Pink Floyd
The Later Years
Art direction
Challenge:
Conceptualize and design an album cover for one of the world’s most influential rock bands, Pink Floyd.
For the band's final release, The Later Years is a massive 18-disc box set concentrating with unreleased material created by David Gilmour, Nick Mason and Richard Wright over the last thirty years. To honor their iconic visual history the cover required a suitably surreal solution.
The contents of the box set
Solution:
A single figure walks into the distance, daliesque lamp posts melt as they pass, bowing to the band’s legacy.
Working with Aubrey Powell (Studio Hipgnosis) we briefed photographer, Rupert Truman, to capture outstretched roads and wide-open plains of the Californian desert. Production company, Happy Finish, helped sculpt the contorting lamps and composite the final scene.
On the back cover the final lyrics of each song within the box set slowly sink into a black hole.
Studio: Johnson Banks
Client: Pink Floyd
Designers: Beth Johnson Alice Tosey
Creative Directors: Aubrey Powell (Hipgnosis) and Michael Johnson
Photographer: Rupert Truman
Retouching and CGI: Happy Finish