HIPGNOSIS

Seed in Futureclaw magazine, morning of October 15th, 10:37 am, pg. 39/208.







I suppose it's not the lack of sleep, coffee overdose or generally thick margin of stress present in my existence at the moment; because I'm floored. Absolutely; had no idea that there was one controlling force behind so many influential illustrations; that I also find incredible and super interesting. ok, digress.
So here they are, Hipgnosis.
Wikipedia tells me they were an art design (like the label, art-design) group formed in the early 70's, founding member graduated from RCA, dissolved in 1983 although one of the members still works it out. Check out Storm Thorgerson's work.

Their approach is based mainly in conceptual photography; creating iconic, ironic, political, satirical, surreal images. They either print as is or alter the state or layers of the visual matter to meet the needs of the client. This Technical Ecstasy cover (above), for example, is a painting of a photograph, that was then cut and illustrated over.
















I love the graphic diagonal rainbow rain; straight forward visually interesting, she kinda looks like Annie Lennox. Will it rain-bows in the future?
The group steered clear from having their clients show up in the illustrations. They based visual staging and theatrics on song lyrics and album titles that were playing with language or commonly accepted ideas, convention.
I appreciate the apparent yet not overdone and completely necessary, understood and thoughtful use of irony in the images. The cover of the Led Zeppelin album Presence in 1978; a well to do European family sit down in a restaurant or possibly in their own dining room, outside the yachts are moored and they contemplate a very insidious sculpture with smiles and reticence.

Right, enough praise. I've got to same something for the next meeting.
See you all soon. Erie