Album Cover Design

Who designs album cover art?

Artists who have studied fine arts or graphic design are good candidates for album cover designers. Although, becoming a talented music cover art designer doesn’t necessarily require a degree. The most important qualification an album cover designer needs is a thorough understanding of your brand identity and some experience with digital artwork tools.

When hiring an artist to create your music artwork, look for the following skills:

• A portfolio with samples similar to your vision
• Good communication and able to translate your ideas into design
• Willing to work with you extensively to shape the concept of your cover art
• Experience using digital artwork tools such as Adobe Spark
• Offers several revisions of the artwork to get it just right

What size is a CD cover design?

The recommended image size for most digital music platforms is 3000 x 3000px, with a resolution of 300dpi. At the minimum, you can get away with 1600 x 1600px and 72dpi. It’s also best to save the design as a JPEG file because not all platforms accept PNG files. Also, use RGB color mode and not CMYK.

An experienced album artwork designer should understand these basic standards. However, you should let your cover artists know the image guidelines of each platform you wish to publish your song on.

How do you come up with mixtape cover art?

Your album cover design is often the first impression listeners get of your song. It’s the image they’ll associate with your music, so it has to be good. You want album art that grabs attention and shows off your style. Creating effective artwork for your album, single, or mixtape isn’t intuitive so having a professional artist help you is a good choice. When your album cover designer is creating your music artwork, they’ll typically stick to some of the following best practices:

• Creating 100% original work (no copyrighted images)
• Matching the artwork to your music and brand identity
• Developing album artwork that still looks great at a reduced size
• Using contrast properly so the design is coherent
• Making text readable with a simpler font

Do singles have cover art?

For every new release, you should have a unique covert art – including singles. The artwork for your single can resemble your album cover, using the same style and font but different colors, for example. Or you can have single cover art that’s completely different. Either way, you should have unique music artwork so that people can easily view and identify all your releases.

What makes single cover art good?

Single cover art should have a distinct look that helps it stand out – not only from other musicians but also from the rest of your discography. You want the artwork to tell your story and spark listeners’ curiosity about your track. Ultimately, single cover art should promise a unique experience, making it as distinct as your song.

A talented album cover artist will use images, photographs, illustrations, and other design elements to tell that story. They should have a solid grasp on what your track aims to communicate, and capture that message with an appropriate single cover design.