It was a pleasure to do this cover for Faber. Sheku was only coming into the limelight in early 2021 when I was was commissioned and it was delightful to have it published in time to watch him (and his amazingly talented siblings) play in the summer BBC Proms. I was fortunate to be able to use such a fine image of him for the front and, with it being quite muted in palette, I took great pleasure in sampling the bright mustard yellow of his sock for the title type!
Client: Faber Music 2021
This was my first major freelance commission in 1997 by the National Gallery Publications officer, Suzie Burt. I took it on eagerly while I was still working my notice at Dorling Kindersley and the privilege and pleasure of working so closely with Sir Jonathan Miller was an absolute delight from start to finish. Together with a fabulous team at NGP we created a beautiful book.
He was a consummate human being, so wonderful to work with.
Client: National Gallery Publications
The second of the book projects I worked on with the wonderful Dr Jonathan Miller. He had long harboured an ambition to publish his own remarkable photographs, which were essentially snapshots he'd taken of "ordinary things". Over many years he had gathered his modest snaps into some five or six enormous scrapbooks with these photos lightly pasted in. Once I had persuaded him that it would be possible to do, these huge books were sent off to the Far East to have the images diligently scanned and a 'proper' book was the result.
For myself I was determined that his carefully constructed images should not be cropped in any way, as I deemed it crucial to the image that it was Jonathan's eye that had created the crop and no one else's. He was also determined to keep the look as plain and simple as possible so it was a delight to use the beautiful Monotype Grotesque.
It was a wonderful project to do but sadly the marketing department of Mitchell Beazley had no idea what the book was about so it died a slow death in the bookshops.
Years later I was told by a designer friend that a photographer friend of his had declared this book the best-designed book on photography he'd ever seen! Praise indeed!
Client: Mitchell Beazley
A cover for a music composition inspired by 500 years since the Reformation.
Client Boosey & Hawkes
A major revamp for a successful existing series where the brief was simply “Rough Guides”. Again a subtle shift of colour to distinguish the large number of titles in the series providing a rainbow of colours from the thumbnail images on the back of the full cover. All the images were sourced from Flickr Creative Commons.
Client: Boosey & Hawkes 2021
Bartók Edition was a major series for Boosey & Hawkes and although there are only seven colours in the rainbow, each cover required a different colour. Some judicious use of tints came into play and they all look very jaunty grouped on the back. I was especially pleased with the typography here, nestling the accent on the capital O neatly into the block, echoing the enlarged ampersand of the B & H logo.
Client: Boosey & Hawkes 2015-
A huge project planned to be published the week that the 1000th No. 1 single was top of the charts. After careful planning and teamwork, this was achieved! Each decade was printed as a duotone combination requiring each section to be allocated the correct number of pages to suit a 32-page print specification. It was a major achievement!
Client: Omnibus Press
It’s always a pleasure to work with images of musical instruments as they are such beautiful shapes. This series was my opportunity to play with overlays.
Client: Boosey & Hawkes 2021
Always tricky to come up with a different way of displaying musical instruments so I took to different filters in Photoshop! These have a definite nod to Blue Note album sleeves.
Client: Wise Publications
A lovely sultry image for both song collections provided a suitably impassioned image to then be able to blend in some restrained but bold typography.
Client: Boosey & Hawkes 2021
A bright new approach for a bright new approach to learning instruments. Riffing on cut out shapes and transparent layers.
Client: Boosey & Hawkes 2018-
Covers for a series of musical collections. The aim here was to tilt towards a travel theme with a passport stamp and snapshots.
Client: Boosey & Hawkes
Posters and publicity for a band in Lewes. Each poster utilised only Cyan Magenta and Yellow on the image which overlaid to create a false 'black'.
Client: In Bob We Trust band
Nice little freebie job for two talented friends of mine.
Client: Adrienne Thomas
Part of a series of straightforward guides which therefore required a straightforward design approach. As always a nod to Blue Note with the typography and a striking and evocative image simply recoloured for each style.
