accomplished flautist with his group The Flying Mystics, he’s released several CDs of, according to his bio site, “music and works with sound in a shamanic context, as a healing modality and in ceremony.”
For more information on this artist, visit his sites at http://www.flournoyholmes.com/flournoy-holmes-album-cover-artist/ or http://www.etsy.com/people/ashtangayogaatlanta
Mike Hrubovcak – notable album cover credits include – Grave – Exhumed; Six Feet Under – Crypt of the Devil; Sinister – The Carnage Ending and Legacy of the Ashes; Aurora Borealis – World Shapers and Apokalupsis; Mortician – Reanimated Dead Flesh; Polterchrist – Bow To None; Seven Gates – Hall of Hanging Lights
Mike Hrubovcak is an artist based out of the Philadelphia/NYC area and has been heavily involved in the metal/horror scene since 1992. In his own words – “My artistic release first began with oil painting and airbrush. Throughout college, I started doing more artwork on the a computer within Photoshop and found that incorporating several mediums (painting, drawing & photo-manipulation) into the computer really allowed me the flexibility to express my art on a whole new level. Over the years I’ve had the pleasure of working with many great bands, magazines and record labels worldwide…A few clients I’ve worked with have included: Revolver Magazine, the record labels Century Media Records and Relapse Records, and acts such as Sinister, Inhume, Rumpelstiltskin Grinder, Avulsed, Cattle Decapitation, XXX Maniak, Aurora Borealis, I.C.E. and many more.” Mike’s works have been found in books (including ZOMBOOK, a book on zombie art), gallery exhibitions and numerous publications in print and online. He also sings for bands including MONSTROSITY and VILE and has stayed busy with former bands DIVINE RAPTURE, I.C.E. and his own solo project, AZURE EMOTE.
To see more of Mike’s work, please visit his web site at
http://www.visualdarkness.com
To learn more about this (and other) releases on Century Media Records, please visit their website at
http://www.centurymedia.com/us/index.php
Gerard Huerta – notable album cover credits include – AC/DC – High Volatage and Let There Be Rock; Boston – Boston; Ted Nugent – Ted Nugent, State of Shock and Double Live Gonzo!; Chicago – Chicago XIV; Return To Forever – Romantic Warrior; Stephen Stills – Illlegal Stills; Rick Derringer – Derringer; Willie Nelson – Willie & Family Live; George Benson – Benson Burner
(b. 1951 in Los Angeles, CA) Born and raised in Southern California, Gerard graduated Westminster High School and then the Art Center College of Design in 1974, after which he began his career working for CBS Records in New York City. His great talent for creating memorable logos, stylized type and other imagery was immediately put to work and can be seen on designs for Boston, Blue Oyster Cult, Ted Nugent, Foriegner and others, but he’s perhaps best-known for the now-iconic logo he produced for Australian rockers AC/DC which has, since it was first seen on their Let Their Be Rock album, been reproduced countless times on all sorts of band-related visuals and merchandise (and for which, sadly for Gerard, he was not given any royalties for – such is life in the music business).
He left CBS after two years and started Gerard Huerta Design in nearby Connecticut in 1976 (with his studio in the historic Southport Freight Station) and has been drawing custom letters and logos ever since. In addition to his well-known designs for the music industry, some of his logos and logotypes have included those for brands such as Arista Records, Calvin Klein’s Eternity, CBS Records Masterworks, Swiss Army Brands, MSG Network, Nabisco, Spelling Entertainment, Type Directors Club and Waldenbooks, along with the mastheads of Time, Money, People, The Atlantic Monthly, PC Magazine, Adweek, Us, Conde Nast’s Traveler, Working Mother, WordPerfect, The American Lawyer, The National Law Journal, The National Catholic Register, Illustration and Architectural Digest.Gerard has also crafted corporate alphabets for Waldenbooks, Time-Life, Pepsi and Conde Nast. Gerard collaborated with noted designer Roger Huyssen on the branding for Clint Eastwood’s film Bronco Billy, The Coal Miner’s Daughter, Friday the 13th-Part III, and the one-sheet artwork for Atlantic City and Star Trek III: The Search For Spock. He also created theme art logos for ten years for the annual Breeders’ Cup event, designed lettering for Super Bowls XXXIV and XXVIII and watch dials for the complete line of wristwatches made by the Original Swiss Army Watch company.
