William Roger Dean (born 31 August 1944) is an English artist, designer, and publisher. He began painting posters and album covers for musicians in the late 1960s, most notably the English rock bands Yes and Asia.
The covers often feature exotic fantasy landscapes. His work has sold more than 150 million copies worldwide.
Early life
William Roger Dean was born on 31 August 1944 in Ashford, Kent. His mother studied dress design at Canterbury School of Art before her marriage and his father was an engineer in the British Army. He has three siblings, brother Martyn and sisters Penny and Philippa. Much of Dean's childhood was spent in Greece, Cyprus, and, from age 12 to 15, Hong Kong, so his father could carry out army duties. Dean was very keen on natural history as a child, and Chinese landscape art and feng shui became particular influences on him during his time in Hong Kong. By this time, Dean was interested in "designing the future [...] boxes for people to live in". He considered Rick Griffin's artwork for Aoxomoxoa (1969) by the Grateful Dead as his "first big visual shock" and bought the album prior to owning a record player. The design was completed when Dean was one of the few students picked from the Royal College to design and make objects in famed designer Cherrill Scheer's factory. The chair remains one of Scheer's favourite pieces. It is now a part of the permanent collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Dean revisited the original design and was paid around £5,000 for his work, which was more than he had earned with architecture, and with much less effort. He decided to venture into cover design not purely for the money, but its wider audience and its use "as a propaganda tool [...] showing people what might be and what could be".
By 1971, Dean's desire to produce artwork for rock bands had grown though he continued to pursue architecture and headed a small exhibition of his work in Florence. Dean considered the job a breakthrough for his career as the design was made into a poster by the Big 'O' poster company which sold a large number of copies. The tour for Tales from Topographic Oceans (1973) featured a nationwide merchandising campaign including posters and t-shirts that led to the creation of the production company Brockum. The project has developed into its current name, Home for Life, and the non-working prototype contains no straight edges or right angles. In the early 2000s, the cost to produce one was estimated to be $75,000–$80,000. Although several local British governments have expressed interest in the project, none have come into fruition. Dean redesigned the Tetris logo which led to the design of the cover art for Tetris Worlds (2001).
right|thumb|Arches Mist from the Yes album [[Keys to Ascension (1996) is a characteristic Dean landscape, with fantasy-inspired and natural features.]]
In 1996, Dean produced artwork for a poster distributed nationwide to commemorate the 25th anniversary of Starbucks.
Dean received an honorary doctorate from the Academy of Art University in San Francisco in 2002, and an honorary fellowship from the Arts University Bournemouth in 2009. Although the filmmakers admitted to being influenced by his work, a judge dismissed the case. Dean felt the judge failed to properly examine the evidence provided. "I showed half a dozen different details that they copied specifically from it that didn't occur in nature. But the judge, reverting to this idea that the work has to be taken as a whole and you don't go into detail, he took all my evidence out. Then when he came back to the concept that I'm saying they copied in detail things that they claimed I'd taken from nature, my evidence was gone."
In March 2021, Dean released his first artwork on the digital art auction platform Nifty Gateway, featuring non-fungible token art pieces. In 2022, an exhibition of works by Dean and his daughter Freyja was displayed at the Haight Street Art Center in San Francisco, entitled The Secret Path. Later in 2022, an immersive exhibition featuring Dean's artwork presented in high definition 4D audio and video with laser projections was held at the Gray Area Foundation for the Arts, also in San Francisco. He cites the early CD reissue of Close to the Edge by Yes as one that particularly affected him as his inner sleeve artwork was missing, replaced with black and white text.
Personal life
Dean lives in Lewes, East Sussex.
- "Meeting Place" – produced exclusively for the stamp issue
- "Blind Owl Late Landing" – features the unreleased Blind Owl album artwork
- "Pathways" – cover artwork from Yes triple album Yessongs
- "Green Parrot Island" – derived from The Studio Albums 1969-1987 box set by Yes
- "Tales from Topographic Oceans" – from the Yes album of the same name
- "Sea of Light" comes from the Uriah Heep album of the same name
Dean has had a long relationship with the Isle of Man, and especially with its long-term resident Rick Wakeman, keyboardist of Yes, for which Dean has designed several pieces of album artwork.
A special FDC was issued on 25 March 2018, to celebrate 50 years of Yesthis was a different cover to the August 2016 one, and was postmarked in Gold to record this historic event and signed personally by Dean who has created a special 50th Anniversary logo. A limited edition of 1000 signed covers were issued.
Dean's artwork was featured in a collaboration with Italian fashion house Valentino for their spring/summer 2020 men's collection.
In the manga JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean the stand Dragon's Dream is named after Roger Dean's art book of the same name
Dean Venture from the Adult Swim television show The Venture Bros. is named after Roger Dean.
Covers
Albums
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- Gun – Gun (1969)
- Earth and Fire – Earth and Fire (1969)
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! style="width:50em; text-align:left" | 1970s
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