One of the reasons vinyl records are still so popular is that it's a great format for cover art. The British graphic design studio Hipgnosis were the visual pioneers of the progressive rock scene in the 1970s.
Image: Pink Floyd Music Ltd
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10 iconic album covers by Hipgnosis
Fifty years ago, Aubrey Powell and Storm Thorgerson created the art design group Hipgnosis. With their surreal cover art, they left their mark as one of the most important design collectives in pop music history.
Image: Pink Floyd Music Ltd
Pink Floyd, 'Atom Heart Mother' (1970)
Hipgnosis suggested pictures of cows for the art of a Pink Floyd album, and the band immediately agreed. It was the first album cover that didn't feature the band's name or photos of its members. The record label wasn't amused — yet it was an immediate hit. The marketing campaign also played on the mystery, with posters of the anonymous cow coming out weeks before the album was released.
Image: Pink Floyd Music Ltd
Pink Floyd, 'The Dark Side Of The Moon' (1973)
"No more cows": Instructions were clear for the eighth studio album. Powell and Thorgerson were inspired by photo of a prism refracting light. This time, the band and the record label unanimously agreed on the design. Not only the artwork is classic; the music of the album also remains legendary.
Image: Pink Floyd Music Ltd
Pink Floyd, 'Wish You Were Here' (1975)
This is not a Photoshop trick. The man on the photo was actually set on fire. The wind was, however, blowing in the wrong direction and burned the stuntman's mustache. The two men changed sides, shook their left hands and the image was then reversed in the dark room.
Image: Pink Floyd Music Ltd
Pink Floyd, 'Animals' (1977)
The inflatable rubber pig flying between factory chimneys was also real. It decided to go on its own adventure. During the photo shoot, the balloon broke free from its moorings and it flew out towards London's Heathrow airport. Flights were cancelled in panic, but fortunately, it didn't cause any accidents. The farmer who recovered it on his land was mad that the giant pig had terrified his cows.
Image: Pink Floyd Music Ltd
Peter Gabriel, 'Scratch' (1978)
Hipgnosis also worked for Genesis. Their cover art for the double album "The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway" is a masterpiece. After Peter Gabriel quit the band in 1975, he kept working with the art design group. He did not title his first series of four solo studio albums, but fans and the press always came up with unofficial names. Why this one is referred to as "Scratch" is obvious.
Image: Hipgnosis
AC/DC, 'Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap' (1976)
Tabloid publications used to hide the identity of a subject with black bars over their eyes. All the people pictured on the international edition of AC/DC's album are automatically suspected of the dirty deeds of the title, no matter how respectable they might appear at first sight.
Image: Hipgnosis
Wishbone Ash, 'New England' (1976)
The image above only shows a part of the cover. Another man is facing this one, while he is sharpening his stake. The sexual connotation is not a coincidence. The photographer was into men and created art playing on ambiguous interpretations. Wishbone Ash had just made a fresh start and found this bold photo fitting for their new plans.
Image: Hipgnosis
10cc, 'How Dare You!' (1976)
The cover of the 1976 album of the British band 10cc featured a couple arguing on the phone in two distinct pictures, separated by a diagonal cut. The art referred to the track, "Don't Hang Up." The picture above made up the gatefold art of the vinyl. With everyone interconnected and taking part in the argument, it was just like social media, but in the landline age.
Image: Hipgnosis
Led Zeppelin, 'Presence' (1976)
The artwork combined a photo of a boat exhibition with a studio shot of a family around a table. A black object, inspired by Stanley Kubrick's monolith in "2001: A Space Odyssey," is painted on the table. Building on the film's proposition, "The Object" as it was referred to by the designers, has always been present throughout history, and represents the absent band members' "powerful presence."
Image: Mythgem Ltd
10cc, 'Bloody Tourists' (1978)
A rock band on tour is like a tourist who travels without seeing anything. They go from airport to airport, see countless hotel rooms and concert halls, as well as their backstage rooms. 10cc felt like bloody tourists who wouldn't even notice a beautiful the beach and the attractive woman swimming behind them. Hipgnosis translated the feeling into this artwork.
Image: Hipgnosis
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The sky is cloudless. Two men wearing suits shake hands while standing amid industrial warehouses. One of them is burning — even his head is on fire.
This photo for Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here is one of the most famous album covers ever made. The artwork was created by the legendary British design studio Hipgnosis, founded in 1967 by Aubrey Powell and Storm Thorgerson.
An experimental playground
The first cover created by Hipgnosis was for Pink Floyd's A Saucerful of Secrets in 1968. The musicians and the artists were school friends. The studio would go on to create 10 covers for the band within the following decade.
"Wish You Were Here" Image: Pink Floyd Music Ltd
Traditional band portraits were obviously too boring for Powell and Thorgerson. The members of Pink Floyd did appear on the cover of Ummagumma (1969), but in an experimental form. Their portrait was repeated infinitely through a picture hanging on the wall. In each scene, the musicians have however switched positions and poses.
Later, the cow on Pink Floyd's Atom Heart Mother (1970) had absolutely nothing to do with the band or the content of the album. It simply aimed to draw attention. And it worked. Even though the band's name wasn't even on the cover, everyone who wanted the new Pink Floyd record knew they had to look for a cow.
Pink Floyd's "Ummagumma"Image: Pink Floyd Music Ltd
Setting new standards
Way before the cultural revolution of 1968, artists had already rebelled against established definitions of art and those views progressively found their way onto albums.
