Presence album cover

[solar]

Found this on Storm's Web site - www.stormthorgerson.com. I highly recommend checking that site out -- he did many iconic album covers of the 70s, including most of Pink Floyd's and HOTH, Presence and ITTOD for Zep.

On Presence's design:

Led Zeppelin! Christ, what was bigger than Led Zeppelin? The most powerful and notorious band in the galaxy. Musically, personally, managerially and mythically. So how the hell do you approach design for such a colossus? Well, firstly, with great trepidation, and then secondly with courtesy and diplomacy, deference at all times, and then with a strong desire to please and not upset nor disappoint. We needed something so powerful, so huge that it made you weak just to think of it. And what did we come up with... a little bitty black object sitting on an ordinary table surrounded by a rather ordinary family. An ordinary family? What's the power in that? But no ordinary setting this, and certainly no ordinary object. Perhaps it was a cosmic battery, or a spiritual relic or alien artifact, exposure to which seemed essential - it filled your life, it sustained you, it bathed you in mysterious emanations. It was vital for growing infants, for education, useful to science and financial institutions, handy for both leisure and sport, indispensable even to romance. It was central to everyday existence - utilitarian, religious and addictive. So powerful that back in those days everyone had one, so powerful that nowadays one didn't need one any longer, so pervasive that the memory alone would suffice, so powerful that it didn't actually need to be there, no depth cues nor shadows cast by the object, more a hole than a thing, an absence rather than a presence. So powerful that the mere suggestion was enough, like a secretly whispered word, like a radical idea or a desert wind, substantial but not needing substance, just like the band, their music and their reputation. Much to our surprise, and I think to their credit, they embraced it wholeheartedly, entitling the album after the image. I hope they love it still, as much as I do.