Mike Dempsey has been a practising graphic designer since 1964. From the late sixties he worked as an Art Director for two leading British publishing houses. In 1979 he founded the design consultancy Carroll & Dempsey, which later became CDT Design Ltd. His work has earned him many awards and in 2012 he was presented with a special Black Pencil for the most awarded designer in D&AD’s 50-year history. 

He’s acted as Design Advisor to the Department of Culture Media & Sport, was appointed consultant Art Director by the Royal Mail to create the two-year Millennium stamp programme and was the Art Director of the Royal Society of Arts Journal from 1997 to 2002. He’s written features for Eye Magazine, Design Week, Creative Review, The Times and many more.

He was made a Royal Designer for Industry in 1994 and was elected a member of Alliance Graphic International in 1998. He was the President of D&AD in 1997/98, was Master of the Faculty of Royal Designers for Industry from 2005 to 2007 and was the external design advisor to the Design Council. He left CDT at the end of 2007 to form Studio Dempsey – and now lives and works in both London and Dorset. 

Mike also hosts RDIinsights – a recorded series he devised in 2006, featuring interviews with world-class Royal Designers for Industry across all disciplines. Search and listen to the shows on Apple and Spotify.

You can follow Mike on Twitter @graphicjourney. You can also follow him on Instagram @studiodempsey. His blog is full of interesting articles which you can find here.

To read Mike’s four-part blog post on cover design here.

For those who haven’t seen it, click here for Tom Gauld’s brilliant piece about cover design.

Cover Meeting is hosted by Steve Leard and produced by James Ede of beheard.org.uk.