The ABC of album cover design
A well-designed album cover provides an artiste a unique opportunity to capture the attention of listeners. The visual representation that goes into the design can spark interest; inspire someone to select your music album out of a stack at the music store. It can also encourage an online listener to click and follow your music. The song cover art markets an artiste in a complete way.
The process of having the best album cover art design can be a real hustle, in any case. For this reason, a good designer should bring skill and passion into his art. This way, the designer helps artistes package their music in ways that express both creativity and originality.
The designer channels his energy, professional skills, and other resources into creating beautiful covers that testify to quality.
For a sneak-peak into the whole process of album cover artwork design, here is a list of the first things you need for great results. The list includes simple steps of brainstorming, to decide album art design in syncs with your music.
It‘s always wise to create cover art designs by searching for a unique identity. Some artistes fail because they fall into the temptation of sketching the cover without knowing which identity suits their music. However, a good design process requires stepping away first to reflect on five things. Begin by carrying out a little identity quest. Avoid immersing yourself into ideas for the album art before anything else. Instead, try to reflect on the identity that best suits your music. Such reflections make cover art design blissful. Here is a list of things to do before starting the design process.
1. Discover the artiste behind your album cover design.
At this stage, it helps to explore and experiment. At the same time, the album cover creator pays particular attention to whom the artiste is. That focus always works, whether you’re designing for a solo artiste or a group. By all means, make sure you have defined the artiste well.
2. Define the targeted audience for your music album cover.
The second step of your music graphic design is to understand that all music goes to a specific audience. There simply isn’t a music genre that suits everyone. Yes, some types of music may have a wider audience, but that’s not always the case. As such, it’s still a good idea to carefully think about the artiste’s audience.
Whom is the music trying to reach? In most cases, an artiste has a particular audience, even he prefers a universal audience. For example, preferences among music lovers tend to vary with age. To create cover art, designers can figure this out by asking simple questions. For instance, who are the people most likely to fill the front row, if this artiste were to have a show? Finding answers to these questions lead to album cover design suitable for the interests of an audience.
3. Identify the mood of music for best album art design.
Different music elicits different moods and feelings. Some emotions feel palpable, some indescribable, and so on. Find the mood that best describes the music before creating an album cover. Listeners may experience the feeling differently. But at least the artiste has an idea of feelings the listener is likely to experience. The designing process needs to utilize this little secret.
4. Find inspiration for the album art.
Inspiration is important. Every work of art needs inspiration, whether musical or design. Always there has to be a source of motivation. It could be from an event, another work of art, an image, a sound, a hunch, intuition, or feeling and so on. Likewise, music cover art requires inspiration to come up with good visual representations. However, as a rule of the thumb, an inspiration for fantastic album cover design works in sync with the music itself. A designer may, for example, imagine and translate the mood and tempo of the music into images for the cover.
5. Condense and refine the ideas for your song cover art.
In a short, concise format, try to describe your thoughts and what you intend to do with them. Like the famous elevator pitch, imagine how you’d explain your album cover design to someone who has only 30 seconds to spare. After expanding and introducing all the necessary elements already mentioned, it also helps to try to fold your ideas, packing them into a condensed format. Album cover design works that way, much like playing the accordion.