Tips for designing your CD artwork
Musicians start off believing it's all about the music. A little experience of the music industry quickly teaches that, in truth, it's all about the complete package. Your songs may have been captured in pristine digital sound, mastered perfectly and copied onto CDs, but now you have to make sure your CD artwork does justice to the music.
A self-released CD has the potential to compete with a major-label release only if you pay attention to the important detail of how the finished package looks.
The goal is to have completed artwork that reflects the music, looks striking when reproduced as an image on a website, and also catches the eye on a merchandise table at gigs.
Can you do it yourselves?
This is a key question. Musicians may feel they have the best idea of the CD artwork that will reflect their music, but they do not necessarily have the design skills and experience to produce the most effective result.
If one of your band members is adept with desktop publishing software and has an artistic eye, they might be able to come up with a satisfactory result. Otherwise it is advisable to work with design professionals.
These don't have to be large and expensive companies. Collaborating closely with a local freelance graphic designer, you can ensure your ideas are incorporated into the finished CD artwork, and also check that the important details like song titles and credits are not overlooked in some indulgent artistic concept.
Remember the scale
Even if you grew up with a fondness for vinyl gatefolds, bear in mind that the most effective CD artwork takes the limited space of a CD insert into consideration. Tiny details will be lost, so keep the concept bold and direct. Always work at 100% scale on the design, so you know exactly how the final artwork will appear.
Don't forget that iPods and many MP3 players now reproduce CD artwork on tiny screens, so ideally you need a design that will look attractive and recognisable even in this format.
A design theme that is repeated on the cover, inserts, and printed onto the disc labels will make the package look more professional.
Quality counts
Don't be tempted to save money on paper or print quality. Badly-printed or flimsy inserts will look amateurish and can undermine all the time and work you have spent on recording the music.