Designer and film-maker Storm Thorgerson grew up in Cambridge and was an early friend of Syd Barrett, Roger Waters and David Gilmour, all from Pink Floyd, for whom he designed many album covers, including the iconic sleeve for The Dark Side Of The Moon. The graphic art group Hipgnosis (co-founded by Storm with Aubrey ‘Po’ Powell) became one of the most famed design and photographic teams in music, with covers for many other internationally successful artists, including Led Zeppelin, Genesis, Wishbone Ash, 10cc, Black Sabbath, Wings, Peter Gabriel, and Yes. After the team went their separate ways, Storm spent some time creating films and documentaries, but always maintained his design work, most recently as founder of StormStudios, which has created memorable images for Muse, Biffy Clyro, and The Steve Miller Band, as well as the graphics for the recent Why Pink Floyd? campaign.
Storm Elvin Thorgerson was born in Potters Bar, Middlesex (now in Hertfordshire) on February 28th 1944. Of Norwegian heritage, he was schooled at Summerhill free school and then Brunswick Primary School in Cambridge. His secondary education was at local grammar school, the Cambridgeshire High School for Boys, alongside Syd Barrett and Roger Waters, who went on to form Pink Floyd.
He studied for a degree at Leicester University from 1963 to 1966, initially in Psychology, but he switched courses, gaining more satisfaction from attaining a BA Honours degree in English and Philosophy. However, his primary interest had always been film, so he progressed to a Masters’ Degree course in Film and TV at London’s Royal College of Art (1966-69). He had a variety of jobs, including being a temporary porter for British Rail, before founding Hipgnosis (by juxtaposing ‘hip’ with the Greek ‘gnosis’ – to know) with fellow college student ‘Po’ Powell.
In 1968, wanting to break into the world of album covers, which had become much more flamboyant and art-oriented since the psychedelic explosion of 1967, Storm asked his friend David Gilmour, who had recently replaced Syd Barrett as guitarist/singer in Pink Floyd, to help persuade the other members of Pink Floyd that they should use him to do the artwork for their latest album.
The resulting cover for A Saucerful Of Secrets still stands as one of the best examples of British psychedelic cover art. As Q magazine stated, the designers attempted to mirror three “altered states of consciousness” – religion, drugs, and Pink Floyd music. The Pink Floyd connection continued with the covers for the band’s subsequent albums, including More, the double album Ummagumma (shot at the house of Storm’s then-girlfriend Libby January) and Atom Heart Mother, but Hipgnosis worked with many other artists, including The Pretty Things, Syd Barrett, The Nice, T. Rex, Marvin, Welch & Farrar, The Electric Light Orchestra, Wishbone Ash, the Climax Blues Band, and Renaissance, before the huge success of 1973’s The Dark Side Of The Moon and its stark graphic sleeve brought their work to a global audience.
Hipgnosis weren’t afraid to use multiple visual techniques to effect their designs; over the years their sleeves used hyperreal photography, pencil illustration, airbrushing, photo montage, Polaroid manipulation and colour photocopying, while their design for The Dark Side Of The Moon was entirely graphic (with Hipgnosis associate George Hardie). In spite of that, their most celebrated images are still probably the ones using Storm’s favoured method of grotesquely oversizing everyday objects like balls of wool, lightbulbs and sculpted heads and then placing them in an otherworldly landscape.
Speaking of his work in 2012, Storm said: “I think it’s always a very difficult thing for commercial artists and designers to pursue, against either circumstance or financial restrictions, that which you believe. So I’ve been very lucky, really. I was working for the [Pink] Floyd, who couldn’t think of anything better to do than to hire me, and fortunately what we did worked, quite early on. I always thought, and I still think, that Ummagumma is a great design. I probably shouldn’t, as an artist, like my own work (heavens, us artists are supposed to suffer dreadfully), but I quite like it.
He died on 18th April, 2013. His family said: “Yes, Storm has died. He passed away, on Thursday 18th April in the afternoon. His ending was peaceful and he was surrounded by family and friends. He had been ill for some time with cancer though he had made a remarkable recovery from his stroke in 2003. He was in his 70th year.”
David Gilmour said: “We first met in our early teens. We would gather at Sheep’s Green, a spot by the river in Cambridge and Storm would always be there holding forth, making the most noise, bursting with ideas and enthusiasm. Nothing has ever really changed. mHe has been a constant force in my life, both at work and in private, a shoulder to cry on and a great friend.The artworks that he created for Pink Floyd from 1968 to the present day have been an inseparable part of our work. I will miss him.”
