Style combination · Contrasts

Hipgnosis Photographic Concept Sleeve × Post-Punk Record Sleeve

The generation that made it look dated: post-punk designers quoted one found image and coded or shrank the type, where Hipgnosis paid for elaborate location shoots and darkroom work. Choose between quoting a picture and staging one.

From the research on Hipgnosis Photographic Concept Sleeve

Mix them and make something Hipgnosis Photographic Concept Sleeve Post-Punk Record Sleeve

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Hipgnosis Photographic Concept Sleeve, their arrangement from Hipgnosis Photographic Concept Sleeve, the finish from Post-Punk Record Sleeve. Not a real work, and not an image of either style.

What each style brings

Each part of the design comes from the style with the stronger say in it, and each style gives at least two.

Hipgnosis Photographic Concept Sleeve Post-Punk Record Sleeve (Stiff, Factory, 4AD)

Type from Post-Punk Record Sleeve: Grotesque & neo-grotesque
All caps
Colour from Hipgnosis Photographic Concept Sleeve: Analogous harmony
Gradients
Form from Hipgnosis Photographic Concept Sleeve: Naturalistic depiction
Ornament-free
Composition from Hipgnosis Photographic Concept Sleeve: Full bleed
Single focal point
Surface from Post-Punk Record Sleeve: Grain & noise
Flat

The type

Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.

Display · Post-Punk Record Sleeve

Wow.

Syne; Post-Punk Record Sleeve used Peter Saville's colour-coded alphabet, one coloured block per letter, decoded by a wheel on the back of Power, Corruption & Lies (1983) and used for the title of Blue Monday and Small, ordered sans-serif capitals in the manner of Jan Tschichold's New Typography, which Saville took as his model from the 1978 Factory poster onwards

Text · Hipgnosis Photographic Concept Sleeve

The sleeves the London studio Hipgnosis made for Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Genesis, Peter Gabriel, 10cc and others from 1968 to 1983. The front is rarely a band portrait or a title: it is a staged photograph of an impossible or deadpan event in a real place, often a pun on the title or a lyric, finished by hand in the darkroom with multiple printing, tinting and cut-and-paste long before Photoshop. George Hardie's crisp pen-and-ink graphics, stickers and inner sleeves carry what lettering there is. Thorgerson carried the idiom on after 1983, as on The Division Bell (1994).

Inter; Hipgnosis Photographic Concept Sleeve used Technical pen-and-ink logo and Rubber-stamped title on brown paper

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Hipgnosis Photographic Concept Sleeve, with a counter-accent from Post-Punk Record Sleeve. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Hipgnosis Photographic Concept Sleeve Post-Punk Record Sleeve (Stiff, Factory, 4AD)

#141414 ground · 36%
#eee8dc ink · 14%
#d8642c accent · 18%
#f2c230 accent · 14%
#c9a46b accent · 10%
#b8963e accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #141414;
  --ink: #eee8dc;
  --accent-1: #d8642c;
  --accent-2: #f2c230;
  --accent-3: #c9a46b;
  --accent-4: #b8963e;
  --font-display: "Syne", sans-serif;
  --font-text: "Inter", sans-serif;
}

Use it with care

Hipgnosis Photographic Concept Sleeve: The sleeves, their photographs and the Dark Side of the Moon prism are in copyright and the archive is held privately by Aubrey Powell: stage and photograph your own pun rather than recreating a Hipgnosis image, and never present a design as a Hipgnosis, Pink Floyd or Led Zeppelin cover. Some sleeves rest on nudity, including two young children on Houses of the Holy, or on jokes Thorgerson himself later called 'not exactly the most politically correct' (Lovedrive) and 'quite sexist' (Technical Ecstasy): borrow the staging and the wit, not those subjects.

Post-Punk Record Sleeve (Stiff, Factory, 4AD): The sleeves are in copyright, and several of their quoted images have their own authors, such as Harold Craft's pulsar plot and Bernard Pierre Wolff's photograph of the Appiani tomb: make a new quotation from a public-domain or licensed source rather than copying a Factory, Stiff or 4AD cover or its colour code.

The two styles

An enormous, roughly spherical, moss-covered boulder floats above a rocky hillside overlooking a lake, fields and distant mountains beneath a blue sky. Small handwritten lettering in the upper left reads “Higher Ground,” with an underline.

1968–1983 · Western Europe Hipgnosis Photographic Concept Sleeve The sleeves the London studio Hipgnosis made for Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Genesis, Peter Gabriel, 10cc and others from 1968 to 1983. The front is rarely a band portrait or a title: it is a staged photograph of an impossible or deadpan event in a real place, often a pun on the title or a lyric, finished by hand in the darkroom with multiple printing, tinting and cut-and-paste long before Photoshop. George Hardie's crisp pen-and-ink graphics, stickers and inner sleeves carry what lettering there is. Thorgerson carried the idiom on after 1983, as on The Division Bell (1994). 1977–1990 · Western Europe Post-Punk Record Sleeve (Stiff, Factory, 4AD) The record sleeves that British art-school designers made after punk, for independent labels and some majors: Barney Bubbles at Stiff, Malcolm Garrett for Buzzcocks, Peter Saville at Factory and 23 Envelope at 4AD. Instead of xerox collage, a sleeve became an art-directed object: one quoted or treated image (a pulsar plot, a Fantin-Latour still life, a Futurist poster, a misty photograph) on a quiet field or edge to edge, the band's name shrunk, coded or left off, riddles and catalogue numbers in its place, printed offset on textured, silver, gold or die-cut stock.