25 Facts About Craig Braun

Craig Braun was born on June 1,1939 and is an American actor and former graphic designer.

Famous for his album covers with Andy Warhol and Tom Wilkes, he and Wilkes won a Grammy in 1974 for Tommy, an award Braun had been nominated for twice previously.

Craig Braun is said to have transformed the medium of album covers from two-dimensional works to creative, interactive experiences during the golden age of vinyl.

Craig Braun was born in 1939 to a working-class family in Chicago.

Craig Braun became friends with Marshall Chess as children in Chicago; Chess became a record executive and the two would later work together.

Craig Braun, who socialized with artists and rock and roll musicians in his career, became addicted to cocaine, something he would recover from after being indicted for tax evasion in 1974, leading his work to dry up and giving a friend the chance to take him to an AA meeting in Los Angeles.

Craig Braun sent Tim to the Malcolm Gordon School boys' boarding school.

Tim Craig Braun was a producer of Good Morning America and later founded Craig Braun Production; Nicholas appeared on Good Morning America as a child and is an Emmy-nominated actor.

Craig Braun introduced Nick to acting and coached him through the Meisner technique "as though it was a sport".

Craig Braun began his design career in 1964, working as a die cutter and printer.

Craig Braun invented the "gimmick" of using stickers on album cover shrink wrap to promote them, and started a merchandising company for promotions in record stores.

Craig Braun moved into album cover design shortly afterwards, despite having no design experience, when he was approached by London Records USA to make an album cover for American distribution.

Craig Braun learned album design by going to large stores and looking at as many album covers as possible, which led him to realize that he had an opportunity to take the design format and do something out-of-the-ordinary with it.

Craig Braun started a new company, Album Graphics, in Chicago, and then a design studio on the West Coast.

Craig Braun did both designs and the construction of record packages; Braun gifted the designs to the bands in return for being hired to create them, which paid much better.

In 1970 and 1971, Craig Braun worked with Warhol to create the cover art for the Rolling Stones' album Sticky Fingers.

Craig Braun had been told by Chess, the album's record producer, that Pasche was designing a logo for Mick Jagger, and demanded to use it on the cover design; his haste was the cause of the version he received being low-quality.

In making the design printable, Craig Braun took inspiration from an illustration by Alan Aldridge of a girl licking an ice pop with a "huge tongue", which was representing the Beatles' "Day Tripper" in The Beatles Illustrated Lyrics; he then worked with illustrator Walter Velez to combine the designs.

Craig Braun, Inc had a merchandise imprint, Rockreations, which licensed the logo for three years.

Craig Braun had originally been against the zipper design, thinking it could damage the record inside and having several other ideas in mind; one of the ideas was to wrap the album in Bambu brand rolling paper, which he was using to roll a joint after photographing a different idea.

Craig Braun scaled back his operations in New York to work more in Los Angeles, telling Billboard that it was the new center of the recording industry.

The new company took on Craig Braun's existing clients and record commitments, with Craig Braun saying at the time that the merger would not mean they would take on more or bigger clients, instead planning to offer a bespoke service.

Craig Braun had been friends with Jimi Hendrix, and designed the covers of the posthumous Hendrix albums Crash Landing and Midnight Lightning, which he finds evocative despite the traditional art medium.

Shortly after his Grammy win, Craig Braun was indicted for tax evasion.

Craig Braun played literary agent Nelson in the 2021 film Erotic Fire of the Unattainable, a semi-improvisational story about an older woman struggling with love and her writing career.