The Captivating Worlds of Roger Dean

This story was published concurrently in video form by Subpixel.

Okay, so this is something of a pilot for a series I’ve wanted to do for a long time on videogame covers, their history, and the big names behind some of the more classic works of videogame box art.

Now, there have been plenty of think pieces about the state of videogame box art in the 21st century — mostly along the lines of “Is videogame box art better or worse than it was 30 years ago?”. The cover for ID and Bethesda’s 2016 DOOM reboot was famously so maligned that Bethesda made an 11th hour decision to make the sleeve art for the physical release of the game reversible. The reversible art, which harkened back to the very first DOOM cover from the early 90s, was so much more popular than the original box art that it became the de facto “official art” for all future releases of the title. 2020’s DOOM Eternal doubled down on DOOM’s box art re-do, providing even more wonderfully illustrated demonicide to fans of the franchise.

And while there has been plenty of great videogame box art that could be classified more broadly as “graphic design”, there’s just something about illustration that catches the eye in a way in a different way than something made in Photoshop or Illustrator. And before we get much further in this video I want to say I’m not taking a stance that any one of these methods of art design is better than the other, only that for the purposes of this video we won’t be focusing on much quote-un-quote “modern” videogame art, but on some of the great illustrative work of early videogame covers — namely, those of British artist Roger Dean.

The name Roger Dean means different things to different people. For some, he’s the man responsible for setting the aesthetic of 70s and 80s progressive rock albums, lending his art to covers for bands like Yes, Uriah Heap, Asia, Focus, Gentle Giant, and even the London Philharmonic Orchestra; for others he’s an architect, creating new and exciting spaces for people to live and work in; to others still, his name can be seen on a baseball stadium in Jupiter, Florida (though those people would not be referring to the same Roger Dean we’ll be talking about in this video); and for a final group, Roger Dean is the creator of some of the best videogame box art of all time.

So, from my understanding of it — having only read about it and not lived through it — the early days of videogames were a wild-west of sorts, an untamed land that no one quite yet knew what to do with. British developer Psygnosis wanted to tame that wilderness, specifically in how their videogames were marketed; and they had one person in mind to get the job done: Roger Dean.

Looking back on this era of game development, Digital Eclipse Studio Head Mike Mika said this in an interview with Polygon:

“Psygnosis’ theory of marketing was they wanted box art that was every bit as beautiful as the games they produced — They were one of the first companies to put a stake in the ground and claim that games were art. By aligning themselves with Roger Dean, Psygnosis not only found a way to stand out and not look like any other game on the shelf, they also inherited, by association, the prestige that came along with Roger’s work.”

And that prestige, at that point in time, was several decades worth of jaw dropping album covers, spread across millions of records all over the world; and a handful of instantly recognizable logos, chief among them the famous bubble logo for Yes, and a rather trippy logo for Virgin Records (cited as a favorite piece of Wilmot’s Warehouse co-creator Richard Hogg, so there’s some bonus videogame trivia for you). People sought out Dean because they wanted his unique vision. His work had an unspeakable beauty, an indelible quality that drew the viewer into the piece in ways that few others at the time could.

And so the first step in Psygnosis’ quest to tame of desolate wastes of videogame marketing was for Dean to design a new logo for the company, to which Dean delivered the now famous Psygnosis Owl. This logo, in one form or another, would appear on Psygnosis games until the bitter end when, in 2000, Psygnosis was rebranded as “SCE Studios Liverpool” by new owner Sony Computer Entertainment.

But in that decade plus before the buyout, Dean would deliver Psygnosis some of their most memorable box art — and arguably some of the most memorable box art of the era. Dean designed the covers of games like 1985’s Brataccas, 1996’s Deep Space and Shadow of the Beast, 1987’s Barbarian, and 1988’s Obliterator — amongst others. And though he would only directly work on a few other covers for Pygnosis’ now expansive library of games, Dean’s work on those early titles all but inexorably bound his aesthetic to the Psygnosis catalog, and myriad future artists commissioned by Psygnosis couldn’t help but show off Dean’s influence in their own work. Everything from color pallette to composition — to even the fonts of the game titles — exuded Dean’s influence — even when his name wasn’t anywhere else on the box.

