Most Pink Floyd album covers came from Hipgnosis, the London studio run by Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey “Po” Powell, or from Thorgerson working alone after it closed: 11 of the band’s 15 studio albums. The designers explained the most famous images themselves: the Dark Side of the Moon prism honored the band’s light show, and the burning businessman on Wish You Were Here plays on “getting burned,” slang of the time for being ripped off. The pig over Battersea Power Station on Animals was Roger Waters’ idea, for an album that recasts mid-1970s Britain as dogs, pigs and sheep.
Who designed Pink Floyd’s album covers
Hipgnosis made nine covers, from A Saucerful of Secrets (1968) to Animals (1977). Thorgerson had gone to school in Cambridge with Syd Barrett and Waters, and Powell met him in the same town; the new studio earned 110 pounds from its first Floyd job, the band’s archive records. After Hipgnosis split in the early 1980s, Thorgerson designed A Momentary Lapse of Reason (1987) and The Division Bell (1994) under his own name. Since his death in April 2013, Powell has been the band’s creative director.
The other four: Vic Singh photographed the debut, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (1967). Waters devised The Wall (1979), drawn by Gerald Scarfe, and The Final Cut (1983), shot by Willie Christie. The Endless River (2014) rests on a concept by Ahmed Emad Eldin, an Egyptian teenager Powell discovered online, rebuilt by the design firm Stylorouge.
Pink Floyd album covers explained, album by album
Years and credits come from the band’s album pages and the V&A’s records.
| Album | Year | What the cover shows | Who made it | What its makers said |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Piper at the Gates of Dawn | 1967 | The band, multiplied by a prism lens | Vic Singh (photo); Syd Barrett (back) | An image to suit the music (Singh) |
| A Saucerful of Secrets | 1968 | A psychedelic collage around an infrared band photo | Hipgnosis | Shared interests: comics, alchemy, astrology (Powell) |
| More | 1969 | A recolored film still of figures by a windmill | Hipgnosis | A film still; see below |
| Ummagumma | 1969 | The band in a room, repeated in a picture on the wall | Hipgnosis | Thorgerson called it “a great design” |
| Atom Heart Mother | 1970 | A cow in a field, with no words | Hipgnosis | A deliberate “non-cover” (Thorgerson) |
| Meddle | 1971 | An ear underwater, with ripples | Hipgnosis; Bob Dowling (photo) | Ripples as sound waves (Shine On box set) |
| Obscured by Clouds | 1972 | A blurred film still of a man in a tree | Hipgnosis | Blur like early Floyd bubble slides (Thorgerson) |
| The Dark Side of the Moon | 1973 | A prism splitting white light into colors | Hipgnosis; George Hardie (artwork) | The band’s light show (Thorgerson) |
| Wish You Were Here | 1975 | Two businessmen shaking hands, one on fire | Hipgnosis; George Hardie (sticker) | Getting “burnt” in business; absence (Powell) |
| Animals | 1977 | A pig floating over Battersea Power Station | Roger Waters (idea); Hipgnosis | Waters’ reaction to mid-1970s Britain (band’s site) |
| The Wall | 1979 | A plain white brick wall | Roger Waters (idea); Gerald Scarfe | Each brick is a hurt in Pink’s life (band’s site) |
| The Final Cut | 1983 | A poppy and war medal ribbons | Roger Waters (idea); Willie Christie (photos) | Anti-war; a tribute to Waters’ father (band’s site) |
| A Momentary Lapse of Reason | 1987 | Hundreds of hospital beds on a beach | Storm Thorgerson; Robert Dowling (photo) | From the lyric “visions of an empty bed” (Thorgerson) |
| The Division Bell | 1994 | Two giant metal heads facing each other | Storm Thorgerson | Communication (band’s site); a third face, Syd Barrett’s (Thorgerson) |
| The Endless River | 2014 | A man punting a boat over clouds toward the sun | Ahmed Emad Eldin (concept); Stylorouge; Aubrey Powell | Powell called it “enigmatic and open to interpretation” |
The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (1967)
Barrett, Mason, Waters and Wright appear in boutique clothes, faces splintered into overlapping copies; it is one of only three studio covers that show the band. George Harrison’s gift to the photographer, Vic Singh, did the splintering: a prism lens. Barrett drew the back cover himself. The point, in the V&A’s account, was an image to complement the music, and the multiplied faces helped give the group an otherworldly air.
