The Creation, ‘66-‘67

Hipgnosis is the kind of creative entity that could be said to be exactly the kind of thing that Dangerous Minds readers know about that maybe isn’t common parlance to the rest of the world. If you’re reading this, I’m going to guess that you know all about (to pick almost at random) the cover for Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here and the cover for Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy and Peter Gabriel’s first three albums and maybe the words “Throbbing Gristle” flitted through your head as well.

In 1968 Cambridge natives Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell were approached by Pink Floyd to do a cover for A Saucerful of Secrets, and that partnership proved incredibly fruitful, as Hipgnosis was an absolutely perfect correlative for the music of Floyd, both being so very strong on concept and strong on execution at the same time.
 

 
I think of an album cover like Hipgnosis’ design for Def Leppard’s second album High and Dry as the kind of thing that cannot happen by accident, you need professionals with vision, daring, and resources to make an image of a perfectly vertical diver flanked by a crowd of people curiously staring upward to work. If you’ve seen that cover just once, that’s enough for you to remember what album it is every time you flip past it in the LP rack.

Hipgnosis did many covers for 10cc and Genesis and Bad Company and Wishbone Ash and many others. What made their ad-ready covers stand out was their enigmatic feel for drama, and they weren’t short on humor either, as their cover for Scorpions’ Lovedrive would establish forevermore. Many of their covers involved high-definition photography and staging, that was their thing.
 

 
The style that Hipgnosis so excelled at didn’t live much past the 1970s, but they’ve continued to be active and they did a great many covers including a few for bands you didn’t know they were associated with. On the occasion of Vinyl . Album . Cover . Art: The Complete Hipgnosis Catalogue, an utterly mouth-watering book to be released by Thames & Hudson in May (quite affordable at under $30, pre-order here), we call your attention to the sustained excellence of Hipgnosis, even on albums you might not have known or not known they had anything to do with.
 

Ian Dury, Reasons to be Cheerful
 

The Police, “De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da” single
 

XTC, “This Is Pop?”
 

Ween, The Mollusk
 

The Cult, Electric
 

Syd Barrett, An Introduction to Syd Barrett
 

The Mars Volta, Frances the Mute
 

Hot Chocolate, Every 1’s a Winner
 

I Am Spoonbender, Shown Actual Size EP
 

Yumi Matsutoya, Voyager
 

Megadeth, Rude Awakening
 

Human Sexual Response, Fig. 14
 

Hey Drag City, label comp
 

Percy Thrillington
 
Hat tip: John Coulthart
 
Note: Minor detail about Def Leppard updated.
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
‘23 Envelope’: The artists who created 4AD’s iconic album covers
Greatest hits: Here’s why the Ohio Players owned the album cover game back in the 1970s