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The Velvet Underground & Nico album art

Contributed by Herb Lubalin Study Center on Jan 11th, 2015. Artwork published in .

1 Comment on “The Velvet Underground & Nico album art”

  1. Over at Daylight Fonts, Shin Oka published a post with correspondence he had with Craig Braun. According to Braun, he was the one who “came up with the idea of ​​a pink banana coming out of the sticker.”

    Wikipedia describes Braun’s role as follows:

    He designed his first major cover when MGM Records approached him to assist Andy Warhol with the removable banana peel featured on the cover of The Velvet Underground & Nico; with his adhesive experience, Braun developed the materials used to create the cover. Warhol then became something of a mentor to Braun in the late 1960s.

    In a 2018 article by Long Live Vinyl, Braun recalls:

    Andy wanted to take that banana painting and put it on a cover for the first Velvets album, but didn’t know how to best accomplish that, so I was quickly recruited by MGM Records. I developed a special pre-coated label stock with removable adhesive, so when the banana was “peeled”, the shocking-pink fruit was revealed! Andy and I became good friends, fast.

    I have added Braun’s name to the design credits (he’s not mentioned in the album) and used the opportunity to add more and bigger images, including such showing a close-up of the sticker and the pink banana underneath.

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