Physical Graffiti - Album Sleeve Design

Album Sleeve Design

The album's sleeve design features a photograph of a New York City tenement block, with interchanging window illustrations. The album designer, Peter Corriston, was looking for a building that was symmetrical with interesting details, that was not obstructed by other objects and would fit the square album cover. He said:

We walked around the city for a few weeks looking for the right building. I had come up a concept for the band based on the tenement, people living there and moving in and out. The original album featured the building with the windows cut out on the cover and various sleeves that could be placed under the cover, filling the windows with the album title, track information or liner notes.

The two five-story buildings photographed for the album cover are located at 96 and 98 St. Mark's Place in New York City. The original photograph underwent a number of tweaks to arrive at the final image. The fifth floor of the building had to be cropped out to fit the square album cover format. The buildings to the left and right were also changed to match the style of the double front. Tiles were added on the roof section along with more faces. Part of the top right railing balcony was left out for a whole window frame to be visible. The front cover is a daytime shot, while the back cover (above) was taken at night.

Mike Doud is listed as the cover artist on the inner sleeve, and either the concept or design or both were his. He passed away in the early 1990s, and this album design was one of his crowning achievements in a lifetime of design. In 1976 the album was nominated for a Grammy Award in the category of best album package. (Doud would later win a Grammy for best album cover of the year in 1978).

The buildings on the album cover were the same ones that Keith Richards and Mick Jagger were filmed in front of in The Rolling Stones music video "Waiting on a Friend". There was a used clothing store in the basement of 96 St. Mark's Place called Physical Graffiti. There is currently a shop called Physical Graffitea. The building has been profiled on the television show, Rock Junket.

The original album jacket for the LP album included four covers made up of two inners (for each disc), a middle insert cover and an outer cover. The inner covers depict various objects and people (including photos of Plant and Richard Cole in drag) on each window. The middle insert cover is white and details all the album track listings and recording information. The outer cover has die-cut windows on the building, so when the middle cover is wrapped around the inner covers and slid into the outer cover, the title of the album is shown on the front cover, spelling out the name "Physical Graffiti".