Graphic Design: Hipgnosis & Storm Thorgerson

Hipgnosis were a famous British graphic design group who were operational for 14 years between 1968-1982 and specialised entirely in music cover art. The group produced some of the World's most famous ever music album covers, working with artists including Pink Floyd, Bad Company, Genesis and Led Zeppelin. Hipgnosis initially consisted of just two people, Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell, and later a third person with the arrival of Peter Christopherson. The group dissolved in 1983 but Thorgerson still works on album covers. The group had their big break when friends Pink Floyd approached them with the opportunity to design the cover art for their second album 'Saucerful of Secrets', which led to them being given additional work by record label EMI.

At the time they were film and art students and initially used the darkroom at the Royal College of Art, before having to set up their own studio in Aubrey Powell's bedroom in 1969. In 1970 they rented space and built a larger and more comprehensive studio from which to work. The name 'Hypgnosis' was adopted from graffiti found on the door to their shared apartment, with Powell liking the word because it had:-

"a nice sense of contradiction, of an impossible co-existence, from Hip = new and groove, and Gnostic, relating to ancient learning." - Aubrey Powell

It was in 1973 that Hipgnosis gained considerable international recognition after designing the world famous cover for Pink Floyd album 'The Dark Side of the Moon', with a simple yet unique prism design (shown right). Hipgnosis had provided Pink Floyd with 7 different designs to choose from however all members of the band agreed that the prism was by far superior to the others. The album became one of the biggest selling albums of all time, selling millions of copies worldwide, and the cover has since been named as the #4 greatest bit of cover art of all time in a poll by VH1. It was this album which led to the group being asked to produce covers for other hugely successful bands including Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Genesis, Bad Company, and UFO. It was in 1974 that Peter Christopherson would join the existing two members of to help out with the growing demand, initially as an assistant before impressing enough to be made a full partner in the business. The trio employed various graphic designers and freelancers through the years, and had a frequent association with a man named George Hardie; the prism design used by PInk Floyd in 1973 was in fact Hardie's image! Another unusual aspect of the hipgnosis set up was that they never invoiced bands or record labels for their work, instead insisting that they pay the group whatever it is they felt it was worth - a policy which Storm Thorgerson stated had rarely backfired in one of his more recent books.

Hipgnosis were incredibly innovative and unique in their time, and was mainly photo orientated. The group pioneered many of the visual and packaging techniques which are still in regularly use today, in particular they utilized various darkroom techniques, used multiple exposures, used airbrush retouching, and used astonishingly innovative mechanical cut-and-pasting techniques. These methods were effectively the film based version of adobe 'photoshopping', and modern graphic designers and graphic software developers today have much to thank Thorgerson and Powell for. The duo, and later trio, used 'Hasslebad medium format' cameras for their work, these use a square film format and Hasslebad is still a supplier of professional camera technologies today. Hipgnosis would hardly never feature pictures of the artist on the outside, and would instead use a gatefold format to ensure plenty of space for their fantastic images. Hipgnosis designed albums would also often contain free stickers, unique and detailed inner sleeves, and various other freebies and bonuses for the purchaser. The group had produced almost 200 album covers in 14 years before breaking up, however Thorgeson is still producing cover art for bands to this day as an individual. Most of those albums can still be purchased with the original artwork, and many also have posters available too.

There have been a number of fantastic books released by the original members of Hipgnosis in recent years, which I have included where possible in the Amazon links for your perusal. The most recent publication is 'For the Love of Vinyl: The Album Art of Hipgnosis' which was compiled by Storm Thorgerson, Aubrey Powell, and three other authors and was released at the end of 2008. This book shows an incredibly array of astonishingly high quality images from the time before digital, and also provides an excellent insight into a now almost non-existent art form. This full color 224 page book will make you gasp in surprises and delight at the pure quality and realism which is proved possible in the pre-realism age, and most will put the book down with an appreciation of the groups pure genius. This book is the one featured above right, whilst the links below lead to other publications by the famous Storm Thorgerson.