Warped reality

Storm Thorgerson is sometimes known as the sixth member of Pink Floyd, and his design for The Dark Side of the Moon has been called one of the greatest album covers of all time. He definitely has the coolest name in that group. Eat your heart out Roger Waters.

And he’s also designed covers for rock icons like Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and Peter Gabriel through the design company, Hipgnosis, he co-founded in 1968. You sense a pattern here. Thorgerson has said he doesn’t like ideas that have an explanation off pat and he prefers to develop a concept that visually alludes to an album title or theme, which he then captures through photography. Think 800 beds, taken from Dave Gilmour’s lyric ‘visions of empty beds’ on A Momentary Lapse of Reason.

Thorgerson is a keynote speaker at Semi-Permanent, the celebration of all things design, on at Auckland’s Aotea Centre, 20 and 21 August.