Pink Floyd’s “The Dark Side Of The Moon - Live At Wembley Empire Pool,” London, 1974 Record Cover

Pink Floyd’s “The Dark Side of the Moon - Live at Wembley Empire Pool,” record cover from 1974, is a crucial part of graphic design history, combining groundbreaking music exploration and innovative concepts for design. This cover was designed by Aubrey Powell and Storm Thorgerson. This record cover exemplifies a vital moment in musical and visual artistry at the time. 

The 1970s music industry faced many shifts in the ways it combined visual art with music. Pink Floyd, a vital part of the progressive rock movement, was known for their part in this shift through not only the ways they pushed boundaries with their music but also their album art. This version of “The Dark Side of the Moon” is a live album that is an extension of the original recorded album that’s known for its iconic cover art. When compared to the original album art, this cover showcases a behind-the-scenes look at the design process of making the original recorded cover art. It reveals Powell and Thorgerson’s original design concept of the prism motif sketched out with some notes about how the final design should be conceptualized. This not only reasserts the connection between this album cover design and the original “The Dark Side of the Moon” cover art while also showing a new outlook on the album due to the difference between the recorded album and this live album’s experience. 

The approach Powell and Thorgerson took to cover designing revolutionized the practice by taking a conceptual and photographic approach rather than traditional illustrative approaches. They found new distinct ways to design the visual representation of music through their concepts like the prism and spectrum of this particular album. This motif became synonymous with Pink Floyd’s music and it aligned with 70s movements of surrealism, minimalism, and conceptual arts.

“The Dark Side of the Moon - Live at Wembley Empire Pool,” record cover is a crucial part of design history because of the way intersects the musical and visual artistry of the time. It represents the innovative and conceptual designs of Aubrey Powell and Storm Thorgerson and the concept of an icon of Pink Floyd through a new lens.

Sources:

• “AUBREY POWELL.” Accessed November 1, 2023. http://aubreypowell.com/AUBREY_POWELL.html.
• Cotner, John Sidney. “Archetypes of Progressiveness in Rock, ca. 1966–1973.” ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2001. 
• Martin, Bill. Listening to the Future : The Time of Progressive Rock, 1968-1978. Chicago, Ill: Open Court, 1998.