KOSH IS A THREE TIME GRAMMY AWARD WINNING art director and former design director for Apple Records. In the mid-sixties, he was designing for The Royal Ballet and The Royal Opera, where he produced the gold foil program for the anniversary Royal Gala attended by HM Queen Elizabeth. At the tender age of 22, Kosh was responsible for designing the innovative entry portal to the “Young & Fantastic” avant garde art and sculpture exhibition on The Mall in London’s West End. Following his work for The Royal Opera House, he met John Lennon and Yoko Ono in 1968, He discovered that they had admired his work as the art director of Art & Artists magazine. Shortly thereafter they offered him a desk at Apple HQ in London. His first project was the “War Is Over (if you want it)” Christmas card, which led to the worldwide WAR IS OVER billboard campaign that continues to this day. He designed The Beatles’ Let It Be book and album package and the Abbey Road album cover, as well as John & Yoko’s Wedding Album boxed set. He worked with the other artists’ albums and singles at Apple including, Mary Hopkin’s Postcard, Billy Preston’s That’s The Way God Planned It, George Harrison’s Radha Krisna Temple and The Plastic Ono Band’s, “Give Peace a Chance”, “Instant Karma”, “Cold Turkey” and “Power To The People.” He produced Phil Spector’s Christmas Album cover along with his “Back To Mono” promotion and the 1969 John Lennon Diary. Kosh later flew to New York to deliver John & Yoko’s Bag One portfolio of erotic lithographs for the Lee Nordness Gallery. After the Apple days, his clientele expanded to cover the cream of British rock artists and bands such as Badfinger, Donovan, Family, Humble Pie, The Rolling Stones, Spencer Davis Group, Stone the Crows, T. Tex and The Who. His work for Decca and London Records found him in Toronto and Chicago with The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and in Venice, Italy with the Benny Goodman Orchestra.
The 1970s brought Kosh to L.A., where he worked with and designed for a number of West Coast recording artists including Aerosmith, Gregg Allman, Bad Company, Ginger Baker, Lewis Black, Jimmy Buffett, J.J. Cale, Carlene Carter, Kim Carnes, Cher, Chicago, KiKi Dee, Bob Dylan, Electric Light Orchestra, Dan Fogelberg, Marvin Gaye, Carole King, David Lindley, Melissa Manchester, Bette Midler, Steve Miller Band, The Moody Blues, The Motels, Randy Newman, Dolly Parton, Tom Petty, Pointer Sisters, Richard Pryor, Bonnie Raitt, REO Speedwagon, Minnie Riperton, Rod Stewart, Spinal Tap, James Taylor, 10,000 Maniacs, Lily Tomlin, Trio, Jimmy Webb and W.A.S.P. Kosh designed four covers for Ringo Starr including Rotogravure. He worked extensively with Linda Ronstadt, which included 26 albums and designed her autobiographical book, Simple Dreams. This led to garnering three Grammys for her albums, Simple Dreams, Get Closer and Lush Life. The last two he shared with his partner, Ron Larson. Kosh and Ron spent several years collaborating on many highly visible projects. He designed and art directed the iconic logo and cover, Hotel California for the Eagles as well as the classic logo for ELO (inspired by the Wurlitzer jukeboxes his father worked on in the ‘50s.) He served two terms as a board member of The National Academy of Recording Arts and many of his album designs have been exhibited at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Museum.
In the mid-eighties, after a stint as the West Coast design director at Album Graphics, Inc., he teamed up with Kay Steele and joined designers Larry Brooks and Amy Dakos to form Kosh/Brooks Design. Their clients included several LA hair bands and opera diva, Sarah Brightman. Kosh designed the wild interior of the legendary Flipper’s Roller Rink in West Hollywood.
In the nineties he started TEN WORLDS PRODUCTIONS, INC. with his then partner Susan Shearer, producing a string of animated TV titles taking TWP into the 21st century. The client list included Warner Bros, Fox, MGM, A&E, TBS, TCM, CBS, History Channel, PBS and The American Film Institute. Ten Worlds became the production designers for a six-hour documentary, Sex, Censorship & The Silver Screen, hosted by Raquel Welch, When The Lion Roars, The MGM Story, hosted by Patrick Stewart and the 75th anniversary show, The Warner Bros. Story with Peter Bogdanivich. Kosh’s team supplied the graphics for the live broadcast of the annual Billboard Awards. Kosh also designed the award trophy. The TWP team produced a 14-part documentary series for The History Channel, Declassified, beginning in 2005 with the highly rated show, The Rise and Fall of the [Berlin] Wall, researched in East Berlin and Potsdam, Germany. Shearer and Kosh won first prize at the 2018 Hollywood Film Festival with their short comedy, Casting All Corpses, directed by Kosh. Their 2019 sci-fi short, Landings was shown in festivals across the US and Europe with Kosh and Susan as executive producers.
Kosh is currently operating KOSH DESIGN STUDIOS in Los Angeles with his partner Genny Schorr. Recent projects include Linda Ronstadt’s book, Feels Like Home, A Song for the Sonoran Borderlands and a picture book on America’s National Parks by photographer, Andy Katz which will be released at the end of the year.