THE FAMILY / John Van Hamersveld

 

John Van Hamersveld (born September 1, 1941, Baltimore, Maryland,United States) is an American graphic artist and illustrator who designed record jackets for pop and psychedelic bands from the 1960s onward. Among the 300 albums are the covers of Magical Mistery Tour by the Beatles, Crown of Creation, by Jefferson Airplane, Exile on Main Street by the Rolling Stones, and Hotter Than Hell by Kiss. His first major assignment, in 1963, was designing the poster for the surf film The Endless Summer, after which he served as Capitol Records' head of design from 1965 to 1968. During that time, he worked on the artwork for albums by Capitol artists such as the Beatles and the Beach Boys. He also oversaw the design of the psychedelic posters for the Pinnacle Shrine Exposition.

In 1997 Van Hamersveld started his own line of products revisiting his work from 1964 to 1974, which he calls "Post-Future". With the printmaking of a fine art edition of the Endless Summer poster, he moved his design work into his Coolhous studio in Santa Monica and between analog and digital environments managed to create works such as the posters for the 2005 Cream reunion concert at the Royal Albert Hall.

In 2013 he celebrated 50 years in graphic design by producing a vinyl EP sleeve for Liverpool-based blues-rockers Sankofa, in addition to publishing the book John Van Hamersveld—Coolhaus Studio: 50 Years of Graphic Design. He continued that line of work in 2014 with two more artworks for records by Asher Roth and the Gaslight Anthem.

In April 2018 Van Hamersveld completed a mural on a storage tank near Grand Avenue in El Segundo, California. "El Segundo is where my career started, as a surfer and an artist," he told the Los Angeles Times.