You're never alone with a good book…
Back in 2008, I was in the reception at the book publishers I worked at in East Sussex – the now defunct Ivy Press. Fran (the receptionist) knew I was a bit of a geek and into fantasy art. I’d started there the year before, after leaving the Pre-Press Department of The Argus newspaper. That – in itself – was a stroke of luck. I was working on getting the job ads ready for the paper, on the day the job came in; I had my CV ready that night and handed it to the manager, Chris Morris personally, on the morning it came out. I was hired pretty-much straight away.
This older gent walked in carrying a rather huge canvas. He looked sort of familiar but I couldn’t really place him.
Fran pipes up, “Hey Roger, John here’s a big fan of your work!” It was one of those life-changing conversations.
It was Roger Dean – local legend (he lives near Lewes); creator of the artwork for Yes, Asia, Virgin Records, Psygnosis and was most famously – allegedly (sadly the case was thrown out of a New York courthouse) – plagiarised by James Cameron for Avatar (floating islands… seriously!), a movie that I have never seen on principle. He also worked with the Cliffe Bonfire Society on their Bonfire Night programmes (which is something I can say I’ve done as well!).
The job itself turned out to be very interesting. The book ‘Dragon’s Dream’ was originally designed by Roger’s brother Martin. However, it needed a bit of a reheat.
The Ivy Press back then worked with publishing houses across the world – creating ideas and then selling them to the likes of Metro Books, Barnes & Noble, Grange Books, The Chris Beetles Gallery and the Findhorn Press (which has more recently been quite important in my life – due to living five miles away… a far cry from East Sussex).
The arguments between Roger and the Creative Director about how it should look (they were both stood behind me – arguing – while I worked) were a little heated. A few other things made the job a little painful: the original artwork wasn't the right page size so it had to be re-laid out by yours truly with only three days before it went to print in China; the designer took the credit, despite only working on a few pages; and the amount of colour correction needed on the images, so they could be printed (without too much ink going on the page). Given the prolific nature of Roger’s work, there were a lot of images!
It was quite a mammoth job; but I'm very proud of the results. I worked with him again, on a revised version of ‘The Album Cover Album’ but not to the same extent.
My favourite parts of this job were setting up the cover with Spot UV and embossing; and typesetting a 228-page book.
Ten years later, at an event held by Trading Boundaries where Roger was exhibiting his work, we caught up (having a bit of a laugh about what happened to the company after I left) and he signed the book for me. I’d been given a file copy and it’s one of my most treasured possessions (OK, the dust jacket is a little battered but it’s all still in good order).
As well as some of the pages (and epic dustjacket) from Dragon’s Dream, there’s a small collection of some of the other books I worked on during my time at the Ivy Press (one of the most crazy being ‘Rediscover Your Heart’ by Fred Matser – with an Foreword by Mikhail Gorbachev and Afterword by Deepak Chopra… quite a combination, for the Findhorn Press).
