The Photo Designs Of Hipgnosis: The Goodbye Look

Selected by Peter Christopherson, Aubrey Powell and Storm Thorgerson

Designed by Neville Brody and Hipgnosis

Text by Storm Thorgerson

Edited by Nick Sedgwick

Publisher: Vermilion

Date 1982

128 pages

ISBN-10: 0091506417 / 978-0091506414

Back cover

Hipgnosis is...

Aubrey 'Po' Powell

Born 23 September 1946 in Sussex. Educated at King's School, Ely, Cambridgeshire, then London School of Film Technique. Worked as a blue-button clerk in Stock Exchange, bus conductor, waiter, on the dole, window dresser and assistant scenic designer in films and television. Currently producer for Green Back Films and director of APP, both spin-offs from Hipgnosis. Still living life to the full and becoming larger on all fronts as a result.

Peter Christopherson

Aged twenty-seven, 6 feet, short dark hair, brown eyes. Director of Psychic Television Ltd, a religious organization, and Green Back Films Ltd, an artistic and commercial organization. Partly educated, partly handsome, and partly hardworking. His whole is none the less greater than some of his parts. Still the youngest partner, even after all these years.

Storm Thorgerson

Born in 1944. Tortuous yet healthy youth in Potters Bar, Middlesex, and Whitely Bay, Northumberland. Educated at A. S. Neill's, Summerhill, Brunswick Primary, Cambridge, and Cambs High School. Various temporary and holiday employment before becoming a hard working full-time student for six years; BA Hons Leicester University, MA Royal College of Art (1966-69).

Stumbled upon Hipgnosis with Po in 1968 and had an immediate neural breakdown. Got shrunk, got sort of married, got a kid, got some more work, got unmarried, got upset, got a grip, got laid, got better.

Director of Green Back Films and STD, and occasionally Lumiere & Son.

Lives alone with his son, Bill, aged ten. Still keen on tennis, acupuncture and the deeper significance of life. Huh?

We would particularly like to thank the following studio assistants for their unbelievable devotion and unflagging enthusiasm during the design and production of all the work in this book:

Richard Draper Paul Maxon

Colin Chambers

Marcus Bradbury

Andrew Ellis Anthony Taylor

      About the book:

The Photo Designs of Hipgnosis: The Goodbye Look is a 128-page visual monograph originally published in 1982 by Vermilion. The book compiles the photographic and conceptual work of Hipgnosis, the legendary British design collective that revolutionized album cover art between the late 1960s and early 1980s.

The book offers a retrospective look at their pioneering techniques, which included complex photomontages, airbrushing, and multiple exposures, long before the existence of digital tools like Photoshop.

Published just a year before the group disbanded in 1983, it serves as a final catalog or "farewell" (hence the title The Goodbye Look) to their most prolific period. It includes iconic work created for bands such as Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Genesis, and 10cc, sometimes detailing the creative process behind surreal and conceptual images.