Pink Floyd’s ‘Dark Side Of The Moon’ Gets Makeover By Pentagram To Mark 50 Years

In a blink of an eye, it’s been half a century since one of the most recognizable album covers first sat on shelves, capturing the zeitgeist of the 70s in a single image. Now, 50 years on, design agency Pentagram is giving Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon a makeover for modern times.

With over 45 million copies sold worldwide since its release in 1973, there’s no doubt the band’s eighth studio album is iconic. Its original sleeve was the brainchild of Hipgnosis’ co-founder Storm Thorgerson, using illustrations by George Hardie.

Forming a big part of rock music’s visual history, the cover features a single ray of light entering a triangular prism, where it breaks into a rainbow which continues onto the back before disappearing into an inverted triangle.

Interestingly, as Fast Company pointed out, there is no mention of the band anywhere on the cover apart from a small Quadraphonic emblem on the bottom right corner, which signifies that the album has been mastered in four-channel surround sound.

To commemorate five decades of the famed album, Pentagram partners Harry Pearce and Jon Marshall have redesigned Pink Floyd’s deluxe collectors’ edition box set, featuring photographs taken by Jill Furmanovsky, Storm Thorgerson, and Aubrey ‘Po’ Powell.

According to the firm, the limited-edition box set comes with a CD and gatefold vinyl of the remastered studio album, complete with an accompanying Blu-Ray and DVD of the original 5.1 mix and remastered stereo versions.

That’s not all. The set even includes an additional Blu-Ray disc of Atmos mix, together with a CD and LP of the band’s live concert at Wembley Empire Pool in 1974, a 160-page hardback photo book, a music book, replica 7” singles, and special memorabilia.

As Pearce explained, the redesigned cover harks back on the instantly recognizable prism, which then led him to consider the idea of a nested sarcophagus. Creating a sense of “discovery,” the box opens to reveal layers of collectibles, with the vinyl placed in a gold box at the center.

Different materials were used for each layer of the boxes, which begin as completely black before elements of gold are added, eventually culminating in the final gold box that holds Pink Floyd’s original and new live albums.

“Nesting several boxes together was technically challenging as multiple elements were interconnected and needed to fit together precisely. We did not want to use foam or plastic inserts and solved the design through cardboard engineering,” remarked Marshall.

To design the live album, Pentagram made use of Hipgnosis’s original marked-up artwork as the agency felt it would be “wholly wrong” to create a new concept. Plus, the designers wanted to honor the original version and complement it instead of changing it completely.

Subtle references to pyramids appear throughout the box set, such as in the angled cuts on the folder for the poster. Pearce and Marshall had thought of creating CD cases that could fold into actual pyramids but went on to rule out that idea, as with one involving an actual glass prism.

Fans who purchase the Official Pink Floyd 50th Anniversary box set will receive a hardback, album-sized book designed by the duo, filled with rare and unseen images of the band, including from behind-the-scenes of the tours from 1972 to 1975 and original album roughs and artwork.

[via Fast Company and Pentagram, images via Pentagram]