Last week, Fisher filed a motion in federal court to intervene in the case in order to claim both authorship and ownership of the smiley face, which he says was originally created as a favor to Nirvana’s management in 1991. Reimagining ‘Wildflowers,’ Tom Petty’s haunted triumph about a troubled marriageįamily and collaborators discuss the making of Tom Petty’s 1994 solo album ‘Wildflowers,’ which is being reissued as a box set with dozens of unreleased tracks. The only problem, according to former Geffen Records art director Robert Fisher, who designed the covers to most of Nirvana’s releases since 1991 (including the 2015 box set “Montage of Heck”), is that the late bandleader Cobain didn’t create the smiley. Lawyers for the band declared full ownership of the image, noting that it was “created by Kurt Cobain in about 1991 and registered for copyright in 1993.” The scraggly line drawing dates to Nirvana’s earliest days on Geffen Records subsidiary DGC, and has been a distinctive logo for the band ever since, appearing on nearly three decades’ worth of T-shirts, posters, key chains, hats, socks, coffee mugs, iPhone cases and now, in time for our pandemic, face masks.Ī lawsuit filed in December 2018 in federal court by Nirvana LLC followed the “intentional copy” of the smiley (with minor alterations) by Marc Jacobs International on clothing in a collection called Bootleg Redux Grunge. An ongoing legal battle between grunge icons Nirvana and fashion designer Marc Jacobs revolves around a blissed-out smiley face known to rock fans around the world - recognizable for its crooked grin, X’s for eyes and tongue hanging out.

Roxy music album cover images