With any album cover project,
there are many considerations to be thought about during the design
process. When one is doing a fresh version of a classic design, these
take on a whole new complexion. The last thing the designer wants to do
is ruin it, or try to steal the thunder of George Hardie's original.
These thoughts must have run
through Storm Thorgerson's mind, when he was approached to design the
cover for the 30th Anniversary edition of Dark Side Of The Moon. Storm,
long time collaborator with the Floyd, was part of Hipgnosis, a design
team that produced most of their covers over the years, and he designed
the new cover with Peter Curzon, Dan Abbott and Lee Baker.
Storm's thoughts on the design process of the cover were on the revised official Pink Floyd site at the time, and here was what he had to say:
"The new but not so new artwork
for the SACD 30th anniversary edition of The Dark Side Of The Moon is a
photograph of a real stained glass window. This has been custom made of
french polished antique glass by a professional stained glass outfit
based in North London. It has been constructed to match the specific
dimensions and proportions of the original graphic prism design of the
1973 album cover. It has typical leading of course to hold the separate
bits of different coloured glass adjacent. The prism itself is made of
2 layers of flash glass, and we have added a border of sparkle glass to
round it off in true stained glass style, with a little extra blue for
cropping safety in finished a/w. There is no black stained glass as
such, at least not that one can see through. Since transparency is an
essential quality of glass I decide to make what was black in the
original design a kind of deep purpley/blue in the new window. Due to a
mixture of paranoia and prudence we actually had 2 different windows
made by 2 different companies, one used on the front cover and one used
on the inlay. This second window is actually fashioned in a quite
different manner using painted or fired glass panels.
The idea derived from a
sense of purity in the sound quality, being 5.1 surround sound,
assiduously remixed by James Guthrie from original tapes retrieved from
the vaults of the legendary Abbey Rd studios in London. The making of
the stained glass visually speaking felt equivalent to the SACD
procedure for reproducing sound, doing for the eyes what SACD might do
for the ears. The glass window, which obviously admits light to pass,
also seemed a neat and appropriate vehicle for expressing something
about light which is passing through glass, namely a prism. It is a
'light' or window type thing about an aspect of light. The medium is
also the message, so to speak. The stained glass window is 'twice'
light or extra light, as SACD is extra sound - cannot get any purer, or
any better, or any more itself, if you follow my drift. There was also
a desire to be the same but different, such that the design was clearly
DSoM, still the recognisable prism design, but was different and hence
new, in the same way as 5.1 is the same DSoM music but different and
therefore 'new.'
The photography turned out
to be more awkward than expected because each time one altered the
circumstances, interior or exterior, the kind or position of the sun or
lights, or the reflections in the glass, or even what was seen through
the glass, it dramatically altered the end result. The final preference
was for an exterior location with a mixed background of trees and
buildings with the noonday sun shining directly and appropriately
through the top of the prism. One feature not entirely anticipated was
the seeing of 3 levels of activity in the window ie what was in front
(the reflections), what was behind (objects other side seen through the
glass), and what was within, like bubbles ripples and imperfections
found in the texture of the glass itself, more visible in stained than
ordinary glass. And 3 of course is the favoured the number, because
this is the 30th anniverary and because March is the 3rd month of the
3rd year of the 3rd millenium and because the beloved prism is a 3
sided figure. And so in the booklet we decide to mark the occasion with
a host of visual bits - 30 bits for the 30th - 30 Darkside images
previously deployed for the most part in DSoM packaging over the years.
Some pieces well known and some more obscure, perhaps never seen
before; some clearly sourced others not quite so clear, some formal,
others of a more humorous nature... or so we hoped. This not so
profound exercise posed a slight logistical problem of arrangement in a
booklet made in multiples of 4 ie 4 page increments. I leave you, dear
reader, to spot the formula."
Finally, here are a couple of
pictures of the cover - the proposed, interim cover, and the final
version, a photograph of the window itself:
Interim design ---- Final design
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