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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Wendy Ide

Squaring the Circle (The Story of Hipgnosis) review – Anton Corbijn’s fascinating snapshot of rock art history

Three men standing in a graphic design studio looking at a large piece of card that says ARE YOU NORMAL
Designers Peter Christopherson, Aubrey Powell and Storm Thorgerson in Squaring the Circle (The Story of Hipgnosis). Photograph: Hipgnosis Ltd

Control director Anton Corbijn’s first documentary, Squaring the Circle (The Story of Hipgnosis), is a fascinating and suitably maverick snapshot of a richly creative moment in music history, told through a couple of disreputable hippies who designed some of the most iconic album covers of all time. The team behind the cover art for acts such as Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, 10cc and Paul McCartney, Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey “Po” Powell, AKA Hipgnosis (the name came from a piece of graffiti by Syd Barrett), operated in a happy Venn diagram intersection in which vast record company budgets overlapped with an equally generous supply of hallucinogenic drugs. The rest is rock history.

Watch a trailer for Squaring the Circle.
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