Client: Boosey & Hawkes 2021
A simple solution for a modern jazz composer. I'm always up for a use of texture and overlaid colours.
Client: Boosey & Hawkes
A series written by the prestigious pianist LangLang in partnership with Faber Music. For the covers I made the most of the contrast between bright colours I used for each level with the Chinese calligraphy of LangLang's name and the rich black monotone images. I aimed for a clean, modern classic look to the inside tutorial pages using my favourite combination of a serif for the heading (Didot) and a sans (Interstate) for the instructive text, especially one with many weights to choose from, like this one.
Client: Faber Music
A series highlighting basic music pieces for four wind instruments. Always fun to use the ‘polaroid’ image idea.
Client Faber Music
A major production for TwoScore Company, a small theatre group that punched above its weight in Ludlow. Macbeth allowed me to go really gory, mixing up blood images with fabulous quotes from the Bard. The heading was a three overlay-combination of the font to make the lettering appear saturated with blood. I was pleased with the blood spot over his eye. The theme I created also allowed me to play with endless variations for web headings, publicity with two-sided postcards and the programme itself. The trailer held the graphic black grey red and white theme nicely too.
I also designed and made all the costumes, using this graphic palette and harkening to heraldic symbolism with the servants of the main characters having a badge on the front of their costume signifying their allegiance. I was particularly proud of the witches' costumes which were created from a black square sheet sewn on the inside with an appliqué white tree so that when they first appeared they were shrouded in a black cloak which they then could turn inside-out and back-to-front to reappear later in the play as the menacing, moving, Birnham Wood.
Client: TwoScore Theatre Company
Variations on a theme for a theatrical show featuring scenes from various Shakespeare plays. Posters and postcards produced in two different colour ways added to the impact of the branding.
Client: TwoScore Theatre Company
A Series featuring leading composers of the 20th Century. My aim was to produce a direct engagement from the photograph to the viewer. Fortunately these images could rise to the challenge although the earlier composer's images were less than perfect.
Client: Wise Publications
I think doing Jazz music covers is one of my favourite themes as the nature of the music itself allows the mind to freeform ...
Client: Music Sales/Wise Publications
Sadly the title changed after I had done a cover rough and I couldn't use that design! Still prefer it to Music Roots ...
Client: Wise Publications
A major biography published at the height of Madonna's success. My only guidance on the brief was "make it sexy" so I did my best ...
Client: Omnibus Press
As the series title suggests this was aimed at those new to learning an instrument and lent itself to a straightforward series style that I set in motion for Music Sales in 1998 soon after I first went freelance. My DK training allowed me to organise the information in a clear and logical way and I was its best recipient, having no clue at all about reading music let alone playing an instrument! I'm happy to say that this series won an award in 1999 for the best new music publication that year.
Client: Music Sales
Omnibus are the biographic arm of Music Sales so it is always a delight to do a cover for them. I was especially pleased with the Abba cover (a band I hate) and the James Taylor cover where I persuaded them to use an image of JT from his drop-dead gorgeous days rather than their suggestion of James as he is now! The much missed author Timothy White sent me a 3am fax congratulating me on this cover!
Client: Omnibus Press
A nice little project from the pen of Todd Slaughter, the head of the UK Elvis Fan Club. The pictures were unseen or little-known pictures of Elvis so I made the most of them, doing the three sections in three different duotones. Again it was a treat to be able to play with the typography for the quotes and let the rest of the page design sit quietly, yet introduce quirky elements like the captions carving their way into the text block.
Client: Omnibus Press
This was a whole new departure for me! Deborah Alma opened the Poetry Pharmacy in Bishop’s Castle in October 2019 and we agreed that the main wall in the cafe needed decoration before it opened. Deborah chose an excerpt from a long poem by the late Alexander Hutchison, a Scottish poet, whose poem “Incantation” https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/incantation/ fitted perfectly with her desire to include charms and potions into the area by the cafe. This was a wonderful exercise in naughtiness, drawing pure lettering with a Black Beauty pencil onto a wall and not be told off for doing it! I also made the letters for the window from Papier Mache and they happily cast a shadow onto my wall lettering. What fun!
