Storm Thorgerson was a British graphic designer known for his memorable album cover designs for rock bands over many years. He had an exhibition in 2010 that showed his design process, which involved 6 stages: discussing ideas with the band (brief), developing rough concepts, creating prototypes (tests), conducting photo shoots, selecting the best photos (editing), and finalizing the design (artwork). His process ensured the album covers properly represented the bands and satisfied both artistic and commercial goals.

1. Storm Thorgerson
By George Merry

2. Introduction
 Storm Thorgerson was a British graphic designer who was well-known for his
designs of memorable album covers, especially for rock bands and artists
including; Muse, Biffy Clyro and Led Zeppelin which represents his credibility
over a number of years.
 He also had an exhibition of his artwork for albums and singles shown in the
East London idea generation gallery in 2010 that underlined the ingenious
methods, this included a 6 step process of a brief, roughs, tests, shoot,
editing and artwork.

3. 6 Stage Process – Brief
 This is obviously an early stage of the process and mainly involves simply
listening to the music/song, reading into the lyrics and discussing the ideas
with the band to represent their style or image successfully, so basically put
this stage is a brain storm of ideas.

4. 6 Stage Process – The Roughs’
 This is essentially a “Rough” copy/idea in a more creative and innovative
meeting with the client, including discussions and scribbling's in attempt to
become decisive in the artwork design that satisfies both parties, in which the
favourite basic designs/themes developed and progressed into more
comprehensive graphics.

5. 6 Stage Process – Tests
 This is when one of the “roughs” have been decided upon as well as the
budget, the designer, Storm Thorgerson can create a One-off prototype to
ensure that the idea and theme works well for the band and their target
audience, this stage could potentially include the production of scaled models
and if it all works then the final models are assembled.

6. 6 Stage Process – Shoot
 This part is the photo shoot once a location has been examined and agreed
upon, in some cases models are made and positioned along with voluntary
help depending on the complexity of the shoot, once everything is ready a
variety of photos can be taken from different angles and different lighting
due to weather conditions and filters etc.

7. 6 Stage Process – Editing
 This stage is used to select the highest quality photo from the shoot for the
album cover, the amount of time that this takes will vary due to the varied
amount of photos that are required to be compared with each other.

8. 6 Stage Process – Artwork
 This is the final stage once the right shot has been chosen for the design and
is being touched up through the final editing to ensure the highest quality of
design for the band, once this is done the final product is produced.

9. Examples of Storm Thorgerson’s work