Storm Thorgerson – Designing an Album Cover |

Creating the image comes from looking at the music, lyrics and information from the band and use these to “form a kind of brief”. Listening to the music is a must and Thorgerson makes sure to carefully consider each song in the process of creating the album cover. Once the brief is established, looking for the right colours, concept, design to suit the style of the musician and to come up with a cover that represents them and their music.

He talks of how when he designs, the commerciality of the image is not a concern, instead the focus is to “represent the music visually”, which can then become the face of this stage of the artist, whether it be on posters, billboards or the iTunes album art. Because of this there is often continuity created in the album covers and the artists’ style helping them to be recognisable to their audience.

Thorgerson has created album covers for a huge range of artists including;

Pink Floyd
Muse
Led Zeppelin
The Cranberries
Biffy Clyro
The Wombats
Alan Parsons
Peter Gabriel
10cc

Pink Floyd – Wish You Were Here

The photograph was taken in the back lot of Warner Brothers film studios in Burbank, used to represent “the land of make-believe”. The two business men shaking hands is said to be an empty gesture, signifying the band’s unease about the music industry, and some would go as far to call it shaking hands with the devil.

Alan Parsons – Try Anything Once

‘The title suggested something a touch reckless, perhaps, or at least a departure from normal behaviour. We joined this thought with the image of a bungee jump from a high bridge on television – wondering what on earth people would do for a thrill.’ – Storm Thorgerson.

Pink Floyd – A Momentary Lapse of Reason

“Beds to dream in, or beds to recover in.” notes Storm Thorgerson. “Real beds in a real place” looking somewhat unreal. The idea stemmed from the lyric “visions of an empty bed”, from Yet Another Movie, which Thorgerson rearranged to “vision of empty beds”, leading to the final image seen on the album cover.

Some of my favourite album covers of Storm Thorgerson’s include: