The article/essay I wrote on Storm Thorgerson. Pretty basic and not as good as I'd have liked it to be but I did pretty much hammer it out in one evening. Which goes to show that I would never get anything done were it not for deadlines.
Anyway, he's a really interesting guy. I just wish I could have found more comprehensive interviews. It would have been great to meet him and pick his brains, since what he did is what I might want to do one day when I get my shit together.
Storm Thorgerson (1944-2013)
Storm Thorgerson is the designer behind what are perhaps the most famous record album covers of all time. He was born in 1944 and grew up in Middlesex, England. He was was a childhood friend of Syd Barrett, Roger Waters and David Gilmour, who would later go on to form Pink Floyd. Thorgerson collaborated from them from the beginning and designed all of their album covers. He went on to design covers for Led Zeppelin, Muse, The Mars Volta, Black Sabbath and many more.
Thorgerson, having completed a Masters in Film, originally wanted to be a filmmaker but when Barrett and Waters asked him to design a cover for their second album, A Saucerful of Secrets, his interest in design was fully realised. During the same year, 1968, he formed the design studio Hipgnosis with his friend Aubrey Powell.
Thorgerson is known for his striking, stark and surrealist style. He often used photography in his art and design but used no computer enhancement. Most of his photographs are of real situations that Thorgerson himself would orchestrate. Obviously having had limited technology at this time, he would utilise what he learnt during his Film degree on his photographs. Among the techniques he employed were multiple exposures and mechanical cut and paste techniques.
A Saucerful of Secrets was Thorgerson's very first album design. His style evolved and became quite different, but the elements of surrealism and general strangeness started here and became a very strong theme in all of his work. Here he uses a collage style; he used this less and less of this throughout his later work, opting instead for stark, unusual and unsettling imagery.
A Saucerful of Secrets album cover, 1968
Thorgerson's next remarkable work for Pink Floyd was for their Wish You Were Here album in 1975.
Wish You Were Here album cover, 1975
This album cover shows the themes that were developing in Thorgerson's style. Instead of collage, Thorgerson's favoured medium had switched to photography, and according to legend this one is completely real – the man on fire really is on fire. Thorgerson's continuing sharp style ensured that Pink Floyd's albums stood out on the shelf, and as David Gilmour said after Thorgerson's passing, his designs had been “an inseparable part of our work.” One could say that Thorgerson's designs evolved along with Pink Floyd's music.
Another album cover that illustrates this is his design for A Momentary Lapse of Reason, released in 1987. This image truly shows Thorgerson's love of surrealism. In order to realise his vision for this album cover, Thorgerson actually lined up hundreds of identical and perfectly made up beds on a beach. Again, Thorgerson shows us his passion for the stark and strange with another shockingly real photograph. He has turned a very traditional landscape – a beach with a horizon – into something extremely strange and surreal. He uses the technique of repetition to draw the viewer's attention in.
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A Momentary Lapse of Reason album cover, 1987
Thorgerson named the surrealist artist Rene Magritte as a huge inspiration to him, and this is especially evident in his work for the Mars Volta for their album Frances the Mute in 2004. The album cover is an obvious homage to Magritte's 1928 painting The Lovers. Thorgerson was also inspired by the music on the album itself, stating that when he listened to the album he “imagined car drivers navigating their way through town i.e., through life, thinking they are steering a safe path but in fact having no idea where they are going, i.e., drivers wearing custom hoods - not hoods to hide their identity but nicely made velvet accessories that simply and surreally prevent them from seeing or having any idea of where they were driving.”
Frances the Mute album cover, 2004
The Lovers by Rene Magritte, 1928
Storm Thorgerson's attention to the music of the bands' who commissioned him clearly paid off in his creation of album covers. The result is that his album artwork often relates to the music it is for, but is still in his stark, surrealist style. His imagery is often simple but so unusual that it draws the viewer in and makes them look at least twice. His designs are clearly integral to the work of the bands he has created artwork for, making him perhaps the most successful album cover designer of all time.
Bibliography
Batty, David. “Storm Thurgerson Dies Aged 69”. April 18, 2013.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2013/apr/18/storm-thorgerson-dies-69
Baucom, Amanda. “Storm Thurgerson”. 2013.
http://www.spikerush.com/storm_thorgerson/index.php?section=biography
No author or date specified.
http://indie-cover-stories.tumblr.com/post/889909834/mars-volta-frances-the-mute
No author specified. “The Mars Volta by Storm Thorgerson”. 2008-2013.
http://www.rockarchive.com/the-mars-volta_photo_print_mvol002st.html#.UZ9X0KKmjko
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hipgnosis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storm_Thorgerson
http://www.artnet.com/artists/storm-thorgerson/
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