history

Having spent six years as a sixties art college fashion victim in Manchester, I emerged, astonishingly, with a couple of design degrees. After tramping the streets of London seeking work as an illustrator, a job with Macmillan Publishing was secured. Thrown in at the deep end of Fleet Street, where typesetters' turn-ups weighed heavy with lead and hacks sweated neat whisky, I learned that drinking at lunchtime and designing books were mutually incompatible.

Undeterred, for five years I rose through the ranks from junior designer to chief illustrated book designer, working alongside such authors of the time as Sunday Times Fashion editor, Brigid Keenan and TV Presenter, James Burke. Reading the manuscripts was a prerequisite of the design process and once I'd become a potted expert in cookery, fashion, classic cars and kittens, a move to commissioning art editor at Octopus Books facilitated the sprinkling of some rough northern charm onto the streets of Mayfair.

By the end of the seventies, London's literati flaunted less appeal than the wide open spaces of my native Yorkshire. Heading north I learned new skills as a newspaper artist in Sheffield, an advertising agency visualiser, and manager of a commercial photographic and video company in Barnsley. A two year freelancing stint provided the impetus to recruit a similarly disillusioned designer and form Ledgard Jepson Limited in the late eighties. Housed in a stone-built market town in the Pennines we existed on a mixed diet of university prospectuses, photo-shoots in steelworks,

industrial brochures a and the occasional European ad campaign. A four year spell with an office in New York confirmed the company’s commitment to retail therapy.

But not long into the new millennium the maverick designer and photographer resurfaced and succumbed to the heady lure of self-imposed deadlines. Now a design consultant, photographer and graphic artist, my clients are in education and the music industry. A chance meeting on a beach in Thailand (don’t ask!) led to my appointment as Senior Creative Director for BGA (Boult, Gottschalk and Appenzeller), a leading design agency in the biotech and pharmaceutical sector based in Freiburg, Germany.

By way of relaxation, I work as a semi-pro drummer with several blues, rock and soul bands in the UK and occasionally in the Far East.

Married to Mel, I have two daughters, Jo and Rose, and live in North and South Yorkshire.

Currently a work in progress is an
autobiographical journey through
forty years of image making including
over 200 illustrations, photographs and
examples of design. For an abridged
online version click on the bookcover

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