Juxtapoz Sound and Vision is a weekly segment on our platform dedicated to exploring one piece of substantial album artwork every Sunday. Album artwork is one of the primary ways that musicians and visual artists are able to collaborate, and many iconic album covers are simultaneously iconic pieces of pop art. It’s also an excuse for us to share some of our favorite albums and the visual component behind what makes an album groundbreaking and fun.
March 10th, 2019: Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon
Cover Artwork by Hipgnosis and George Hardie
For those of us in the United States, (sorry Arizona and Hawaii,) today is our yearly “springing forward” out of Daylight Savings Time. So to celebrate the later sunsets, we’re going with a “light”-inspired Sound and Vision.
Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon isn’t just relevant to our series for the gimmicky Daylight Savings joke above, it’s arguably the most recognizable album-cover in American music history. Its icon status can be partially attributed to the fact that Dark Side Of The Moon is one of the best selling albums of all time, but those sales are in no small part related to how clear and direct the image is. Stemming from keyboardist Richard Wright’s request for “simple and bold” cover artwork, British design duo Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell, AKA Hipgnosis, along with their friend George Hardie delivered the prism design. Hipgnosis went on to create dozens of world-famous cover designs for artists like Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Ween, AC/DC, and many others.