He has been featured in Money Magazine, The Penrose Annual, Typographic i, Scripsit, The Graphis Business Issue, How Magazine, Step-By-Step Magazine, Westport Magazine and the books Graphis Typography 1: Masters of Typography and Friedrich Friedl’s reference book Typography: When Who How. Gerard also designed the multi-necked fully-playable stringed instrument known as “The Rock Ock” for the National Guitar Museum, which is on display along with his Vintage Guitar Art collection of illustrations of many of the world’s best-known instruments. His work is in the permanent collection of The Museum of Modern Art.
To see more of his current work, please visit Mr. Huerta’s sites at http://www.gerardhuerta.com/ and http://www.graphis.com/portfolio-slideshow/gerard-huerta/
I had the pleasure of interviewing Gerard several years back about his work on that iconic AC/DC logo and I invite you to take a gander at that article on my old archive site –http://rockpopgallery.typepad.com/rockpop_gallery_news/2007/07/cover-story—a.html
Darren Hughes – Individual Achievement Award Nominee (2014) for his work on the cover for Hey Ma by the British alt rock group James
(b. May, 1974 in Barnsley, Yorkshire, UK) Rejecting the “family career” of coal mining and looking to prepare for a career in the arts, Darren left Barnsley in 1992 to move to London, where he enrolled in a Graphic Design degree program at the Camberwell College of Arts. While working on his Bachelor of Arts degree (which he received with Honors in 1997), Hughes apprenticed with Alan Kitching and Kelvyn Smith at the Typography Letterpress Workshop, which ultimately lead to a position as a lecturer/assistant in the Typography/Letterpress program at the Royal College of Art, where he worked until 1999. That year, he decided to enroll in the school’s Master of Arts in Art & Design Communication program, receiving that honor from the world-renowned university in 2001 while simultaneously gaining more design experience working for two firms – Imagination and Meta Design – where he worked until graduating.
After a brief stint as a designer at Crescent Lodge Design, in 2002 Darren accepted a position as an Art Director at a start-up called Albion London, a digital creative agency that, today, employs over 90 people. At Albion London, he worked on campaigns including the launch of Skype (the video service now owned by Microsoft), Innocent Drinks and Virgin, remaining there until 2005. After working transiently as Head of Design at Springer & Jacoby International, in 2005 Darren moved to Amsterdam to work for international creative titan Wieden + Kennedy as a Designer/Art Director, working on projects for clients including Coca Cola, EA Games, Nike and P&G/Old Spice. In 2008, he accepted an offer to move back to the UK to join LOVE Creative in Manchester as a Creative Director, working on large-scale projects for Sony (including the launches of the PlayStation PSP and the PlayStation 3), a position he remained at until 2012, when he to launch his career as a freelance designer/art director.
Since then, he’s added portfolio clients including IdeasByMusic, Zero Lites and Zucchini Digital Engineering. Throughout his career, Darren has worked to share his passion for design with students all over the world, lecturing and tutoring at schools/universities including the Kent Institute of Art & Design, the London College of Communication, the University of Brighton, the Southampton Institute and the Miami Ad School.
More information on this artist is available on his web site at http://mrdarrenhughes.com/3581894
Don Hunstein – Notable examples of album cover work – Bob Dylan – Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan; Blood Sweat & Tears – More Than Ever; Al Kooper – You Never Know Who Your Friends Are…; Cryan’ Shames – Scratch The Sky; Johnny Cash – Love; Simon & Garfunkel – Bridge Over Troubled Water
Don Hunstein grew up in St. Louis, MO and attended Washington University, graduating in 1950 with a degree in English. After college he enlisted in the US Air Force and was stationed in Fairford, England and assigned a desk job. It was this assignment that allowed him to travel around Europe. He began photographing casually, taking pictures to send home to his family, and then with the help of a Leica M3 purchased in the PX and inspired by a book of renowned street photographer Henri Cartier Bresson’s work, his hobby began to take him on a lifelong path. Transferring to a base near London, he joined a local camera club and took evening classes at London’s Central School of Art and Design, becoming influenced by the artists and designers whom he met there. He returned to the States in 1954, ending up in New York City, where he eventually landed an apprenticeship in a commercial photography studio. There he honed his photography skills by mastering large format cameras and lighting.
