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| Storm Thorgerson, Hipgnosis an
| 17.6.2010 |
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| Back in 1969, at the tender young age of 16, I was about to first experience the otherworldly sounds of a British rock group known as Pink Floyd. It was the age of Woodstock, and I had moved with my parents from the sweltering big city of Houston to the pastoral charms of rural Arkansas. Despite the laid-back vibe of the country, as a p.ionate young record fan, I still sought out the most unusual sounds I could find, and the album cover for Ummagumma was too intriguing for me to p. up. At first glance, it seemed normal enough - four long-haired young men inside a room, in various positions at an open doorway. But on the wall of the room was a framed portrait of the same scene, only now the order of the men had changed. cheap coach purses Without changing the original positions (one in a chair, the next at the steps outside, further out one looking up, and the farthest member on his back, legs up), the group had switched with one another. And within the picture was yet another repeated picture, and within it another, so that in the course of the views within views each member of the band was in each of the four positions. I was floored by this concept and rushed home with the double-vinyl album. After absorbing the spacey sounds, I went back to the cover art and discovered that it was designed by "Hipgnosis" - another fascinating concept. I started noticing more Hipgnosis covers on what usually turned out to be the most .tting-edge rock albums coming out of the U.K. at that time. Hipgnosis was the title of Britain's coolest art collective. It consisted of two school chums from Cambridge, Storm Thorgerson and Audrey "Po" Powell. Thorgerson and Powell were also friends with the lads from Pink Floyd, who came from the same area, and Hipgnosis (the double-meaning name combines "hip", or to-the moment, with "gnostic," relating to ancient learning; it came from graffiti found scrawled on the door of their apartment) began their career by designing the Floyd's second long-player, A Saucerful of Secrets, in 1968. makeup brush Within time, their list of clients included some of the top acts in England, including Genesis, Yes, Black Sabbath, Alan Parsons Project, Peter Gabriel, 10cc, Led Zeppelin, UFO and Paul McCartney and Wings; Hipgnosis were also responsible for designing the cover to Douglas Adams' novel "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." Their approach to design was based largely on photography, and by utilizing many pre-Photoshop tricks (including airbushing, multiple exposures, etc.), their designs were decidedly surreal. A quirky sense of humor was also a hallmark of their work. This was not your usual ad agency to be sure. Even their method of billing clients - "pay what you think it's worth" - was more in keeping with the free-spirit feeling of the time, rather than the hustle-for-every-buck attitude of corporate America's Madison Avenue ad agencies. And as former film students, Thorgerson and Powell tended to use models as actors, with cover designs looking like selected scenes from a movie. Some of their most creative work was produced for their Cambridge pals in Pink Floyd. Album after album, including solo projects, bore the unmistakable stamp of the Hipgnosis team, and with the Floyd's 1973 cl.ic, Dark Side of the Moon, practically everyone in the world seemed to have a Hipgnosis cover or three lurking within their record collection. The concepts continued to amaze and confound, and with Animals and the infamous floating pig they made international news as well when that giant pig floated off from the photo shoot at Battersea Power Plant, resulting in a frantic search (it finally | |
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