8: SYKES. 1995
Easily one of my best logos and album covers.
This was also a chance to reunite in 1995 with ex-Thin Lizzy guitarist and rocker John Sykes, who I was only really getting to know when my mate and longtime collaborator, Philip Lynott, went into a drug-induced tailspin that ended with his awful and untimely death at the age of 36.
John struck me as a cool, talented, wild-looking English rocker, not unlike Snowy White who I also liked a lot, though Snowy was a quieter type.
Both the logo and cover art heraldic imagery were designed to be quintessentially British, like John, with the exaggerated Elizabethan script style above the slightly mad family tree crest adorned with the Union Jack flag.
This one was for his Japanese label EMI and my A+R friend in Tokyo, Tami Fukatami who treated me and my then partner, Kerry, to some great times in Toyko back in 1997 when I was flown over to Japan for an exhibition of my art.
I have done a few cool logos in my time but I love this one and the cover. It is probably my only true British-themed work but John and the record company loved this one and he still uses it nearly 20 years later.
9: RAVE FASHION. 1978
This series of logos for Rave Boutique in Dublin, Ireland, were commissioned by my friend Shay Pallas, a longtime supporter of my art who, like Philip Lynott later, kept me alive with commissioned work.
This was the second Rave logo and the influence of Art Nouveau and Alfons Mucha, one of my favourite artists, is very pronounced I hope.
10: RAVE FASHION. 1980
The third and final logo for Rave Boutique is a more rock-n-roll logo reflecting the look of the times. These logos were used extensively on everything from stationery, labels, ads, and shopping bags. The bag was a beauty, with the logo in silver on a black background. Luckily I still have one and scanned the logo from it.
11: DUBLINER. 1968
This logo and rather psychedelic cover design for Dubliner magazine were for an Irish American publication that was a one-off, an attempt to publish and raise funding for future issues.
The publisher was my old friend from Scene Magazine days, one of those very English gentlemen types, publisher Norman Ames, the nicest chancer I have ever met and a lovely charming, witty man too, and my mate, writer Herbie Brennan was the magazine editor while I stood in as Art Director.
As there had been a superb and famous literary magazine with that same title published by my friend, writer John Ryan, I was pretty sure problems lay ahead but the failure to raise the money needed doomed this one to oblivion, so problem solved.
The logo is designed to be simple, straightforward, and easy to read using a fairly standard typeface but it worked well for its time.
Brings back some wild memories too.
Note: Norman Ames was the publisher of Scene magazine and the man who turned down my now-famous first Che Guevara poster graphic but we stayed great friends despite this. Norman was so charming and funny I just could not dislike him.
12: CHIPS. 1972
Chips were a bunch of very talented Northern Irish musicians led by Robbie Irwin, who later worked with American icon, Cindy Lauper, while the very beautiful northerner Nicola Kerr was on lead vocals after replacing Linda Martin who went on to actually win the Eurovision Song Contest.
I think this iteration of Chips lasted two years but I never worked for a band who changed personnel so fast I lost count of the repeated changes.
Still the logo stands the test of time, I think.
13: HIBERNIAN INSURANCE. 1968
I did so many corporate logos in my time in advertising, from 1962-1971, you could plaster the walls with them.
I don’t even have a record of many of the images but this one for a major Irish company, Hibernian Insurance, in 1968 was my first important corporate logo.
The brief was simple: ‘Make these guys look friendly and easy to deal with for the customers’.
Straight away I had the bright idea of simply using the company initials ‘hi’ as a logo and this was the result, a user friendly logo that has lasted for a few decades.
Printed ephemera can be fun too and I did my time producing a ton of it back then but this little one always reminds me of my time in advertising in a nice way.
This ad also has one of my very first published and credited illustrations depicting a more progressive Ireland ‘on the move from stagnation’ vibe as well as the ‘Hi’ logo and the company lettering in Cooper Bold.
I know it’s only printed ephemera but not bad for it’s time. I wanted to show something for my time as an advertising Art Director so this will do.
14: ROBBINS ASSOCIATES. 1968
I won an advertising award for this mad logo and letterhead back in 1968 and it is of its time, a hippy trippy logo for a casting agent, Liz Robbins.
Yep, you wrote on the back only, obviously.
Crazy now but very trendy back then, almost rebellious and it sure got attention too.
15: CLUB ELIZABETH. 1968
This was a logo design and poster (printed on real silver foil) for the very first nightclub on Leeson Street in Dublin owned by DJ and businessman Maurice Boland. It was a wild place at night, never closed, just carried on behind closed doors and was full of great characters with a wine list to poison you slowly.
But we all thought we were the bees knees with a joint in one hand and a bottle of awful plonk in the other, partying the night away.
The club was named after Irish model Liz Willoughby and her brother Allenby and myself designed the interior as we went along, with Allenby piling on plaster on mesh for my womb-like interior design inspired by the movie Barbarella.
16: DEA MATRONA. 2021
This one was a freebie for a very talented Northern Irish band of three deadly young women rockers and their band Dea Matrona.
They are a superb, stylish, tight outfit and their playing demands real attention.
They have gone from busking on the streets of Belfast to survive the pandemic to playing real live gigs and look set to be around for a long time.
Check them out on YouTube, they have some deadly videos of the band in action.
17: FILLMORE WEST. 1974
I have had many strange and bizarre commissions but this one was batshit crazy. For anyone who missed the entire 60s hippie revolution the Fillmore East in San Francisco was the most famous and infamous venues of its time and the poster graphics created for it were inspirational and ground-breaking. So, when I was asked to do the graphics for a landmark poster to put a new venue on the map I was delighted. The venue, for some strange reason was called Fillmore West but I cannot think of a less appropriate venue for a hippie trippie vibe. It was in Bray ffs.
