Gene Mahon

In 1967, Gene Mahon was the graphic designer who designed the back sleeve of the “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” album along with his colleague Al Vandenberg and graphic designer Gordon House. He likely came up with the idea of including the lyrics on the back cover, the first time this had been done on a rock LP. Mahon also suggested adding the line “A splendid time is guaranteed for all” from the song “Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite!” at the end of the credits.

[Gene Mahon] was a nice Irish guy who was at an ad agency who we found to help pull it all together because we had Michael Cooper, we had Robert, Peter, Jann, Neil and all of us to get together.

Paul McCartney – From “Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now” by Barry Miles, 1997

On the back cover, somewhere at the bottom, along with the credits and stuff, there’s a line from the lyrics of the song: ‘A splendid time is guaranteed for all’ or something like that. It appeared there after I suggested it: “Let’s take this line and put it there”

Gene Mahon – From beatles-chronology.ru

In 1968, he introduced the concept of using a whole apple on the A-Sides and a sliced apple on the B-Sides for all Apple records.

A record company needs a logo, and so Neil Aspinall, now managing director of Apple Corps Ltd, contacted Gene Mahon. He was the graphic designer from Dublin who had worked on the Sgt Pepper cover, laying out the back sleeve which contains the lyrics, marking the first time anyone had ever printed the lyrics on an album sleeve; usually you had to buy them from a sheet-music publisher. Neil told Gene that he needed a photograph of an apple to use on the centre label of Apple records. Gene immediately had the brilliant idea of using a photograph of an apple on the A-side of the record, with no writing or information, and on the B-side using a photograph of an apple sliced in half, to give a white background to all the relevant label copy for both sides. The left-hand side of the apple would be headed ‘This Side’ with the title of the track, the artist, the running time, the publishing and copyright information; the right-hand side would be headed ‘Other Side’ and would give the same information for the A-side.

Gene commissioned Paul Castell to photograph a series of apples: red apples, green apples and sliced apples against different-colored backgrounds. Two days later they had an assortment of 2¼-inch transparencies of apples against red, blue, black, green and yellow backdrops. Gene selected the two he thought were the best but included the others for consideration.

It turned out that it was a legal requirement for copyright to list the contents on both sides of the record, so that idea was out. Meetings were held and slides of various apples were projected on to office walls. Batches of eight-inch by ten-inch color prints were made, six at a time, one for each Beatle and one each for Neil Aspinall and Ron Kass, the head of Apple Records. Eventually they decided upon a nice shiny green Granny Smith on a black background. Alan Aldridge, former chief designer for Penguin Books who was to publish The Beatles Illustrated Lyrics, was brought in to draw the copyright lettering that surrounds the outer perimeter of each record. The finished artwork was sent to New York where the dye transfers were made from which all the labels would be printed. It had taken six months.

Barry Miles – From Why The Beatles Created Apple Music | by Barry Miles | Cuepoint | Medium

Designing the Apple label was a relatively straightforward job. What I brought to it was the idea that it can stand as a pure symbol. Let it never have any type on, put all that on the other side of the record — just designer stuff really. And the apple that had the information on it should be sliced, to give a light surface on which to put type… I said to McCartney, ‘It’s a green apple, a big Granny Smith’ and he said, ‘Oh, good!’

Gene Mahon – From “Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now” by Barry Miles, 1997

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