In This Hub-Page We Journey Through Four Decades Of Album Art by Graphic Designer Roger Dean Also Including Record Label Art and Logo Designs and More.
"It wasn’t just prog that Dean illustrated for – he also did lots of work for the pioneering British afro-pop group Osibisa. These ‘tankheads’ would appear on their 2015 Ultimate Collection...
Dean's 'House Concept 3 - I'd happily live in that Me not sure, I can't see the...
Worked on Yes, Asia and Uriah Heep album covers
Terrorpods by Roger Dean For Psygnosis games
I hope Roger will not ban this blog because of author rights.I have some >100 renderings of Roger...
The English artist, one of the great fathers of Imaginative Realism, muses about a new world and the people’s art, and shares with MutualArt an...
Roger Dean, the famed artist, designer, architect, and publisher, turns 70 on 31 August. Featuring some of his greatest fantasy landscapes and designs for artists such as Yes and Asia, let’s celebrate with a selection of some of his most brilliant images
Space was not the final frontier for artist Roger Dean, best known for his album covers for the band Yes – he went far beyond the galaxies for these fantastical images
I hope Roger will not ban this blog because of author rights.I have some >100 renderings of Roger...
The Chambers Project is proud to present the opening of "The Secret Path" an exhibition of original art works by famed UK artists Roger Dean and his d...
The band's 11th studio album showcases the current line-up's new music and is housed in a stunning 6 panel digipack with new artwork by ROGER DEAN.
Containing work by artists including Chris Foss, Ian Miller, David Pelham, Bruce Pennington, David A. Hardy, Tim White, Bob Fowke, and Roger Dean, the Science Fiction Monthly poster magazine was published by New English Library from 1974 to 1976.
Space was not the final frontier for artist Roger Dean, best known for his album covers for the band Yes – he went far beyond the galaxies for these fantastical images
I hope Roger will not ban this blog because of author rights.I have some >100 renderings of Roger...
Space was not the final frontier for artist Roger Dean, best known for his album covers for the band Yes – he went far beyond the galaxies for these fantastical images
I hope Roger will not ban this blog because of author rights.I have some >100 renderings of Roger...
Roger Dean, the famed artist, designer, architect, and publisher, turns 70 on 31 August. Featuring some of his greatest fantasy landscapes and designs for artists such as Yes and Asia, let’s celebrate with a selection of some of his most brilliant images
Roger Dean, the famed artist, designer, architect, and publisher, turns 70 on 31 August. Featuring some of his greatest fantasy landscapes and designs for artists such as Yes and Asia, let’s celebrate with a selection of some of his most brilliant images
Space was not the final frontier for artist Roger Dean, best known for his album covers for the band Yes – he went far beyond the galaxies for these fantastical images
Make your space more sustainable with the latest information on industrial design and product design.
If you were an amoeba, your neighborhood was a healthy human body & your job was to travel around this body, what sort of day would you have? There are no straight lines in Nature & this is…
The English artist, one of the great fathers of Imaginative Realism, muses about a new world and the people’s art, and shares with MutualArt an...
Acá damos inicio a una sección dedicada a los grandes ilustradores del género fantástico y de ciencia ficción. -LA PSICODELIA ILUSTRADA- Hace muchos, pero muchos años, no existían ni el Blue Ray, ni los DVDs, ni las computadoras personales y ni tan siquiera los CDs… pero aun así se escuchaba buena música. La juventud de esos tiempos, por lo general inmersa en los vapores de la marihuana, pasaba largas tardes de su existencia escuchando una y otra vez discos de vinilo con temas que jamás duraban menos de media hora. Yes, Génesis, Led Zeppelin, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull y Focus son solo algunos de los tantas bandas que desgranaban sus melodías en una serie de largos solos caracterizados por la síncopa, las reminiscencias musicales clásicas y las letras cargadas de extrañas fantasías psicodélicas de carácter mítico, por lo general bastante inentendibles. Otra de las características de este material discográfico eran sus cubiertas. Las mismas solían estar diseñadas e ilustradas por grandes creativos, que se encargaban de imprimir a los mismos el carácter conceptual que representaban. Uno