Book design · Covers · Production · Los Angeles
Fire Dragon Color is: book cover design, production graphics, and artist book design. Twenty years of getting art onto paper accurately.
Selected work
12 projects
Cover design · Out 29 September 2026
50 Years of Song and Poetry — lyrics, unpublished photographs and handwritten drafts, with a foreword by Stephen King.
Clients
Publishers, galleries & museums
I sit on book production teams for major publishers. On most of these titles the credit belongs to the house — but the book on the table went through my hands, and it is the part of the work I am proudest of.
TIME · best photobooks of 2014
Victoria Sambunaris, published by Radius Books — selected by Phil Bicker, senior photo editor, from the twenty-seven photobooks TIME's editors said defined the year.
The New Yorker · best books of 2014
Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb, published by Radius Books — Teju Cole's pick, an elliptical account of Rochester, New York after the decline of Kodak.
Publishers, galleries and museums
What I do
Los Angeles
The part of the job I care most about. A cover has to work at thumbnail size on a retailer's grid, at arm's length on a table, and as a physical wrap with a spine and a back that still belong to it. I usually work up two or three real routes, because a cover is easier to judge next to the covers it beat.
Trade · Art books · SeriesInteriors: typesetting, image sequencing, pacing across the spread, and the grid that has to survive captions, plates and back matter without going slack. Cover through colophon.
Monographs · Catalogues · IllustratedTwenty years of getting art onto paper accurately — separations, stock, screen ruling, proofing and press checks. This is what publishers keep me for, and it's why the design side comes with a realistic sense of what a press will actually hold.
Color · Proofing · PressA sister studio
Tools for artists & estates
An artist's site that puts the work first and stays easy to update, without a monthly platform fee or a redesign every time you have a new show.
Keep track of what's been made, where it is, what it sold for and who has it — built for working artists, and for the estates that come after them.
About
Santa Fe 2007 → Los Angeles
Color accuracy is the hallmark. Design is where it pays off.
I started Fire Dragon Color in Santa Fe in 2007 as a pre-press and production studio — photographing art, correcting color and proofing books for publishers, galleries and museums. Two titles I worked on were named to TIME's and The New Yorker's books of the year in 2014.
Design was always part of it, and it's now the part I lead with. Knowing what a press will hold changes how you design: which blacks are worth the fourth unit, when a full-bleed image is a liability, how much a spine can carry. Most designers hand that problem to someone else. I've been the someone else for twenty years.
I work with publishers, galleries, museums and authors, from single covers to full book production teams. Now based in Los Angeles, travelling for press checks.
Start a job
John Vokoun · Los Angeles
Send the title, the trim size, the image count and the date it has to be at the printer.
Based
Los Angeles, California
Travelling for press checks
