Imagine your CD is sitting on the shelves of a radio station library. Can you find the disc among all those other albums? Many DJs are still heavily reliant on CDs, and they need to be able to pull your disc off the shelves quickly. Print your artist and album name clearly on the spine A NYT article from a few years back talks about this album art phenomenon in more detail. Maybe the modern sensibility is, “Things’ll get shrunk, so things should stay simple.”Īfter all, it’d be really difficult to make out all the faces on the cover of Sgt. This is probably related to number three and number four above, but the starker the image, the more it seems to capture our attention. Does it still capture your attention? If so, you’ve got a winner. If not, try a different approach for your album cover. Before you commit to an album cover design, shrink it way down. Often it will appear as small as a thumbnail. They’ll see a smaller version on digital music platforms like iTunes, Spotify, and Amazon, or on review sites and blogs. The majority of people who encounter your album will do so online. Via Envision your album cover as a thumbnail Then, print the URL to your website’s lyrics section on your album packaging.

Post your lyrics on your website in a dedicated section that shares design elements with your album. So if a six-page booklet insert or a giant foldout for your LP edition aren’t realities, use the internet as a way to augment your album art and avoid clutter. Lyrics in the album packaging are great – if you can read them. Print your artist and album name clearly on the spineĭon’t print lyrics unless you have sufficient spaceĪre you thinking of cramming the lyrics to 12 songs onto a four-panel digipak? Where are you going to put the album credits, copyright info, and crowdfunding thank-yous? Who’s going to be able to read that tiny font anyway?.Envision your album cover as a thumbnail.Don’t print lyrics unless you have sufficient space.

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