HIPGNOSIS DESIGN GROUP

Hipgnosis Design Group was founded in 1968 when members of Pink Floyd asked their friends Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell to design an album cover for them. Later, Hipgnosis created the iconic album cover for The Dark Side of the Moon. They had a number of clients- Genesis, Peter Gabriel, Paul McCartney, Led Zeppelin, Al Stewart to name a few. Hipgnosis disbanded in 1982.

While I was studying graphic design, I first became acquainted with and loved their work. This was back in the design Dark Ages-before Photoshop, when we were using press-on type (neva heard of it? look it up). Their work was photography-based, which appealed to me. They used all sorts of darkroom tricks with a good dash of surreal and clever imagery and visual puns. One of my favs:

The band, Uno was a short-lived Italian prog-rock band. I'm not in love with the typeface-it's the image.The original is pretty grainy and all I could find online is of marginal quality. The checkered cloak has the black squares removed to reveal the grassy image behind. In the background hillside is this:

This is the Long Man of Wilmington in East Sussex, England. 235 feet tall, originally cut into the turf to expose the underlying chalk-the modern version is formed with white painted concrete blocks. For many years its origin was thought to date to Neolithic times but modern archeology suggests it was made in the 16th-17th Century.

One of these days (Floyd reference), on my bucket list, is to visit these grand, history-drenched isles that are just chock full of ancient sites and curious visuals like the Long Man. Someday.