Storm Thorgerson

Storm Thorgerson was a British graphic designer whose comic, disturbing, semi-surreal images for the covers of albums helped illustrate the era of psychedelic rock. Storm Elvin Thorgerson was born on Feb. 28, 1944, in Potters Bar, north of London, and grew up mostly in Cambridge, where he and three of the early members of Pink Floyd — Syd Barrett, Roger Waters and David Gilmour — knew one another as teenagers. What was perhaps his best-known image was something of an anomaly. For the 1973 Pink Floyd album, “The Dark Side of the Moon,” prompted by a request from a band member for something “graphic, cool and deliberate,” he created the suggestion of a triangular prism against a black background, an image of brilliant light refraction that became a symbolic reference to the band. Over 40 years, Mr. Thorgerson, working with partners in two different companies, designed LP covers, and later CD covers, for Led Zeppelin, Genesis, the Cranberries, Styx, Phish and other bands, helping to push album design away from simply featuring pictures of the artists.