Roger Dean is an iconic artist most well known for his fantasy landscapes that have adorned album covers for the past 30 years. In addition to his work for the music industry he has worked in videogames, publishing, architecture and film. Dean’s most well known work was album covers created for Yes and Asia.

Yes - Fragile (LP, front cover, 1971)

Yes - Fragile (LP, back cover, 1971)

Yes - Close To The Edge (LP, front cover, 1972)

Yes - Close To The Edge (LP, inside spread, 1972)

Yessongs was a live 3 disc album and continued a theme from the back cover of the first album, Fragile. The album art continues the story of the planet breaking apart from the Fragile back cover. With the extra space given due to the album’s foldout 4-panel design, Dean was able to illustrate a timeline of events. On the back cover illustration, Escape, shows the lingering pieces of the destroyed planet. Arrival shows pieces of the planet landing into the waters of a new planet. In the next image, Awakenings, you see development of plant and animal life on this new planet. In Pathways you finally see the development of civilization on the new planet.

The story depicted on this album is also the basis of Roger Dean’s film, Floating Islands, which is currently in development.

Yes - Yessongs (LP Live, front cover, 1972)

Yes - Yessongs (LP Live, Escape, back cover, 1972)

Yes - Yessongs (LP Live, Arrival, insert 1, 1972)

Yes - Yessongs (LP Live, Awakening, insert 2, 1972)

Yes - Yessongs (LP Live, Pathways, insert 3, 1972)

Budgie - Squawk  (LP, front cover, 1972)

Budgie - Never Turn Your Back on a Friend  (LP, front cover, 1973)

Asia - Self-Titled  (LP, front cover, 1982)
“Asia” (Dragon) album cover design was later voted the second most successful album cover design of all time, (after “Sergeant Pepper” ) by readers of “Rolling Stone” magazine.

Asia - Alpha  (LP, front cover, 1983)

Asia - Astra  (LP, front cover, 1985)

Uriah Heep - Demons and Wizards (LP, front and back cover, 1972)
This cover garnered a bit of controversy over the hidden imagery of male and female genitalia in this illustration.

Pink Floyd/ London Philharmonic Orchestra - Us and Them  (LP, front cover, 1995)

Birdsongs of the Mesozoic - The Iridium Controversy  (LP, front cover, 2003)

From the mid-1980s to early 1990s Roger Dean did most of the cover art for Psygnosis’ video games which were published on the PC Commodore Amiga, Commodore 64, Atari ST and Amstrad CPC.

Psygnosis Logo and Wordmark (Video game company corporate logo, 1985)

Brataccas (Mindscape Inc./Psygnosis, 1986)

Baal (Psygnosis, 1988)

Obliterator (Psygnosis, 1988)

Agony (Psygnosis, 1992)

Ork (Psygnosis, 1992)

Here is a short video with Roger Dean briefly explaining his process of creating a cover for a British band, the G.O.D.S. (Gentlemen of Distorted Sound).

Images were taken from RogerDean.com, Psygnosis.org and Album Art Exchange. All rights reserved to the respective owners of the showcased material.

69 Love Songs is a project created by London-based fans of the Magnetic Fields.  The small collective of artists and designers are taking on the task of interpretting and illustrating each and every track off of the Magnetic Fields’ three volume album, 69 Love Songs. I am eagerly awaiting what they come up for “Washington, DC” and “Popular Mechanics for Lovers.”

Iamgabz.com is the portfolio of Polish designer Gabz who specialize in everything drawing related. Posters, Illustration, story boards etc…

Resn is an interactive design company from New Zealand. Their company site makes you feel like you are on an acid trip while their work is amazing and have won multiple FWA picks, Webby and SXSW awards.

Wizz is a French post house that does both motion design and VFX. I recommend checking out their short Gary and Seat commercial.

Another must read from Khoi Vinh on design criticism that asks for designers to separate themselves from their work or the work of “design superstars” and think more objectively.

“In New York, we are very occupied with getting from one place to another. I wondered: could a human-like object traverse sidewalks and streets along with us, and in so doing, create a narrative about our relationship to space and our willingness to interact with what we find in it? More importantly, how could our actions be seen within a larger context of human connection that emerges from the complexity of the city itself? To answer these questions, I built robots.”

Kehinde Wiley does portrait painting of “urban men” on horses.

Does this post mean I am running out daily inspiration material? No, this is just interesting to me for some reason.

A motion and graphic design collective from somewhere…

This is a free 3D shirt template for Cinema 4D where you can render mocks of t-shirt designs. I made this for a friend and thought I would pass it along.

To put your designs on the shirt you just need to open up shirt_texture.psd and replace the “DESIGN” layer with your own work. For help with placement you can turn on the “GUIDE” layer, just remember to turn it back off before you save and close. If you want a different shirt color than white you can fill the “Shirt Color” layer with the desired color of your mock shirt.

Once you have your texture set, open the lbwb_shirt.c4d file. You may need to reload the texture in the material to update it with your changes. The “pose” of the shirt is accomplished using the clothlide tag so you can adjust the settings on the cloth tag to get different poses. Then you can play through the preview until you get something you like. Finally all you have to do is render and you are done.

I kept the instructions short here but if you have any questions feel free to leave a comment below.

Download project files (.rar)

Fearless design is by Nick and the OC design is from me (Jamie).

Previews:

Words To Work By are a series of six typographic posters from the ad agency Publicis Mojo in Sydney.

Airside is a creative agency working across the disciplines of graphic design, illustration, digital, interactive and moving image.

Sébastien Cannone just put up a new reel. Amazing 3D work in motion graphics.

Joshua Davis Studios just updated their site with new work and a new style (reminds me of cards layed out on a table). You should also check out Joshua Davis’ flickr account for great work in progresses, photos from his travels and the occassional artwork from his daughter. I am very interested in where he is going to take his latest exploration in kaleidoscope generative work.

Design Stories from New York is a presentation given by Debbie Millman at a GDC event in 2005. Debbie Millman is a partner and president of the design division at Sterling Group and also is the host of the always wonderful Design Matters radio show.