Tom Dolan was born in Boston, Massachusetts in the 60s. He's been a designer since the mid-80s, and started working as a designer and art director at Virgin Records America in 1991.

He worked with Ben Harper and JP Plunier from 1993 to 1999, "fashioning the enduring aesthetic tone and graphic vocabulary that has become a cornerstone of the Harper project". His work includes albums, flyers, posters and web pages.

Welcome To The Cruel World (1993)
Art direction : Tom Dolan & JP Plunier - Design : Tom Dolan
Fight For Your Mind (1995)
Art direction : Tom Dolan & JP Plunier - Design : Tom Dolan
Burn To Shine (1999)
Art direction : JP Plunier - Design : Tom Dolan, Mike King & JP Plunier
Both Sides of the Gun (2006)
Layout and design : Tom Dolan / Polychrome

Tom Dolan, Los Angeles, July 2004
Interview by Emmanuel Rivet / www.swer.net

When Ben and JP came to Virgin we just hooked up. I had seen JP about a year before Ben was signed while he was working on a video for another artist (who I don't remember). I had met JP years earlier when we were both in college in Claremont, California (where the Folk Music Center was). I'd played music with JP and we'd been friends. I was natural for us to collaborate when Ben came to Virgin.

Creation process...
JP and I worked very closely, often shoulder to shoulder at the computer or art table, reviewing images and tweaking designs. JP is always full of reference ideas and concepts and was equally open to references and design vocabulary from me. I'd also spend as much time in the recording studio as I could, listening to work in progress and sharing the designs with Ben and the crew. Ben has always been open and forthright with ideas and feedback, and trusting of input from JP and myself. JP and I worked long and hard, the work is a true collaboration.

JP and I collaborated on all elements of Welcome to the Cruel World. It is build around the photography that was organically getting shot around Ben and the group. Fight for Your Mind was perhaps more led by me. The cover and back cover where my concepts, the photography is done by a photographer (William Howard) brought in by me. Burn to Shine is a collaboration with JP and Mike King, and Mike is really responsible for all the illustration treatments. I assembled the package and did the typography.

Aesthetic tone and graphic vocabulary...
It varies from album to album, but overall we've always tried to set a tone of revolutionary craftsman, design aficionado, hand-tooled, guerilla infantry-man, zen monk. A bit rough but with careful attention to details. Honest --- in parallel to the music.

The ultimate symbol...
The fist-in-the-air target on the inside back cover of Welcome to the Cruel World, no question. This was almost the cover, but was thought a bit too politically provocative by some. It was inspired by one of JP's books on Mohammed Ali.

Inside the design...

Targets and circles...
In some ways we were attracted to them because of their overuse, their simplicity. Targets, stars, circles, are just fundamental building block symbols and we liked their inherent power and their broad references (from a sniper's target to a Mod fashion statement to a meaningless graphic device). The are primitive, elemental --- but they work. We wanted to co-op them and make them our own.

Roundels...
They are African Air Force insignias, except Jamaica. They are symbols first --- symbols of identity, struggle, of Africa's struggle to be a part of the first world. Ben does sing about peace, but peace is often a struggle --- often a struggle that can be impossible to win. He sings about that as well, especially in the title track.

Sheriff's star...
It's also about assuming authority and taking power --- empowering yourself, making yourself the law. The Burn to Shine album mixes many symbols --- another example is the American Rebel Flag re-color coded to Rastafarian colors.

Southwest images...
Image printed on Welcome To The Cruel World cd is a Hopi Indian Basket, a vessel to hold sustenance. On Fight For Your Mind cd it is a baby cactus, a living object, beautiful, soft, organic, but also sharp and pointed. Both CD images (and the snake on Burn to Shine) are images from the Southwest.

Web design...
I taught myself, because I thought the internet was interesting --- this was about 1995. I left the Virgin art department to start the New Media department (this is why I did not design Will To Live).
I left Virgin in 1999, and worked for independent clients and then became Creative Director at a Los Angeles web design firm called Fullerene. I started Polychrome in 2001.

Polychrome Southern California office is directed by Tom Dolan. Polychrome provides graphic, interactive, environmental, and industrial design services to some of the world’s most succesful compagnies.