Squaring the Circle film review — the story of Hipgnosis, rock’s greatest cover act

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Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey “Po” Powell were art-school stoners who had hung out with members of Pink Floyd in Cambridge since the days when they were still called The Pink Floyd. In 1968 the band asked the pair to design a cover for their second album, A Saucerful of Secrets, and eventually Hipgnosis was born, a studio specialising in record sleeve design. Their client list grew to encompass Led Zeppelin, Peter Gabriel, Paul McCartney and Wings and many more and today they are remembered for creating some of rock’s most iconic covers.

Like the prism in the studio’s most famous design, Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon, Hipgnosis is an instrument that refracts many pop narratives in the new documentary Squaring the Circle. Their sleeves helped define several groups in the public’s imagination and several of those client-friends acknowledge that contribution with generosity and affection here.

Director Anton Corbijn, originally a band photographer himself, gets high-quality anecdotes out of the interviewees and there are enough scandals and spilled beans to distract from the fact that this is a pretty conventional talking-heads-and-archive-footage affair, albeit one shot in silvery black and white. The story of how, at huge expense, Hipgnosis came to fly a crew out to Hawaii to take a picture of a sheep on a chaise longue on a beach for 10cc’s Look Hear? is worth the price of admission alone.

★★★☆☆

In UK cinemas from July 14