Documentary film “Squaring the Circle: The Story of Hipgnonsis” presents the story of one British album art design studio which gave us some of the most iconic album covers of all time. Although I do not know that much about those music albums during the 1960-70s, many of the album covers shown in the documentary look familiar or recognizable to me at least, and that says a lot about how strikingly artistic they are.

The two central figures of the documentary are Aubrey Powell and Storm Thorgerson, who incidentally died in 2013 but is often shown to us via archival photograph and video clips throughout the documentary. When they were young and wild during the early 1960s, Powell and Thorgenson happened to befriend the nascent members of Pink Floyd, and then they found themselves assigned to designing the cover of the latest album from the band, even though they did not have much career or experience for that job at that time.

Nevertheless, as two young men full of artistic instinct and talent, Powell and Thorgerson decided to give a try on this challenging assignment, and the result was much more successful than they or the band could imagine. Following the ongoing psychedelic trend during the 1960s, they went all the way for bold surreal design, and they could actually get away with their unorthodox album cover design mainly because Pink Floyd was merely regarded as a minor pop band in UK around that time.

As the band gradually rose with more fame and popularity, Powell and Thorgerson got more albums to work on while also establishing their little company. On Thorgerson’s little inspired suggestion, he and Powell decided to name it “Hipgnosis” for making their company look a bit cooler on the surface, and their company soon began to draw many other musicians and bands besides Pink Floyd, who remained their No.1 client as before.

One of the biggest clients of Hipgnosis was Paul McCartney, who certainly has some interesting things to tell us as reminiscing about his collaborations with Powell and Thorgerson. Once he came with an idea to be developed for the cover of his new album, Powell and Thorgerson enthusiastically went all the way for getting what they and McCartney wanted, and there is an amusing episode about when Powell had to go to the top of one big snowy mountain just for getting a right photograph which would be the centerpiece of the cover design of McCartney’s latest album.

In case of Peter Gabriel, Powell vividly remembers how he and Thorgerson managed to shoot the photograph of Gabriel and then include it in the design of Gabriel’s latest album cover. Although Gabriel was often awkward in front of Powell’s camera, Thorgerson found a brilliant solution which would make the result all the more impressive, and Gabriel also willingly demonstrated a little private prank of his in front of the camera.

Whey they did the album design for Pink Floyd’s “The Dark Side of the Moon”. Powell and Thorgerson simply included the drawing of a prism effect in the black background. While it may look too simple at first, the result is undeniably memorable to say the least, and the documentary also shows us a bit about how influential this impressive album cover design has been for next several decades.

As bouncing after one memorable album cover design after another for more amusement and enlightenment for us, the documentary also pays some attention to how Powell and Thorgerson could complement each other despite their considerable personality difference. While Thorgerson was the one usually going wilder and bolder for any kind of spontaneous inspiration, Powell was the one who often keeping them on the ground, and that certainly made them into an almost perfect artistic duo during their prime period during the 1970s.

However, there also came burden and pressure as they had more and more success during next several years. While they surely enjoyed the taste of success, Powell and Thorgenson did not feel that comfortable with how they were pushed toward more success, and that naturally put more strain on their friendship/partnership at times.

As entering the 1980s, they came to see themselves and their company becoming less trendy than before. Like Pink Floyd was pushed back by new emerging rock bands such as Sex Pistols during that time, the works of Hipgnosis became less relevant as the era of music video and CD began, and Thorgerson and Powell eventually decided to move onto whatever might come next for them after shutting down their company, though what they tried to do next unfortunately led to the permanent end of their relationship.

In conclusion, “Squaring the Circle: The Story of Hipgnosis”, which belatedly comes to South Korea in this week, is engaging enough for recommendation, and director Anton Corbijn, who has been relatively less prominent after “A Most Wanted Man” (2014), handles its main subject with enough care and respect. It could show and tell more in my humble opinion, but the overall result is fairly satisfying, and you will appreciate more of the considerable artistic achievement and influence of Hipgnosis and those talented people behind it.