4 album covers in our archive
Led Zeppelin is featured in Behind the Covers' archive with 4 album covers spanning the 1970s and 1960s. Released across Swan Song Records and Atlantic Records labels, the artwork sits in the rock, blues, folk, metal tradition. Each cover is documented in our archive with design notes covering photography, graphic design, conceptual, typographic, collage, found photograph. Below you'll find the full story behind each Led Zeppelin cover — designers, photographers, label history, and the visual choices that defined the release.
Cover evolution
Peter Corriston spent weeks combing New York for the perfect tenement, then cropped out an entire floor so the buildings would fit a square sleeve. The windows of 96-98 St. Mark's Place became die-cut peepholes that could spell out a name and reveal everyone from Buzz Aldrin to Lee Harvey Oswald.
Two naked children climbing Ireland's Giant's Causeway at dawn, hand-colored in otherworldly hues. Hipgnosis created one of rock's most mystical and controversial covers through painstaking darkroom techniques that transformed volcanic basalt into an alien landscape.
A picture frame holding a stooped old man bears no band name, no title, nothing — just a record so confident it dared customers to recognize it. For fifty years everyone called the image a Victorian oil painting. In 2023, the truth turned out to be stranger, and far more human.
George Hardie transformed Sam Shere's iconic 1937 Hindenburg disaster photograph into a haunting stipple illustration using a technical pen, creating one of rock's most powerful visual statements for just £60.
