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Anyone has pointers in designing an album art / CD cover?

2
2006-08-02 08:33:13, Category: Programming & Design
Hello! I'm an amateur graphic designer. My friend recently asked me to design an album art for his first album (CDs and cassettes - yep, we still use them cassettes in my country...). Anyways, just wanna ask you all if you have some pointers for me in doing this. (The size of the printouts, paper type, dos and don'ts, etc...). Any answers will be greatly appreciated. Thanks a bunch!

Answers

  1. gpashtun

    On 2006-08-02 09:09:59


    Check out this site: http://www.discmakers.com/templates Not only will you find templates to get the correct size, etc. there is also a bunch of other good information concerning design. Hope this helps!

  2. jmfc

    On 2006-08-02 11:22:10


    diskmakers (from the above answer) is a great place for printing and producing your CDs and tapes. I would first try to find out who you are going to use to print the covers. They should have specifications on dimensions (they will differ slightly based on who is printing it I have noticed). If you are going to print out yourself, the labels and inserts you purchase should come with a template for this. Here are a few that I have used. I prefer Avery as they have a nice program that comes with the lables that allows you to format these just right. I have used them for serveral covers and labels and they come out good. http://www.avery.com/ http://www.neato.com/ You should also design all your graphics at least at 150dpi. If you use a lower resolution they may look fine on the screen to you but when they print out they will be blurred. Also, another thing to remember if you are going to get them professionally printed is image bleed. What this means is you need to make your image larger then the actual end product because when the print this it can get shifted slightly and you don't want to have any thin white lines around a border, usually a quarter inch extra around the edge is OK. Keep this in mind up front because you don't want to have to make your image larger after you are done as it will cut down on the quality. If you need image editing software - Gimp is a great program which similar features as Photoshop http://www.gimp.org/ Good luck and have fun