New Hipgnosis Book.

[Ross62]

When Storm Thorgerson died last year at age 69, Po Powell, now the last living member of the design collective, began to trawl through the Hipgnosis archives. He ultimately compiled this treasure trove—including unseen photos of the Rolling Stones and of the original Giant's Causeway shoot—into an epic new book: Hipgnosis|Portraits, out this month from Thames & Hudson.

Led Zeppelin, Houses of the HolyAubrey Powell/Hipgnosis (Mythgem Ltd)

How did Hipgnosis create the cover for Led Zeppelin's "Houses of the Holy" (1973)?

Powell: I got a phone call from Jimmy Page, asking if Hipgnosis was interested in designing a cover for "Houses of the Holy." I agreed, and asked to hear the music and see the lyrics. He said, "No, just turn up in a few weeks with some ideas."

'The Dark Side of the Moon' sold 65 million copies. A billion people have probably seen that image.

When we showed up, Storm and I basically just had a sketch on a napkin. That’s how we did things in those days. Not very high-tech. The sketch was from an idea that came from science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke’s novel At Childhood’s End. At the end of the book, all the kids in the world go up into space in an enormous column of gold fire. I drew that on a napkin and Jimmy Page loved the idea. Then Robert Plant suggested we find some "interesting rocks," and I said, "How about we go to the Giant’s Causeway in Ireland?" They gave us carte blanche to shoot there for as long as we wanted, even though it would be expensive. At that time, bands had all the creative power—more power than record companies.

We went with a family—three adults, two kids, up on the rocks—and it poured rain for five days. It was absolutely miserable. I needed to make this cover extraordinary, but there was no chance of sunshine. The photos we took were in black and white, in the pouring rain.

Each album cover had a totally unique design process.

Finally, I decided to cut each individual child out from the various black and white photographs and created a montage. I hand-tinted it in bright orange and gold and red, rich colors, with 11 gorgeous children running up these octagonal rocks. The image is completely made up. That’s the cover you buy in record stores.

I put the original black-and-white photos in this book because no one's ever seen them before. I’ll always remember when I showed the final cover to Jimmy Page in the parking lot of a train station in England as he was returning home from tour. I opened up the car trunk, and there was the artwork. He said, "That looks incredible—that thing will gather a crowd." Within 10 minutes, 200 people were gathered round, looking in the car trunk and at Jimmy Page, dressed in all his finery with long hair and a lot of jewelry.

http://www.fastcodesign.com/3039377/the-dark-side-of-the-moon-cover-designer-on-the-making-of-iconic-rock-album-art

[Walter]

Very cool!

[Charles J. White]

Hipgnosis was the beast, very few could do it better, let alone as long as Hipgnosis was able to score jackpots

[Disco Duck]

I might buy this if my budget will allow it. I miss album covers; not just from rock bands but across all musical genres. A lot of creativity and thought went into them. Led Zeppelin had some very interesting ones. II, IV, Houses of the Holy and In Through The Out Door are my favorites.

[The Only Way To Fly]

Agree! I just got my 14 year old son the "wanted" poster from Geiger's ELP cover for Brain Salad Surgery. Tuns out someone stole the original pieces of work and there's a $10,000 reward upon its return.

I know Geiger didn't do as many covers as Hipgnosis but the one's he did do were pretty cool.