angelophile | RIP Heinz Edelmann

A big influence on me when I was in school and later at college, Czech graphic designer Heinz Edelmann has died aged 75.

Graphic designer Heinz Edelmann, best known for his work as art director of the 1968 Beatles film "Yellow Submarine," has died, his former employer said. He was 75.

Edelmann died Tuesday afternoon in a Stuttgart hospital, according to the city's State Academy of Art and Design, where he had worked as a professor until 1999.

Born in 1934 in Aussig in the former Czechoslovakia, Edelmann studied at the Dusseldorf Art Academy and became a freelance graphic designer in 1958.

Edelmann was a poster artist who created the psychedelic, surrealistic look of the animated film revolving around Beatles songs. He made the original drawings for the Blue Meanies, Apple Bonkers and other characters, casting them in a flat, two-dimensional style that popped with vivid colors. Ron Campbell did the animation for the film, which was produced by Al Brodax and directed by George Dunning.

Some viewers incorrectly assumed Edelmann was calling up his own experiences with hallucinogenic drugs.

"I had never taken any drugs," the artist said in a 2004 interview with the British magazine Design Week. "I'm a conservative, working-class person who sticks to booze . . . so I just knew about the psychedelic experience. . . . I guessed what it was."

In addition to his work on "Yellow Submarine," Edelmann designed many book covers, including the first German edition of J.R.R. Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings."

In 1989, he won a competition to design the mascot of Seville's Expo '92 world fair, beating 23 other entries with his illustration of a pudgy bird with a rainbow plume and conical beak named Curro."