de ellos, e indudablemente el más representativo de esos tiempos, fue Roger Dean. Este pintor ingles, nacido en Ashford el 31 de agosto de 1944, se haría muy conocido a mediados de la década del 60 por sus soberbios trabajos realizados para las grandes compañías discográficas que editaban Rock progresivo y sinfónico. Sus extravagantes paisajes oníricos que desafían las leyes naturales, sus criaturas fantásticas, su tecnología semiorgánica y su estilo gráfico tan característico, cautivaron a todos los amantes de este género musical, llegando a formar una parte de la producción artística de estos conjuntos musicales. VIAJE AL PLANETA DE ROGER DEAN Extracto del artículo publicado en Musical Boxed (http://musicalboxed.wordpress.com) -Islas flotantes- Las islas flotantes han sido uno de los elementos más característicos en la carrera de Roger Dean, hasta el punto de la simbiosis de conceptos, como ocurre con los relojes deformados o los elefantes patilargos y Salvador Dalí. No en vano, Roger ha estado obsesionado con la visión de islas flotantes desde hace casi 40 años. Sin embargo la idea de una roca ingrávida ya había sido utilizada por Jonathan Swift en la novela fantástica (y satírica) Los Viajes de Gulliver de 1726. En la tercera parte del libro, Gulliver es rescatado por los habitantes de una fortificación científica enclavada en una isla flotante, la isla de Laputa, por mal que nos suene. La primera isla flotante en la carrera de Dean aparece en la contraportada de su primer trabajo para el grupo Yes (Fragile, 1971), donde un pedacito de planeta se separa del mismo en una imagen surreal de ingravidez. A partir de ahí la idea fue progresando desde los asteroides del álbum Yessongs (1973) hasta la isla-lago de la publicación The Flight Of Icarus (1976). A lo largo de estas décadas el concepto ha ido evolucionando a través de las diferentes ilustraciones que se han ido publicando. La última novedad iba a ser la realización de una película animada desarrollada en base a un guión de su hermano Martyn. El proyecto de la misma (realizado por David Mosely de Red Vision) fue presentado en el Festival de Cannes de 2004, donde fue recibido con gran entusiasmo. Por alguna razón, posiblemente relacionada con el estreno de la película Avatar, la página web del artista (http://www.rogerdean.com) ha dejado de mostrar información respecto al proyecto Floating Islands. -Yesscenes- Roger Dean ha diseñado gráficos y tipografias para multitud de artistas, pero tradicionalmente se le vincula al grupo Yes y sus diferentes reencarnaciones. Fue introducido a la banda de la mano de Steve Howe, que también ejerció de nexo de unión con el grupo Asia, hasta ser considerado por muchos como el sexto miembro de la formación, encargándose también del diseño de los decorados escénicos de las diferentes giras mundiales. Las portadas dobles de Tales from Topographic Oceans y Relayer han pasado a la historia del arte gráfico musical, así como la portada del disco homónimo de Asia. En una de las paredes de la discoteca Privilege de Ibiza se conserva un único vestigio de la década de los 70: un mural con la serpiente de Relayer como motivo. Desde 1973 y la publicación del triple directo Yessongs, la canción de apertura de los conciertos de Yes es el clásico de Stravinsky El Pájaro de Fuego. La película Fantasía 2000 de la factoría Disney incluyó como colofón una versión animada de la misma inspirada también en los trabajos de Dean para dicho álbum, en concreto de la pintura Awakening. -Los elementos: Agua, Fuego, Tierra y Aire- El arte gráfico de Roger no se ha limitado a las islas flotantes, sino que ha creado todo un mundo de fantasía con denominación de origen: agua emanando de la misma roca y cayendo en diferentes formas al vacío, árboles pétreos megalíticos inundando la escena. Animales fantásticos de vivos colores pueblan este mundo. Dean ha pintado multitud de ellos, pero los más característicos siempre han sido los dragones, reptiles y otros animales de aspecto prehistórico. Los paisajes de piedra son otra seña de identidad de este mundo. Los arcos rocosos constituyen otro de los elementos reiterativos en su obra. La ingravidez también se ha visto plasmada en escaleras de piedra suspendidas en el vacío. -GALERÍA DE IMÁGENES-
Roger Dean is an artist, architect and designer (his “retreat pod” is featured in Clockwork Orange) whose work mostly deals with fantasy and sci-fi. He is primarily known for the covers he made fo…
In This Hub-Page We Journey Through Four Decades Of Album Art by Graphic Designer Roger Dean Also Including Record Label Art and Logo Designs and More.
