John Berg, American art director and designer, Died at 83

John Hendrickson Berg was born on January 12, 1932, in Brooklyn, died on October 11, 2015.

He was an American art director and designer.

He graduated from Erasmus Hall High School, working for the student newspaper as a cartoonist.

John earned an undergraduate degree from Cooper Union in Manhattan.

His worked can be found at Columbia Records, where he produced some of the most instantly recognizable album covers in rock history.

He lived with his wife, Durell Godfrey.

John has worked with advertising agencies, including Doyle Dane Bernbach, and for magazines including Esquire, before joining Columbia as an art director.

Mr. Berg later became creative director.

He retired in 1985 as a vice president.

His art can be found on album covers include Simon and Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water”; Santana’s “Greatest Hits,” featuring a Joel Baldwin photograph of a bare-chested black man holding a white dove; “The Barbra Streisand Album,” released in 1963 and “Underground,” by Thelonious Monk, for which he won a Grammy.

The series of albums by Chicago, the design based on the group’s cursive logo, which appeared variously carved in wood, worked in leather, hidden in the loops of a fingerprint, printed on a sepia-toned map and, in “Chicago X” in 1976.

He left behind his wife and a daughter from his first marriage, Kristina Berg, Lars, a son from his first marriage, died before him.

John Berg passed away at 83 yrs old due to pneumonia.