A Saucerful of Secrets (1968)
Planets, bottles and comic-book fragments swirl around a small window holding the band. That small photo is a compromise. Powell shot it in infrared on Hampstead Heath because EMI insisted the group appear and the band wanted no photo of themselves on the cover; Hipgnosis, on its first Floyd commission, then buried it in a hand-tinted collage assembled in the Royal College of Art darkroom. Powell’s own ingredients list: astrology, flying saucers, alchemy and Marvel’s Doctor Strange, whose panel comes from Strange Tales #158, drawn by Marie Severin.
More (1969)
Silhouetted figures play beside a windmill under a hot orange sky, above a foreground turned a deep, unreal blue. It is a frame from More, the first of two Barbet Schroeder films the band scored, recolored by Hipgnosis. The film itself is a story of hippies and heroin on Ibiza, and the trippy palette suits it, though that link is a reading: the band’s page for More credits Hipgnosis without explaining the image.
Ummagumma (1969)
David Gilmour sits on a stool up front while a framed picture on the wall shows the same room with the four men rearranged, and that picture holds another. The trick is called the Droste effect. Hipgnosis took the photo at Libby January’s house; she was Thorgerson’s girlfriend at the time. No later studio album puts the band on its front. Thorgerson’s own verdict, given in 2012, was about the design: “I always thought, and I still think, that Ummagumma is a great design.”
Atom Heart Mother (1970)
A black-and-white Friesian turns her head back toward the camera from a green field, and nothing on the front names the band or the record. Given a free hand by Waters, Powell recalls, Hipgnosis took the idea from a chat with their surrealist friend John Blake and photographed the cow near Potters Bar, north of London; the band’s archive names her Lulubelle III. Thorgerson wanted, in his words, a “non-cover.” The cow’s “seeming irrelevance” was the point, he said, because it made people ask, “Why a cow?”
Meddle (1971)
The front looks abstract, a swirl of blue and ochre, until it resolves into an ear under water with rings of ripples beside it; according to the band’s Shine On box set, those ripples are sound waves. Thorgerson’s first pitch, a close-up of a baboon’s backside, lost out when the band asked for an ear underwater, and Bob Dowling took the picture. Of all his Floyd sleeves, Thorgerson liked this one least, and he said the music outclassed the picture.
Obscured by Clouds (1972)
A man sits in a tree, barely visible through a haze of glowing blobs. The picture is a still from Schroeder’s La Vallée. Thorgerson’s account, from a book of his Floyd artwork quoted by Rolling Stone Italia, is that Hipgnosis put 35mm slides of the film through an old projector whose lenses were failing, and the bad optics swelled flecks of sun between the leaves into glowing spheres that recalled the bubble slides at early Floyd shows. Other retellings blame a slide that jammed in the projector. The band named the album Obscured by Clouds after a row with the company behind the film.
The Dark Side of the Moon (1973)
Against solid black, a narrow white beam hits a triangular prism and comes out as a rainbow. Richard Wright set the brief: no more surreal photos, something as clean as Black Magic chocolate packaging. The spark was a French physics textbook in which Powell spotted a glass paperweight throwing a rainbow; George Hardie then drew the finished art. Thorgerson told Rolling Stone in 2011 that the prism “related mostly to a light show” the band had never really celebrated, and that the triangle, “a symbol of thought and ambition,” was a subject of Waters’ lyrics. Fan theories, such as the prism standing for mental darkness, come from listeners rather than the designers.
Wish You Were Here (1975)
On a studio back lot, two businessmen shake hands while one of them burns. Powell set stuntman Ronnie Rondell alight on the Warner lot in Burbank 15 times; on the last take a gust drove the flames into his face. Shops received the record sealed in black plastic, with a single round sticker by George Hardie: two mechanical hands shaking, set in quadrants for the four elements, which pinkfloyd.com calls a nod to the band’s four members. Powell traces the idea to a phrase of the day, “Man, I’ve been burnt,” meaning ripped off, and the band’s site describes a handshake as “often an empty gesture.”
Animals (1977)
A pink pig floats among Battersea Power Station’s chimneys beneath a dark, churning sky. Waters supplied the idea, and Hipgnosis spent three December days in 1976 trying to photograph the 40-foot helium balloon. On the second it slipped its ropes with no marksman on hand; Heathrow stopped flights, Powell says, and it landed in Kent. The cover marries the third day’s pig to the first day’s sky, whose “Turner-esque” quality Powell admired. By the band’s account, the album was Waters’ answer to a Britain of strikes, inflation and unemployment, filtered through Orwell’s Animal Farm. Seeing the pig as a symbol of the powerful is a listener’s reading.
The Wall (1979)
White bricks, gray mortar and nothing else. Gerald Scarfe recalls that leaving it blank was Waters’ idea all along, that the grid “didn’t take long,” and that his hand-written lettering went on a separate sheet inside the shrink-wrap, so the wall stood empty once opened. Hipgnosis was out. By Powell’s account, Thorgerson and Waters were already at odds, and Hipgnosis’s 1978 book, Walk Away René, sealed it by never crediting Waters with the Animals pig. The album’s concept dates from the 1977 Animals tour, when a disillusioned Waters imagined a wall between band and audience; in the finished story, the band’s site explains, each brick is something that has hurt the rock star Pink.
The Final Cut (1983)
Four medal ribbons from the Second World War, one of them the purple-and-white Distinguished Flying Cross, sit low on a dark lapel, with a red remembrance poppy pinned above. The photographs are by Willie Christie, Waters’ brother-in-law and a Vogue photographer, who shot them in November 1982 with prop poppies because real ones wilt; Waters ran the design. The band’s site describes an anti-war album that doubles as a tribute to Waters’ father and others who gave their lives. The rear photo is a dig at Alan Parker, director of The Wall film: Christie says the blade in the officer’s back, together with the film canister under his arm, meant Parker had stabbed Waters in the back.
A Momentary Lapse of Reason (1987)
Hundreds of metal-framed hospital beds snake down a beach toward the sea, one occupied by a man sitting alone. The beds were real: Thorgerson’s crew set them out on Saunton Sands, a North Devon beach, in July 1987, about 500 by Powell’s count, for photographer Robert Dowling. Thorgerson’s own notes trace it to a lyric in “Yet Another Movie,” “visions of an empty bed,” imagined as beds winding off like a riverbed. He thought the sight matched the album’s name: “an act of madness, a momentary lapse of reason at the very least.”
The Division Bell (1994)
Across a flat field, two huge metal heads meet in profile, Ely Cathedral tiny on the horizon between their mouths. Thorgerson worked out the heads with the artist Keith Breeden and had John Robertson build them, at a size the V&A compares to a double-decker bus. Lights set in the gap between the two mouths signal speech, the V&A points out, on an album about communication. Thorgerson also saw a third face: “The single eyes of the two faces looking at each other become the two eyes of a single face looking at you, the viewer.” In Taken by Storm he named that absent face as Syd Barrett’s.
The Endless River (2014)
A young man punts a narrow boat over a sea of cloud toward a low sun. Powell found the original on the portfolio site Behance after Thorgerson’s death; its maker, Ahmed Emad Eldin, was an Egyptian student of 18, and Stylorouge produced the final sleeve from it. Eldin said it came from thinking about “the intersection of life, nature, and what is beyond the world,” and Powell called it “enigmatic and open to interpretation.” The mostly instrumental album was billed as a tribute to keyboardist Richard Wright, who had died in 2008.
Why did Pink Floyd change their album covers?
On September 9, 2025, three days before Wish You Were Here turned 50, the artwork vanished from every Pink Floyd album on Spotify, Deezer and other streaming apps, and from the band’s social accounts. In its place sat a black tile, styled like shrink-wrap, with a line of white text describing the missing cover; the one for Wish You Were Here read “Two men in suits shaking hands one man is on fire.” The band offered no explanation when the tiles appeared, but the 1975 LP had reached shops sealed in black plastic, and coverage at the time took the tiles as a nod to it. On September 12 the band announced Wish You Were Here 50, released December 12, 2025.
Reissues have also changed covers outright. For A Momentary Lapse of Reason: Remixed & Updated (2021), the 2019 remix released on its own, Powell picked another transparency from the 1987 beach shoot, with the tide flooding under the beds, and, taking his cue from the small microlight in the original, photographed one himself and placed it up front. The 2018 remix of Animals, issued in 2022, shows the half-rebuilt power station among construction cranes, photographed by Rupert Truman, with a pig added; Waters approved it. A third new cover followed in 2024, on the Dolby Atmos edition of Animals: the converted power station, finished and lit by projections, in a design by Powell and Peter Curzon of StormStudios.
