Stanley Donwood
Radiohead's visual architect
Stanley Donwood is the pseudonym of Dan Rickwood (b. 1968), the English artist who has made the artwork for every Radiohead album since The Bends (1995). He met singer Thom Yorke when both were art students at the University of Exeter, and the two have shaped the band's visual identity — often credited jointly, sometimes with Yorke under the alias “Dr Tchock” — for three decades.
Donwood works across painting, printmaking, linocut, digital collage and writing, and his Radiohead covers track the band's moods: the melting, over-bright landscape of OK Computer; the scribbled red mountains of Kid A; the poured, scraped colour of In Rainbows. He typically makes the art in parallel with the recording, in the same room as the band.
The work has been widely exhibited and collected, and in 2002 Donwood and Yorke won the Grammy for Best Recording Package for Amnesiac. Donwood has also written several books and made artwork for Yorke's other projects.
- Born
- 1968 (born Dan Rickwood), England
- Role
- Artist, printmaker & designer
- Known for
- Radiohead
- Active
- 1994 – present
Signature style
Donwood's art is anxious, hand-made and weather-beaten — apocalyptic landscapes, smeared text, motorway signage and creatures rendered in paint, woodcut or crude digital tools. It reads as the visual equivalent of Radiohead's music: modern dread made by hand rather than by machine.
Defining covers
The Bends
Radiohead · 1995
Donwood's first Radiohead cover — a resuscitation dummy, cropped and clinical — began a partnership that would run for decades.
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OK Computer
Radiohead · 1997
The over-exposed, collaged highway landscape scrawled with fragments of text — Donwood's portrait of millennial anxiety and information overload, made partly with early digital tools.
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Kid A
Radiohead · 2000
Jagged red-and-white mountains built from painted and knifed layers — an icy, burning landscape matching the band's turn away from guitars.
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Amnesiac
Radiohead · 2001
The weeping “crying minotaur” imagery, whose packaging won Donwood and Yorke the 2002 Grammy for Best Recording Package.
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In Rainbows
Radiohead · 2007
Made by pouring dye and wax and scraping into it — Donwood's “digital rain” of colour, released alongside the album's famous pay-what-you-want experiment.
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Cover evolution
Stanley Donwood · 1995–2007
Every Stanley Donwood cover in the archive
Frequently asked
- Who designs Radiohead's album covers?
- Stanley Donwood (Dan Rickwood), working closely with singer Thom Yorke. He has made the artwork for every Radiohead album since The Bends in 1995.
- Is Stanley Donwood his real name?
- No — it's a pseudonym. The artist's real name is Dan Rickwood.
- Has Stanley Donwood won any awards?
- Yes — he and Thom Yorke won the 2002 Grammy for Best Recording Package for Radiohead's Amnesiac.