At the time, photography was, as Don put it: “ not a glamorous profession,” but he didn’t have a pull in any other vocational direction and it satisfied his creative side. As chance connections were made, he soon met and became mentored by Deborah Ishlon, who worked in the publicity department at Columbia Records. She offered him a job helping her run the photo library there and supplying prints to the press. As he began to take his own photos for the company, they recognized his talent, and he gradually worked his way into the position of Director of Photography for CBS/Columbia Records. As staff photographer during Columbia’s heyday as a major rock, jazz and classical music label, Don was there to witness – and photograph – a number of iconic moments in the early history of rock music.
Over the course of his career at CBS, he shot over 200 LP and CD covers and documented the recording of many of the great albums in music history and have included portraits of Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Miles Davis and many others. And, fortunately for Don, this was a time when the company was under the direction of Goddard Lieberson, who thought it important to document in photographs the cultural history of the music of their time. So he had the opportunity to do far more than album covers and publicity shots, covering their recording sessions and even visiting them on their home turf. His ability to set both new comers and experienced stars at ease in his presence is evident in his photographs, which captured the intimate personal moments as well as the quintessential portraits. His photographs documented a rare time when musicians spent time on their art, rather than their publicity.
After a battle with Alzheimer’s Disease, Don Hunstein died in Manhattan, NY at the age of 88 in March, 2017
Biographical information excerpted from Mr. Hunstein’s bio on his web site at – http://www.donhunstein.com/
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Ioannis – Notable album cover work examples – The Allman Brothers – Where It All Begins; Extreme – Pornograffitti; Styx – Return to Paradise; Blue Oyster Cult – Curse of the Hidden Mirror
Ioannis was born in Athens, Greece. In 1967, his family moved to the United States and at an early age, he became influenced by American comic book artists. He immediately knew he would be an illustrator and began creating and drawing his own comic books, which he then sold around the neighborhood. His love for music pushed his artistic development in a particular direction, with the hopes of one day creating artwork – and, in particular record sleeve design – for the music industry. During his teen years he began painting in different media, developing a unique mixed-media technique combining photographs, several types of paints and mixing traditional and airbrush applications. As he began college, Ioannis had already begun providing design services to the local independent music acts and labels. In the early 1980s, this expanded to include clients in the New York music scene where his work as a freelance art director increased dramatically.
Since then, he has done over 165 record covers/CD packages, along with a vast catalog of promotional material, merchandise and tour art for a diverse series of clients in the Classic Rock, Metal, Jazz, Prog Rock, World music, alternative, and electronic genres. Some of his music clients have included Universal Records, Sony Records and Sanctuary Records Group, providing designs for Deep Purple, Urian Heep, STYX, Blue Oyster Cult, Dream Theater, King Crimson, Yngwie Malmsteen, Biohazard, Sepultura, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Quiet Riot, Dokken, Johnny Winter, Extreme, UFP, The Tubes, Eddie Money, Van Zant, Saga, and many more.
In 1994, he was one of 80 artists selected to create a mural at Woodstock II, and his works have been featured in many magazines, books and exhibitions worldwide. His design firm – VIVID IMAGES CREATIVE – also creates film posters, entertainment company ID programs for Radio and TV companies and programs, websites and viral campaigns for entertainment clients, while his merchandising company – DANGEROUS AGE GRAPHICS – showcases, sells and promotes his original artwork (original works have been selling recently in the $25 – $50K range). He is also currently working on a series of exhibits nationally as well as on a video game based on his art, the cover for a book on Led Zeppelin, and an apparel line of his designs.
To learn more about Ioannis, please visit his website at http://www.dangerousage.com
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