The commission came from a well-known local music entrepreneur with allegedly shady mafia connections, as I was warned before accepting the work.
The venue was the old Arcadia ballroom in Bray outside Dublin and once they saw my proposed poster they immediately had the bright idea to book a few real live lions from Fossets Circus for the opening gig.
Things just seems to go totally daft from that point onwards.
The venue was booked to be opened by chart topping prog rock band, Emerson, Lake and Palmer but a lethal bomb placed by British Intel assets went off near the Four Courts in Dublin.
Yep, we had learn to live with the British Army using loyalists assets to plant bombs in Dublin city, killing dozens, you just could not make this stuff up.
Unfortunately for all of us while one of the team was on the phone to their manager sorting details another bomb blast was heard and that finished any chance of an English band coming to Dublin.
Ireland became a wilderness for gigs.
Their place was taken by a new young but fairly unknown Irish band called Horslips, with my ex-Tara Telephone poet mate Eamon Carr on drums, wearing a silver fairy star Alice band on his head.
To cut a very long story short when the band appeared they took fright and legged it at the sight of three large lions roaming the circular area in front of the stage while the half-stoned audience sat there frozen in silent horror as one huge maned lion roared at them and bared the fangs.
Chaos ensued.
Later when the main man got my invoice for this one he roared at his accountant:
‘Does this f**ker charge by the square inch!’
18: CLANNAD. 1979. ALAN STIVELL. 1977
Two of the same with my take on Celtic lettering.
The logo for legendary Breton harpist ad composer, Alan Stivell, was for his beautiful album ‘Before Landing’ in 1977. It was an honour to work with Alan. Check his work on YouTube, genius Breton Celtic musician.
Clannad manager Maurice Cassidy, a lovely guy and very witty too, supported my work through the 70s and 80s, commissioned album cover art from me for everyone from my friend Tommy Makem and Liam Clancy to Maura O’Connell and Derek Bell of The Chieftains, one of my own fav bands.
This logo was for a New York gig in a famous venue and this was a great commission as I loved both Moya, Clannad and of course, that amazing family member Enya.
19: IRINA BETELEVA. 1982
This artwork was for a line of organic facial cleansers.
The artwork was never returned but luckily I had a 35 mm transparency I took before handing it over to the client. Both disappeared a while later.
20: ÉRINSAGA. LOGO 1+2. 1984 and 1991
The first Érinsaga logo was for the cover of my book of the same name and I created a new neo-Celtic letterstyle for use on the cover and interior chapters.
But this final Erinsaga colour logo for an album cover and single has to be one of my finest, it certainly is the one I look at and wonder how the f**k I did it. I really did put everything onto this one.
It was for my own concept album cover for a music project for Ringsend Records and the really good guy who ran it, Clive Hudson, also a neighbour in Howth.
The album was called ‘Érinsaga’ and was based on my artwork and books, I wrote all the lyrics but it ended up a mishmash of directionless music styles when I was hell bent on a more powerful and directly anthemic work.
The problem was simple.
I had been flown to Los Angeles to meet a few producers and executives with a superb demo and I think I even impressed the main man at Warner Records at that time, that genius producer, Lenny Waronker, enough for him to want to be kept posted on the project.
Lenny was a lovely man but he must have been dismayed when he heard the final recording. I know I was.
Unfortunately when we went to finally record the album I had to deal with this extraordinarily egotistic producer who had full contractual control over production and recording (big mistake) and he made a real pigs mickey of a mess of it. We never heard any development work, only the finished album and by then we were out of finance and out of luck.
I still listen to the beautiful demo but never the album.
Nevertheless the logo and cover were pretty impressive and the cover art was used as a full colour pullout poster for Irish music magazine Hot Press.
You win some, you lose some.
The logo was a winner for me but the album was a bit of a mishmashy mess when it could have been a real beaut. Yeah, I know, that’s showbiz.
BAYONET JUNGLE. 1962
This is one of my earliest works but not on this list for obvious reasons.
This remnant is of one of my attempts at cover design and art while I was a night student in the National College of Art in Dublin.
I was clearing out old work years ago and had torn this up when I noticed the fine hand lettering in pen and ink with white gouache corrections and felt was pretty impressive work for a novice like myself, now it brings back so many memories.
The little work shows my interest in those old ‘64 pager’ ‘Battle Comics’ from the UK, all full of amazing artwork from artists who knew how to really draw WW2 Spitfires, ME 109s, bombers, trucks, ships, artillery etc.
You name it, they drew it.
Still have a load of those old comics in my attic too. Not worth much but beautiful work.
This was my first attempt at real lettering and it’s pretty damn good too for a young kid so I kept this as a souvenir of my earliest attempts at lettering and logotype design. I think what impresses me about this is the fact that I had not yet discovered those brilliant (but messy) German technical pens like Graphos, Rapidograph and Rotring pens so the lettering was drawn with an old style nib pen.
It brings me back to a time when I thought nothing was impossible and the world was waiting for me to discover my talent and get working with it while I accumulated vast riches ☺
Didn’t quite work out that way, but man, did I have fun and enjoy myself, and the work, for the rest of my life.
In the end the only thing I really learned was to just put the head down and work, never stop trying to learn and never allow negativity or criticism, from inside your head or outside, to slow you down.
One last word:
‘Critics’, according to Brendan Behan, ‘are like palace eunuchs. They watch it done, they see how it’s done but they can’t do it themselves’.
Self-belief is vital for any creator, self-doubt destroys it. Just never give in, never give up.
Keep on truckin ☺