Roger Dean
Part two was supposed to follow hot on the heels of part one. But... well, that didn't really happen, did it? So I've been sitting on these happy little .jpgs for months now. And here they are, perhaps a little flattened. Pretty much everything you think of as 'a classic Roger Dean design' can be found in part two, and sadly... little else. Having found a niche, Dean finds little reason to stray from it. And I suppose that makes sense, really: as you can especially see in the latter-day work, bands call up Dean specifically because they're looking to tap into a particular vibe, to connect themselves with the music that was first illustrated by Dean himself. In particular, on these next few albums. Badger: One Live Badger: Badgers it is, then. A naturalist landscape, wintry, with not one but two of the titular creatures, looking cute. Did they change the album title at the last minute, then? Budgie: Never Turn Your Back on a Friend: A different band, though you could be forgiven for confusing them. No budgie on the cover this time, exactly: some mammoth sci-fi bird instead, being reined in by some guy standing on one of several inuksuit. Or not. Greenslade: Bedside Manners are Extra: A multi-armed green wizard and a cat in front of a Dr. Seuss landscape - the landscapes are prominent now, as they always will be, but they don't quite look like Roger Dean yet. After all, there are buildings here. Really? Magna Carta: Lord of the Ages: Right out of some German epic, a trio, perhaps of gods, ride mythical creatures on what is perhaps clouds. Animals are a really big theme in 1973, it would appear. Snafu: Snafu: Self-titled album for obscure group named after swear-wordy army acronym. The Grim Reaper with yoked oxen on a really sunny day, and an odd layout with a black frame. Yes: Tales from Topographic Oceans: And finally, the 'golden age' is upon us. A fantastic landscape looking right out of those kinds of paperbacks I didn't personally read when I was a teenager, it's pretty - the same combination of naturalistic and surreal that his prog-rock clients were undoubtedly hoping for. But why no ocean? Didn't read the title again? Yes: Relayer: Another Yes, two in a row, and this one is even more iconic. These are mountains straight out of Dr. Seuss, with two horses only semi-visible there in all the whites and beiges. I wonder if Dean was actually creating these pieces based on the contents of the albums, or if he just made them and Yes stuck whichever one took their fancy on the cover of their next album? Steve Howe: Beginnings: Peter Jackson took a real risk making The Lord of the Rings as a live-action film. He knew you could only make it work with a huge budget and lots of CGI. Otherwise, you get this rather horrid cover, which attempt to portray the side-project-indulging Yes man playing from within one of Dean's landscapes, but in fact just looks ridiculous. Dave Greenslade: Cactus Choir: Greenslade gets a particularly lovely one, with gloomy clouds, a churning ocean and a really cool mushroom-building. But weren't these artists bothered by looking so much like each other? John Lodge: Natural Avenue: Another side-project (Moody Blues, not Yes) with a photograph, but there's no attempt at 'integration' here, so it's less embarrassing. Floating rocks, yay. Steve Howe: The Steve Howe Album: And yet another solo jaunt. Yes, again, and this time no picture at all and also no fantasy. Craggy rocks and a pond. Or..., wait, is that a dead body floating in the pond? Well, nothing fantastic about that. Carry on, then. Yes: Drama: Back to the mother-band again. I'm starting to flick through the years much more quickly, and we're up to 1980, with a seeming attempt to 'update' the series, if those monochrome cats and bird are anything to go by. The result is something a bit less than impressive, I think - a turn-of-the-decade relic, though. Asia: Alpha: Ah, Asia. There's something really unlovable about this band, even for prog rock fans. The trying-too-hard cover is fitting, then, as it's not very attractive, either. Tropical stuff mixes with some more mushroom-buildings in the background. Birds! Barry Devlin: Breaking Star Codes: But by 1983, his time had clearly passed, and instead of updating his style, he took up whatever meagre offers were out there for his line of work. Who is Barry Devlin? I don't know, but with the flying fish, the craggy rocks and even that hand-written triangular logo, he was someone who very clearly wanted Dean-by-design, and got it. Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman and Howe: Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman and Howe: And now we're all the way to 1989. A long story ensues about how Yes has, for all intents and purposes, split up into two camps. This one, made of the four individuals whose surnames form the band's name, are prohibited from calling themselves 'Yes'. Instead, in a rather clever move, they assert their Yes-ness with a decidedly retro 'Roger Dean original' cover, meant to evoke those 1970s covers of the band who they more or less are, even though they can't come out and say that. Fantastic trees, fantastic buildings, birds. This is exactly what ABWH were looking for. Who needs innovation? Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman and Howe: An Evening of Yes Music Plus: Check out the title of this live album to see how desperate these gentlemen were. Trees on floating pod-islands. But it's 1993, and it's all a bit boring by now, isn't it? Asia: Aria: I guess not. Not if you have this kind of music in your blood. You just want more and more albums that look pretty much exactly like this. And it's Asia, so don't expect innovation, right? Steve Howe: Not Necessarily Acoustic: Whereas some musicians take the side-project as an opportunity to divert, you really have to admire the Yes people's commitment to the main brand. The dragon is a bit different, but little else is, right down to that classic 1970s hand-written album title. Uriah Heep: Sea of Light: It's 1995 now, and another resurrected dinosaur gets a Dean-by-design. If you covered up the titles of these albums, how could you ever tell one from another? Budgie: An Ecstasy of Fumbling: My God, something different! Well, kind of. The wordmark is still post-hippie, and it's still a bird and trees. But it's not a landscape, amazingly enough., And that budgie makes me think there might actually be a sense of humour at work here. Say it isn't so. This is a compilation: maybe those bring out the best in him? Space Needle: The Moray Eels Eat the Space Needle: Little to say about this album except that the title is cute, but the self-cloning nature of the cover is just too much to take. And that's a horrid lime-green, isn't it? Yes: The Ladder: Hatchets buried, they've got their name back. Both Yes-by-name and cover-by-Dean. What else could they ask for? Weird spindly-mountain things. Whatever. By now, no one was even looking at these covers, I don't think. Especially since this is the CD era, so they're only five inches. I might cry. Steve Howe's Remedy: Elements: One last example, before we put Mr Dean to bed. It's Yes-man Howe again, with a band name this time, but who cares, really? This came out in 2003, 30 years after Howe and Dean were breaking ground. It's weird rock-formations rising out of the water. What else was it going to be by now?
