The designers at AlbumCoverZone prepare their works by imagining a possible vision of a musician or label. They have a passionate effort to get closer to you even before you contact them for a cover. This means that the covers you find here will have the authenticity of an artist designing an album cover just for you.
Having said this, the final step is still done by you by personalizing the text areas to your choice. Our albums have example titles and artist names with a plan to guide the eye within the hierarchy of the importance of information. In some covers the artist’s name shines more than the album title, or vice versa. In others, the balance between the order of importance of the text and the image is equalized. Given titles and artist names can suggest you the function of the area, but you can also use these areas the other way around.
The album cover art is the visual representation of your music, and it is the first contact listeners might have with your product. So, how can you choose the right album cover? We’ve prepared a few simple tips for exactly this question. Good luck and enjoy your search!
1. Look down, look up
Just like posing for a band pic. 😉 If you do this trick, you freshen up your mind and get to scan the visual information as if you are looking at it for the first time. After looking at an image for too long, you might lose touch with this, so repeat this action as much as you need. Realize which information area pops up to your awareness first, and second, and so on… Unlike movie posters and book covers, album covers break the rules more often because of their square form in terms of text positioning. Even with that, in the eyes of the audience, some covers will be scanned starting with the image and THEN will get supported by the text, and some will be scanned the other way around.
It is your choice to go for an album cover that;
•hits the audience with a bold color
or
•invites the audience to look closer for the details.
In the same way, it is up to you to give priority to the text information and choose an album cover with visual art that is more supporting rather than dominating the cover.
2. Mix’n’match
The title and artist name areas that our designers define in the pre-customized format of each album cover are different. Each cover is built around a different idea of a hierarchy of information. This means, we imagine ourselves wearing the shoes of the musician and decide on the spot that for that cover we need to have;
•a bigger area for the artist’s name and a smaller area for the title of the album.
•an image that is the ruler of the cover and a text that supports and completing the concept.
•an equality within the text and the visual art.
•and many, many, many, more cool decision makings like these 😉
But this doesn’t mean that the final result needs to keep the order in the exact way our designers have chosen. Some bands’ album titles speak for themselves, while in other cases the name of the singer will make people get the album with no questions asked. Make experiments on the covers you like and shift the album title and the artist name from one to the other to see the changing effect in the result. Make the tiny titles huge, and huge titles tiny to see various balance shifts.
3. Challenge yourself with album cover experiments
We know when you arrive at this page you have a clear vision deep within your imagination. You have been listening to your music either in your mind or in the studio setting for ages and you have dreamed of a visual counterpart for it maybe even before that. Maybe there have been major conflicts between the band members about whether the tree should be white or black or on the right or on the left. Regardless, it is always good to get out of your comfort zone (as usual). Even if you have found the identity/purpose/message you want the music to have in its visual form in your imagination, try something else as well.
Even if you made your mind up around an idea such as “I will use an illustration for sure”, try one of our albums that uses black and white art photography as well! The unexpected might fit like a glove. Often the first idea is the best, but sometimes the second can win over that. 😉
Suggested questions:
The first question to ask yourself is; what do you want? Below, there are a few questions that can help you find a clearer answer to this.
1. What needs to be seen first?
•Visual art of the album or the text information?
•Your name or the album’s name?
•Are both the name of the artist and the name of the album with equal importance?
2. Do you want the visual of the album cover to:
•Tell a clear story.
•Make them feel…
•Give a message!
•Create curiosity?
3. Do you want the visual of the album cover to be:
Colorful, black and white, abstract, crowded, simple, pattern-oriented, realistic, natural, calming, gloomy, scary, sexy, modern, traditional… Choose your words and start looking for them in our tags 😉
4. What seems to be the style of the visual representation of your music?
•A photograph?
•An illustration?
•Whatever your choice may be, the next question is “Why that choice?”
•And the last one is “What if I go for the other one instead?”
We believe these can help you narrow down your “favorites list” to your needs. Go to our tags collection to see covers from a different perspective.