Thorgerson’s approach
Thorgerson’s medium was the staged photograph, and he conceded he was no draftsman: “I like photography because it is a reality medium, unlike drawing which is unreal. I like to mess with reality…to bend reality.” Staging things for real mattered because, as he put it, “the reality has its own attributes.” He aimed for ambiguity, “You know what it is, but not why it is,” and called the faceless desert salesman on Wish You Were Here a deliberate homage to René Magritte.
Real objects sit behind the cow, the burning stuntman, the Saunton Sands beds and the Division Bell heads. There are exceptions: George Hardie drew the Dark Side prism, the Animals pig was combined with a sky shot on another day, and Thorgerson added the singed corner on the Wish You Were Here photo, a touch Powell says he would have left out. His later company, StormStudios, made artwork for Muse and Biffy Clyro.
Where to see the original artwork
The V&A in London billed Pink Floyd: Their Mortal Remains as the band’s first international retrospective and ran it from May 13 to October 15, 2017. It brought in the real Division Bell heads and a recreation of the knifed soldier from The Final Cut, then toured, reaching Los Angeles in 2021 and Montreal in 2022. Between exhibitions, the official record is pinkfloyd.com, where each studio album’s page lists its artwork credits.
Frequently asked questions
Who designed the Dark Side of the Moon cover?
Hipgnosis, the studio of Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell, designed it to a brief from keyboardist Richard Wright, who wanted a single stylish image. Their regular collaborator George Hardie drew the final art.
What does the Wish You Were Here cover mean?
Powell says two themes drove it: absence, and a record industry the band found insincere. The burning man has been “burnt,” or ripped off, in a handshake deal, the salesman on the back is invisible inside his suit, and the diver who leaves no ripples stands for absence.
Why is there a cow on Atom Heart Mother?
Because it was so ordinary. Thorgerson wanted a “non-cover,” seemingly unrelated to the music, and the cow’s apparent irrelevance made people ask why it was there.
Was the Animals pig real?
Yes. Hipgnosis flew a 40-foot helium pig over Battersea Power Station in December 1976, and it escaped on day two. What you see joins two days, though: the pig was photographed on the third, the power station on the first.
Why are Pink Floyd’s album covers black on Spotify?
In September 2025, days before Wish You Were Here turned 50, every Pink Floyd album on streaming apps lost its artwork to a black square carrying a short white description of the original cover. The band gave no reason when the squares appeared; music press and fans tied them to the black plastic that hid the 1975 sleeve in shops.
Sources
- Pink Floyd: official album pages, such as Wish You Were Here and Wish You Were Here 50; archive Storm Thorgerson biography and timelines for 1968, 1970 and 1976
- V&A: The graphic identity of Pink Floyd; Their Mortal Remains; records for Meddle and A Momentary Lapse of Reason
- Rolling Stone: Thorgerson interview (2011); Powell on 15 covers (2017)
- The Conversation: Dark Side at 50 (2023)
- Louder: black sleeves and Wish You Were Here 50 (2025); Wish You Were Here artwork; Powell interview; Scarfe on The Wall; The Final Cut; Final Cut facts; Meddle; Atom Heart Mother; film soundtracks; Endless River artwork (2014)
- Ultimate Classic Rock: Momentary Lapse cover update (2021); Endless River artist (2014)
- Thorgerson’s annotations at Hypergallery; Genesis Publications, The Division Bell; Rock Archive, Atom Heart Mother at 50
- Planet Rock, heads at the V&A (2017) and Animals in Dolby Atmos (2024); Arsenal Contemporary Art, Montreal exhibition
- Rolling Stone Italia, Obscured by Clouds cover (in Italian); Far Out, Obscured by Clouds at 50
- Den of Geek, Doctor Strange and Pink Floyd; Classic Rock History, ten Floyd covers; Wikimetal, streaming covers (2025); Distractify, the blacked-out Spotify art (2025)
Lead photo: Battersea Power Station in London, the building on the cover of Pink Floyd's Animals (1977). Photo: Gaetan Lee, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons (cropped).