And even after Sony’s 2000 rebrand of Psygnosis, Dean’s work had such staying power that in 2016 a “Psygnosis Amiga Game Generator” popped up on the internet, courtesy of Rob Beschizza — which, per his own description “combines a random Psygnosis-y game name,” (which he says is something “equal parts concise, literary and antediluvian”) “with a randomly-picked work of art by Roger Dean and the classic Psygnosis box art wrap”. And I have to say, I’d probably buy Fog of the Coveter based on the cover alone.

However, all this work for Psygnosis pales to what is likely the most recognizable contribution Dean made to world of videogames: the Tetris logo. In the late 90s the rights for Tetris reverted back to the original creator of the game Alexey Pajitnov, who, upon receiving the rights to the game, subsequently brought all things Tetris under the new umbrella of The Tetris Company, and commissioned Dean for a new logo to bring Tetris. Dean’s Tetris logo has since appeared on almost every Tetris title since then (2001’s Tetris Worlds even used a painting of Dean’s along with his logo), and served as the official Tetris logo until June of 2019, when a new version of the logo was rolled out for the game’s 35th anniversary — one that pays homage to Dean’s work, but gives Tetris a sleeker look for the modern era.

But that was the last time Roger Dean would formally work in the world of videogames — at least until 2012, when Dean teamed up with the developers at Moshen to release his own mobile game called Dragon’s Dream, featuring his own art and designs.

So why was Dean’s work so absent from the videogame scene for more than a decade? Well, I think it might have something to do with an industry shift away from illustrated covers. But like I said at the beginning of this video, there’s been more than enough think pieces about why this or that shift happened in the world of game art, so I’m not going to touch on any of that here. What I will do is share some of Roger Dean’s own words on the subject, specifically a quote from an interview with ItsNiceThat.com, about his work and the state of modern graphic design — now, the quote is in the context of a discussion of album covers, but it could easily be a quote about videogame box art:

“I like that otherness, and I try to achieve it. When you look at a lot of modern album covers, the art school obsession with the Helvetica kind of undermines it. So instead of looking at an artefact that comes from another place entirely, you are looking at an artefact that has been caught and tamed and made corporate.

The thing I am concerned about is the very simple dogma of modern design, and how it undermines quality in a surprising way. And it applies to graphic design, architecture, everything: that unbelievable necessity to strip everything down to its simplest form. I think it’s against nature. It’s a kind of religious zealotry.”

In the context of Dean’s own work, nowhere can this Helvetica approach to design be seen than in the 2016 reimagining of Psygnosis’ Shadow of the Beast. To look at the 2016 cover art next to Dean’s 1986 version … I can’t really even get into how much I’m not okay with it.

Now I was lucky enough to meet Roger Dean in 2018 at an Art Exhibition in Palm Beach, and saw some of his works in person. It was an exhilarating experience. None of the originals of his videogame works were on display there, but there were plenty I recognized from my own music collection. There’s just something about seeing these images, that you’ve only ever seen the size of a CD or maybe a record, in their original form — that can’t really be captured in words. It was incredibly inspiring. And I know I’m not the only one who feels that way about his work.

With legendary developers like Yu Suzuki citing Dean as an inspiration for Space Harrier, and former Ubisoft Art Director Pascal Blanche regularly singing Dean’s praises on Twitter (even noting it was Dean’s covers for Psygnosis that first introduced him to Dean’s work), it’s difficult to know just how widespread Dean’s influence really is; but it is undoubtedly far. A 2002 documentary about Roger’s work even talks about how folks within the design department at Lucasfilm were passing around one of Roger’s books during development of the first Stars Wars film in 1977. More recently Dean was even involved in a somewhat high-profile lawsuit against Avatar director James Cameron, claiming that much of the world of Cameron’s Pandora was lifted directly from Dean’s own work. We’ll let you make your own judgements on that. Regardless, Roger Dean has has undeniable influence on all sorts of art forms.

There are a few permanent displays of Dean’s work around the world, but he’s actually been travelling more in recent years — giving more people an opportunity to see his works in the flesh. If you’re a fan of Psygnosis, old Amiga games, 70s prog rock, or even if you’re someone who’s hearing about Roger Dean for the first time because of this video, I’d implore you to seek out his works in person. You won’t regret it.