Tales of Getting Lost in Flight for a Marvin Gaye Album Cover
Recap of the newsletter's first panel discussion with Craig Braun, Isha Dipika Walia & Camilo Medina in Brooklyn, NY.
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Two months ago, I announced the newsletter’s first in-person panel discussion with Craig Braun, Isha Dipika Walia, and Camilo Medina. Within 24 hours, you all sold out the event (how many times can I say thank you), and two weeks ago, it came to life on a midweek 93-degree day in New York City. Thankfully, Public Records had air conditioning, and most of you were able to shelter yourselves from the rain shower that broke the day’s humidity.
At the venue entrance, A to Z Media built an amazing vinyl display for attendees to explore before and after the panel. For the layman, A to Z is the actual business that prints the vinyl, its album cover, and packaging. They’re a one-stop shop for physical media – working alongside labels and artists, producing everything from vinyl, CDs, books, and merch. It felt very full circle to have the business that brings the artwork to life supporting the night.
I started the discussion by going back to where it all began: our childhoods. I asked Craig, Camilo, and Isha about the first album cover that made an impression on them. Isha spoke of Animal Collective’s Merriweather Post Pavilion, Camilo mentioned blink-182’s Take Off Your Pants and Jacket, and Craig went off on an unrelated (but always enjoyable) tangent. To be fair, album covers were just getting started when the Grammy award-winning designer was a budding teenager. From there, we explored how the physical process of creating album covers hasn’t changed as much as we think between generations. Watch an excerpt of the panel below:
Amidst conversations about how Lady Gaga's Chromatica cover came together during the pandemic and confronting the most challenging aspects of designing album art, Craig shared old industry tales about how he earned royalties from producing album covers and made enemies of record executives, putting himself in the most precarious of situations. Once, while flying to Connecticut to pick up a painting he had commissioned for a Marvin Gaye album cover, Craig lost his way in the night, ala JFK Jr. Thankfully, he made it out alive to speak at the panel. Paid subscribers can hear that adventure along with the rest of the talk and Q&A session below.
Thank you again to everyone for joining us and to my friend Ben Wittkugel of Ploeg Arts for helping me produce the night. For further reading, dive into my one-on-one interviews with Craig and Isha.