How to Make CD Album Art

Often left blank, even record sleeves can be part of the design.

Album art is one of the most eye-catching aspects of the music industry. You can design album art to reflect the style of the music. One of the basic principles of designing media---posters, album covers, etc.---is the three-second rule, which means you have three seconds to catch your viewers' attention; otherwise, they lose interest and continue past your product. To learn the basics of designing eye-catching album covers, create some mock album covers for practice.

Things You'll Need

• Graphics software (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, etc.)
• Internet connection

Instructions

1. Measure out the dimensions of an album cover. Album covers are usually about 4.75 by 4.75 inches. Use the graphics software of your choice to create a file to the size of this dimension.

2. Include your band name, photos of your band and roles of each member. You also can include a section thanking anyone who's helped the band out along the way.

3. Consider the placement of information. Many album covers only have a picture or illustration with no band or album name on the front. If you have a powerful image, you may want to leave it untethered by text.

4. Use Photoshop filters to give pictures a different feel. These changes can either be dramatic or subtle; if the picture is too small, a dramatic change may make the picture too crowded with details and thus harder to see.

5. Create a potential logo for the band. This could be a hand-drawn symbol or the band's name in a specialized, edited font. One of many ways to play with fonts is to turn the text into outlines (can be done in Adobe Illustrator). Go into the "Brushes" menu (with the words selected), and experiment with applying different brush strokes.

6. Give the text some depth by adding a shadow. Darker colors should always be behind brighter colored text, as bright colors are easier to read on dark backgrounds.

7. Make several different designs, and have the band members vote on them. Also you can test out the designs on friends and family.

References

• Design Sojourn: 3 Seconds is All You Got for Your Designs to Sell!
• Jefferson Middle School: Dimensions For CD Covers