A polished image of the band no longer needed to appear on the cover. The focus was on the message of the music. In some cases, the goal was to show how experimental they were. Suddenly all forms of artistic expression were possible.
Hipgnosis were pioneers. But while the designers were loved by musicians, record labels initially hated them. How were they supposed to promote an album if it didn't even show the band — or their name?
A breakthrough album
For The Dark Side of the Moon (1973), the graphic designers were asked to come up with something "smarter, neater — more classy."
The band hadn't reached the peak of its fame yet, but they were already renowned for orchestrating elaborate light shows on stage. For the album Dark Side of the Moon, Powell and Thorgerson came up with the idea of the glass prism dispersing light into color to translate the band's artistic approach.
In the wake of the iconic design for that extremely successful album, all the top high-profile bands who could afford the London designers' artwork showed up at their door.
Hipgnosis did portraits, like this one of the Rolling Stones, but would never have used that as art for an albumImage: Hipgnosis
Reflecting an era of the past
Many of the designs created by Hipgnosis some 40-50 years ago would no longer be acceptable today.
For example, the Scorpions' instructions for the cover of Lovedrive were simple: It should show sex, women and be provocative.
Hipgnosis came up with a picture of a well-dressed couple in the backseat of a car; the man is pulling pink chewing gum off the woman's uncovered breast as she stares blankly into the camera. The band loved the artwork.
At the time of the release of the album in 1979, the picture was seen as shocking but not because it was considered misogynist. Powell admitted that such a concept wouldn't go over well in today's Me Too era: "There would be a call to arms," he said in an interview with weekly Der Spiegel last June. Still, "it was just meant to represent something really surreal, a bizarre incident," he explained.
The cover art of Led Zeppelin's Houses of the Holy wouldn't go down well today either. Naked children are climbing on an unusually-shaped rocky landscape — Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland — that was painted in surreal colors. While the cover is world famous, portraying naked young blond children wouldn't seem appropriate today.
Signature works
Hipgnosis kept on producing cover art until 1984, with their last works including Ammonia Avenue by The Alan Parsons Project; Now Voyager by Barry Gibb; and About Face by former Pink Floyd member David Gilmour.
Powell, Thorgerson and their large team have designed some 350 album covers to this day. Many of these albums made music history not only because of the tracks, but thanks to the singular artwork.
The exhibition "Daring to dream. 50 Years of Hipgnosis" opens on September 30 at the Browse Gallery in Berlin and runs through October 28.
More on the designer group can also be found in the book "Vinyl, Album, Cover, Art: The Complete Hipgnosis Catalogue" that was published in 2017.
Highlights of the Pink Floyd exhibition in Dortmund
After runs in London and Rome, "The Pink Floyd Exhibition: Their Mortal Remains" is now in Dortmund. The major retrospective in London revisited the 50-year history of the iconic band and their sources of inspiration.
Image: Reuters/S. Wermuth
Experimental and influential
They were way more than just a band: Pink Floyd (Roger Waters, here in the back, and from left to right, Nick Mason, David Gilmour, Richard Wright) not only revolutionized rock with their progressive psychedelic music. They also set many other artistic milestones with their unusual stage concepts and artwork for their albums, as well as their innovative recording techniques in the studio.
Image: Pink Floyd Music Ltd/Storm Thorgerson
Iconic images
Over the last 50 years, the versatile band has produced many iconic visuals. London's Victoria & Albert Museum featured some 350 photos, album covers and artifacts in its retrospective, such as these heads, which served as artwork for the concept album The Division Bell (1994). They were conceived by the graphic designer Storm Thorgerson, who also worked on another well-known cover...
Image: Stufish
Masterpiece: The Dark Side of the Moon
This is one of the most famous album covers in rock history. The exhibition dedicates a whole room to it. Keyboardist Richard Wright asked designers Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell to come up with a "simple and bold" design. Powell remembered finding this image of a glass prism dispersing light into color in a chemistry book. They immediately felt it was right.
Image: Pink Floyd Music Ltd
And pigs can fly
Bassist Roger Waters came up with the idea of the flying pig over Battersea Power Station. The huge helium-inflated porcine balloon broke free and flights over London had to be canceled, adding to the band's trove of legendary antics. The photo served as the cover of Animals (1977). "The sky had colors in the style of William Turner's paintings, fitting with the music," said Aubrey Powell.
Image: Pink Floyd Music Ltd
We don't need no education...
As the creative director of the exhibition, Powell dug out real treasures: This cane was used by their teacher to beat Waters, Thorgerson and founding member Syd Barrett when they were in school together in Cambridge. It inspired the prop held by the huge teacher puppet that was part of the "The Wall" concerts. Waters was happy to see it in the exhibition.
Image: Hills Road Sixth Form College/Pink Floyd Music Ltd/R. Truman
The Wall (1980/1981)
The exhibition also includes a reproduction of the huge wall that was gradually built in front of the band during the shows of "The Wall Tour." It symbolized the feeling of alienation between Roger Waters, the band and the audience. Because of the enormous costs of the stage theatrics, the tour only comprised 31 shows in four locations. German fans were lucky: Dortmund was one of them.
Image: Reuters/S. Wermuth
From here to immortality
"Their Mortal Remains" is the name of the exhibition, yet the band itself appears to be immortal: The Dark Side of the Moon is still a top seller worldwide. Pink Floyd's psychedelic universe can be explored at the Dortmunder U until February 10, 2019.
