40th anniversary of the Dark Side of The Moon.

I know I'm over posting about the best album cover of all time again, but in the past weeks, the Dark Side of The Moon completed 40 years old! Yes! And the fantastic and genius designer Storm Thorgerson and the Pink Floyd official Facebook page, posted during couple of weeks other versions of the famous cover. Check the final result poster with all the pieces and some of them in details.

Check the album on the official Facebook page here: 

RIP Peter Christopherson

Photographer, music video director, musician and former partner at design company Hipgnosis with Storm Thorgerson, Peter Christopherson, sadly passed away on Wednesday (December 1) in his home in Bangkok, Thailand, aged 55.


As well he worked as freelance photographer and contributor, then promoted to an assistant to Hipgnosis design studio, then became partner. After he officially left the Hipgnosis he continued to act and he also did art direction for some cover from Peter Gabriel.

Another cover art that was credited to him was, Pink Floyd's Nice Pair. A compilation album by Pink Floyd, re-issuing their first two albums,The Piper at the Gates of Dawn and A Saucerful of Secrets, in a new gatefold sleeve.

Peter Christopherson, rest in peace and thank you for your contribution in cover artwork. 

The Artist Side Of The Moon

With hard work, much study and much reading I finally finished my thesis of semiotics analysis of Pink Floyd's album cover. I had the goal to proving that the album covers work in the same way as advertising, always has a reason and some kind of dimension of communication.

The communications dimensions can be divided into three types: affective, cognitive and connotative. The affective dimension is when someone has a predisposition to consumption of a particular object, for example: users of LSD in the '60s. They had an affinity with the psychedelic-style design, sharp colors, very colorful and lots of curves in the sources, which gave the consumer a purchase desire by the affinity he had with his lifestyle.

The connotative dimension, is about consumers to interact with the product. They want to enter the world of image, always wanting to discover the meaning of each element of design. Today, brands not only sell their quality, in the competition of the globalized worldm, quality no longer serves as a tool of persuasion. The big brands try to make the consumer come into your life style, they want the consumer likes the brands and feel like a member of the brand and lifestyle.

The other dimension is the cognitive. This aspect of communication is the tool that sells an ideology like propaganda or a sign of protest. Pink Floyd's Roger Waters era, has a phase that represents well this kind of dimension. Till the Wish You Were Here album to the Final Cut, this dimension has created a consumer desire for identification with the ideology of the band.

Pink Floyd used the anti-culture movement to criticize the capitalist world, the Cold War and even the Falklands War, to make their music a tool of protest. With a structuralist semiotic analysis of Roland Barthes, it is evident that each cover wanted to convey. Its connotation based on reading of Mind Over Matter, a book of Storm Thorgerson, shows what they wanted through the covers.

In a poster, press ad, the intention is always part of the dramatization of one idea through a copywirting, art direction and design and could not be different about the album covers. Storm Thorgerson, who made 90% of the album covers of the Pink Floyd, says that the cover is a selling tool, not as direct as an brand ad, but there is nothing different.