Covers for a revamp of a best-selling stalwart of music education, A Tune A Day. The aim here on the covers was to inject movement into the otherwise static poses of the young musicians and to bring clarity to the inside pages which were packed with information.
Client: Wise Publications
A fresh new look for a best-selling but tired-looking series. The books are split in half so that you can mix and match different rhythms . I aimed here to keep the look simple and clean even though there is a a lot of information to display.
Client: Boosey & Hawkes
Another production for the Two Score Theatre Company. This time an almost forgotten play by the existentialist Jean Anouilh. The main force of the play is the love-hate relationship between Thomas Becket and King Henry II, so the image of a hearts-suite playing card being torn in two and an accent on B for Becket and K for King seemed to do the trick. Various adaptations were needed for cross-media platforms and the programme yielded some opportunities for playing with the headline.
Various covers commissioned by Guild Of Master Craftsman Publications, I B Tauris and Music Sales
A jolly midsummer farce required a jolly midsummer look, so candy stripes do the trick. It has the two main themes of love and money bound together by script which nods to Falstaff’s multiple love letters, reproduced on the back of the postcard, complete with greasy-knight stains and sack glass stains.
An extensive tome running to over 700 pages chronicling the history of Western Classical Music. The book sections were organised by decade and each had a background history then a year by year chronology. I chose a chapter colour sampled from the image used to illustrate the section. My biggest challenge to myself was organising the diary texts around the images!
Client: Omnibus Press
A series of covers for a comprehensive collection of the works of Béla Bartók. Each instrument has its own colour and within that colour, shades are used for different arrangements for that instrument. Béla Bartók's signature is a spot varnish on these matte covers. I really enjoyed sorting out the typography for these book covers.
Client: Boosey & Hawkes
I always love working with great images, especially of musical instruments and especially the saxophone. This series gave me the opportunity to indulge my pleasure in playing with lettering to make a logo style with a title and subtitle text combination. I also love to create a stark white panel base for type like this when there's a lovely rich photograph to accompany it.
Client: Faber Music
A logo for my niece Rosie who is a successful garden designer. I was delighted to be able to use our favourite ginkgo tree leaf which happily had been rained on the day before.
Logos for Wetmore Clinic, a small chiropractic clinic with the seven leaves representing the seven ages of man.
A logo for the independent shops in Ludlow
TwoScore theatre company's simple but effective 'score' logo.
A logo for a Thomas Paine literary festival in Lewes.
A Fairground theme seemed appropriate for these compilations with their wide variety of performers and styles.
Client: Faber Music
Appropriately for a leading London-based music publisher these huge graphic panels were commissioned by Music Sales as decoration for their Frith Street office reception area. The layout allowed me free reign to use all the musical lyric quotes I love within a graphic context. Each one was installed according to the season.
Client: Music Sales
Cover and book design for a special personal project by a local photographer, Geoffrey Adams, showcasing his work and thesis on the nature of time and stone in the landscape around Shropshire and Herefordshire. The original book was contained within a handmade box which included a set of prints. To be able to display his images to their best advantage within the book, I made sure that photographs backed on to photographs and text pages onto text pages to avoid the effect of showthrough. It was a delight to use a little-used font for this, the beautiful Monotype Bell.
Client: Geoffrey Adams
Sometimes I have too many ideas and can't decide! Inevitably I produce designs that don't get chosen but I still like enough not to throw them out altogether. Here are a few that didn't make it to the press.
Only one can go through of course, but these others were too good not to show.
I was always a fan of the old Guardian use of Helvetica and New Caledonia as a combo so I mercilessly stole the look for this project. Which set the style for a big series for GMC. It was fun to design the symbols too.
Client: Guild Of Master Craftsmen Publications
