If you missed Storm Thorgerson's talk at Semi Permanent, you might find this presentation interesting - and not entirely dissimilar if you were present (though the flavour of this lecture is lettuce and cabbage, rather than kiwifruit).
I rather like how articulate he is about what seem like abstractions of thought - which refers nicely to another of the SP speakers, Adrian Shaughnessy, who said Designers need verbal skills as well as visual skills.You need to be able to explain your work. You need to be able to surpass the obvious rationale: 'because I like it… I have admired Thorgerson's work since I was in the fourth form at high school in (aherm!…) 1977, when I was beginning to obsess about 'graphic design' and fetishised the work of George Hardy (whose pre-Adobe Illustrator illustrations presaged a certain mechanical style of drawing). While the path from there to here has been circuitous (I failed to gain a place in design school, advertising was an accidental unplanned B) there is no doubt that the work of Hipgnosis made an indelible mark on me. It was both a tattoo on my psyche - that an imagined reality offered a very real pathway - and a drumbeat about the quality of execution of an idea - Thorgerson and his collaboators have always set an exacting standard. So it was nice to meet a childhood hero…jet-lagged, cantankerous and sometimes a little 'off' though he was. I still have the Hipgnosis book - Walk Away Rene stored somewhere - only used copies show up on Amazon. S'funny the things one hangs on to. Slideshow sampling from The GuardianUnofficial Hipnosis archive
