The Saucerfuol of Secrets album - What the hell went wrong ?

[pinksmile]

I have never seen this mentioned before but i have wondered for years - why does the name Pink Floyd on the front cover of the album appear to be off centre ? and even worse, what is with the letters y and d that are printed before the group name ? It all looks terrible and i cannot understand how Hipgnosis and Floyd let it go to print like that. Does anyone know ?

[Cowards]

Because it's groovy, man. pink floyd is clearly meant to wrap around the album cover, you can see the p and then the y d from the end, if that makes sense. I don't have a copy to hand (or at all) so I don't know what happens on the back cover, but that's what I be presuming yo.

[danielcaux]

Ooops! I was going to quote my post but instead ended up editing it ...and deleted it!

[J Ed]

it suggests the infinite, the microcosmic and the macrocosmic and all that stuff their lyrics and titles were evoking at that stage of their career
yes the implication is the word pinkfloyd repeats ad infinitum, as did the prism on Dark Side and the regressing windows on Ummagumma

not only is there a space between the y and the d, theres no space between pink and floyd .... as if pinkfloyd were a quantum unit onto itself, equal to in value to the isolated letters to either side ....
or else, as the other letters in the infinite series progress they become more abstracted, devoid of meaning,
or else they disappear into either entropy or the mists of perspective like the horizons behind the Mona Lisa
if I still smoked 'erb I'd tell you exactly what it means but Im keeping my brain squeaky clean and am a hardcore rationalist these days, so let me just suggest the iterpretation is up to the viewer

keep in mind this design was very early in Storms career, perhaps his first ever (he was a friend of syds and owes his whole career to that connection) so theres a very raw undisiciplined everythingexceptthekitchensink quality to the composition

[drafsack]

it suggests the infinite, the microcosmic and the macrocosmic and all that stuff their lyrics and titles were evoking at that stage of their career
yes the implication is the word pinkfloyd repeats ad infinitum, as did the prism on Dark Side and the regressing windows on Ummagumma

not only is there a space between the y and the d, theres no space between pink and floyd .... as if pinkfloyd were a quantum unit onto itself, equal to in value to the isolated letters to either side ....
or else, as the other letters in the infinite series progress they become more abstracted, devoid of meaning,
or else they disappear into either entropy or the mists of perspective like the horizons behind the Mona Lisa
if I still smoked 'erb I'd tell you exactly what it means but Im keeping my brain squeaky clean and am a hardcore rationalist these days, so let me just suggest the iterpretation is up to the viewer

keep in mind this design was very early in Storms career, perhaps his first ever (he was a friend of syds and owes his whole career to that connection) so theres a very raw undisiciplined everythingexceptthekitchensink quality to the composition

Heavy

[my breakfast.]

Storm made the cover as a collage on his floor, then photographed it, letters and all. Its not the mother of printing errors its just what Storm was up to back then. He cut up Dr. Strange comics and all sorts of esoteria to make the cover. Its in that book of his that I payed £30 fucking quid for.



Problem album cover.

[nosaj]

One of my all time favorite PF album covers...well, I went to art school, so what do I know...carry on you brilliant straight-thinking people.

[Stephen]

Surely Obscured By Clouds has to be the most disappointing cover.

[johnjohnstone]

I love this cover

ASOS was the first PF album that I ever heard, and I thought that the cover was mysterious and enigmatic, just like the music. I was hooked after that!

[pinksmile]

Yeah, i too like the cover. I am just saying that the writing of the Pink Floyd name looks shit with the lower case letters, no spacing the y and d apart from each other etc.

[malusienka]

This question is a little bit like asking why the Piper cover is so strange - you know, double Syd, triple Rick, something in the printing-house must have gone wrong

I don't know why you think it looks terrible - it's one of their best cover!

[J Ed]

after the next soundtrack album their covers wouldnt even feature the name at all, not till Roger left and they had to start proving they were still Pink Floyd
kind of cool then its getting abstracted just before they dispense with it altogether

[nosaj]

Quite possibly Storm and some friends were smoking a bit and said, Hey what if we screw with the text to make people ask these questions?...

[J Ed]

hey heres another record with the same problem!

these musicians are stoopid

[drafsack]

after the next soundtrack album their covers wouldnt even feature the name at all, not till Roger left and they had to start proving they were still Pink Floyd
kind of cool then its getting abstracted just before they dispense with it altogether

And wish you were here was going to be just the black shrink wrap and nothing else - the round lable was an addition on the record companies insistance