California artist claims he designed Nirvana’s logo, not Kurt Cobain

A California graphic artist has stepped forward to claim that he created the iconic band logo used by Nirvana, and not Kurt Cobain. 

According to Billboard, it’s the latest twist in the band’s two-year-old copyright and trademark battle with designer Marc Jacobs over the use of the smiley face design.

The man in question is Robert Fisher, a freelance graphic designer based in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles. He filed a motion on Sunday, September 13th, to intervene in the ongoing federal litigation in the US California Central District, claiming to be the rightful creator and owner of the copyright design.

Nirvana LLC has been in litigation with Jacobs since 2018, when they sued the designer for copyright infringement and trademark infringement. They alleged that he had used the smiley face design as part of his “Bootleg Redux Grunge” line without their permission.

The band’s legal papers stated that it was Kurt Cobain who created the smiley face design that was used as the band logo for Nirvana, and that they had a valid copyright registration for the t-shirt design that covers the Happy Face illustration. Nirvana said it has been using their copyrighted smiley face design and logo continuously since 1992.

Jacobs’ attorneys countered in court papers that the designer drew inspiration for his 1993 grunge collection from the “looks that his friends were wearing in downtown Manhattan and Pacific Northwest at the time.”

Jacobs’ team admitted in their court papers that their smiley face design was inspired by vintage Nirvana concert t-shirts, but said his face design was reinterpreted by using his MJ initials as the face’s eyes.

Fisher’s claims throw a curveball into the band’s ongoing litigation. Fisher said in his court papers that he was working as an art director at Geffen Records when he heard that Geffen was going to sign Nirvana.

Fisher said he worked for several months collaborating with the band and Cobain on what would become the cover of the band’s Nevermind album, showing the image of the naked baby boy swimming trying to grab a dollar bill.

The artist claimed that it was in mid-1991 when he received a request to design a t-shirt for the band to come up with more retail-friendly merchandise. He said he “started playing around with variations of the smiley faces that he used to draw in his final year at Otis College, when acid culture was at its peak.”

He said he settled on an “x-eyed design” and added the tongue pointing sideways “as a wink to the tongue-in-cheek working on the back” of the shirt. Fisher said he used a felt tip pen to draw the smiley face on tracing paper and blew it up bigger with a Xerox machine, which he said created the “squiggly-looking” face design.

He said he then put Nirvana’s band name above it in Onyx font and picked a yellow/gold color for printing. Fisher says his design is exactly what was submitted to the copyright office, that he was never an employee of Nirvana, Inc. and that he never executed an agreement with Nirvana, so his work cannot be considered work for hire.

Nirvana LLC attorney Bert H. Deixler told the Los Angeles Times that Fisher’s assertions were “factually and legally baseless” and that his claims would be will be “vigorously” challenged.

Check out ‘Lithium’ by Nirvana: