It’s one of my most favorite album covers. Here, he tells the story of Hipgnosis – which, he points out, is still a functioning company, making designs and films – through some of its most brilliant album sleeves. He recently took some time out from working on an exhibition at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum celebrating Pink Floyd, for whom he is the creative director, and picked 15 covers he felt were turning points for the company. Pepper’s, we went, ‘Oh, my gosh, there’s another way of doing this.’ We were both fresh out of art school, and we said, ‘We can do this, but let’s think differently.’ By 1973, when we did Dark Side of the Moon, Houses of the Holy and Band on the Run, we had discovered our métier, and we had the great privilege of being trusted by the bands we worked for. “We always tried to think laterally and not go for the obvious,” he says. And average artwork could take three to six weeks, whereas you could do some of these album covers in an afternoon now.”Īs Powell looks back on the history that he made with Thorgerson, who died of cancer in 2013, he’s most proud of the creativity they shared. Everything had to be shot on film and done by hand. “You can see the development of Hipgnosis, and how we got more sophisticated, more sleek and clever at photography, graphics, lettering and text,” Powell tells Rolling Stone. It collects the 373 sleeves Powell, Thorgerson and their compatriots made together between ’ with commentary by Powell and Thorgerson, among others, and a foreword by Peter Gabriel. Art: The Complete Hipgnosis Catalogue – due out May 16th – will celebrate the company’s 50th anniversary. Hipgnosis – cofounded by artists Aubrey “Po” Powell and Storm Thorgerson in 1967 – flipped the script on rock art.Ī new book, Vinyl. Pepper’s, album covers largely were portraits of the bands and artists. Although the psychedelic era produced beautifully filigreed LP sleeves like Love’s Forever Changes and, of course, Sgt. Imagine record sleeves without the advent of Hipgnosis, the photo-design company responsible for Pink Floyd‘s mysterious black prism, Led Zeppelin‘s flaxen-haired nudist children, AC/DC‘s censored everyday villains, Black Sabbath‘s copulating escalator robots and Peter Gabriel‘s melted grilled-cheese face.

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