The reason it had a different title for a while was because there’d just been another album come out called Dark Side of the Moon. It was to be named Eclipse (A Piece for Assorted Lunatics]. But Thorgerson also figured pyramids tied in with the album’s running theme of insanity, being “fantastic structures intended to elevate Pharaohs and assist in transporting worldly goods skywards to heaven-and how mad is that?”įor a while the album had a different working title. Pyramids are triangular, like the prism on the front cover, so there was that angle.
The designer went to Egypt to shoot infra-red photography of the pyramids for an inside poster. The joining of the spectrum extending round the back cover and across the gatefold inside was seamless like the segueing tracks on the album, whilst the opening heartbeat was represented by a repeating blip in one of the colors.” “Its outline is triangular and triangles are symbols of ambition, and are redolent of pyramids, both cosmic and mad in equal measure, all these ideas touching on themes in the lyrics.
“The refracting glass prism referred to Floyd light shows–consummate use of light in the concert setting,” Thorgerson said in an interview for the album’s 30 th anniversary. The prism design was partly inspired by Floyd’s extravagant live light shows. ‘Rick,’ I said, ‘I do images, I don’t do cool graphics.’… Whereupon Rick said, ‘Why don’t you try to see it as a challenge.’” But in this instance, as Thorgerson remembers it, Wright “said, ‘Storm, let’s have a cool graphic, not one of your tatty pictures…’ I protested. The Hipgnosis design team was famous for elaborately staged and photographed covers, like Wish You Were Here, which came out two years later. It was keyboardist Rick Wright who was insistent that the cover not feature any photography at all, even conceptual photos. One can look at it after that first moment of brilliance and think, ‘Well, it's a very commercial idea: It's very stark and simple it'll look great in shop windows.’ It wasn't a vague picture of four lads bouncing in the countryside. “It was, ‘That is it.’ It's a brilliant cover. “When Storm showed us all the ideas, with that one, there was no doubt,” guitarist David Gilmour told Rolling Stone in 2003. The band had always hated having their photos in the artwork. Imagine how differently we’d think of the album if the Floyd members had expressed any interest in one of Thorgersen’s alternative ideas, to have the cover feature… the Silver Surfer! One of the rejected designs involved a then-popular Marvel comic book superhero. ‘That’s it,’ they said in unison, ‘we’ve got to get back to real work,’ and returned forthwith to the studio upstairs.” In an 2003 interview, the designer elaborated, “No amount of cajoling would get them to consider any other contender, nor endure further explanation of the prism, or how exactly it might look. Took all of three minutes,” Thorgerson recalled in liner notes for the 2011 deluxe box. “The band trooped in, swept their gaze across the designs, looked at each other, nodded, and said ‘That one,’ pointing at the prism. The band members spent three minutes deciding on the front cover.ĭesigner Storm Thorgerson brought seven designs into the Abbey Road studio where they were still recording.