We live in a highly visual environment, meaning it is crucial to create the perfect album cover art for your music. Not only does it provide a visual look into your music, but it is also the image listeners will associate with it. The artwork on your album might even be the first impression someone has with your brand and artistry.
First impressions matter a lot in music discovery, so you should create album cover art that catches the eye right away. Even with the rise of digital music and platforms like Spotify, album cover art is still one of the fundamental aspects of music streaming and discovery.
You should view album cover art as an extension of your own personal brand and a reflection of the style of your music.
When looking to create album cover art, consider these five main tips:
Every musician has their own audience, and this should be the first thing you consider when creating album cover art. If you are a pop artist, your audience will be different than that of a rock artist. This difference also means the fans have different expectations.
You should begin with research as understanding your audience is key to your brand’s success. One way of doing this is by assessing the work of your favorite artists or those you consider closely related to you stylistically. Ask yourself a few important questions, such as:
A great part of music is that it creates a culture and style around the artist, which fans are fast to adopt. So when you create album cover art, make sure to show off your style in the forms of dress, hair, backgrounds, and more. Your fans will be excited and will better relate to your music.
Inspiration is important for musicians. After all, music is largely the result of being inspired by an event, art, images, sounds, feelings, and more. When you create album cover art, you should look for this same inspirations for visual representation. These could even be the same inspirations that you drew on when writing songs. The key is to then translate this musical inspiration into images.
At the same time, you should know your aesthetic and stick to it. Audiences make assumptions about your music based on its genre, and while it’s okay to borrow aesthetics from other genres, you need to ensure it still represents your brand.
A big part of this aesthetic is your color scheme, and you have many different options. If you opt for monochrome, meaning you use all one color and its shades, your album cover art will be more simplistic and minimalistic.
You could also go for analogous colors, or those that are close to each other on the color wheel. These colors work in harmony and give your album more dimension when compared to monochrome colors.
One more option is triadic colors, which come from three equal sections on the color wheel. Triadic colors are more stimulating and can make your album stand out visually.
Whichever colors, typography, and visual styles you choose, you need to make sure they represent yourself and your music.
The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) technology is providing musicians with incredible tools to create album cover art. One such tool is AI art generators like our own starryai.
AI art generators are creative AI tools that produce unique designs based on written, descriptive text. All you have to do is type out a prompt and the AI will create countless unique designs based on it. AI art generators are useful tools for creating the perfect album cover art, and they allow the musician to be as close to the process as possible.
AI art generators help you create exceptional and unique designs for your album, which can really stand out against more traditional covers.
With starryai, you can create your own workspace where you can come up with various creations based on themes and prompts. After housing all of these designs, you can then look for the best to feature on your album cover.
alt text: collection of vinyl records
Even if you haven’t decided on a branded image or logo, it is good practice to put the title of your album on the album cover. You should also consider showcasing your name if you are the artist. In today’s digital environment, many viewers will only see the image of your album. If your album doesn’t have any names on it, there is less of a chance that it sticks in viewers’ memories.
On the other hand, if you do include the album or artist name on the cover, viewers will begin to make connections between those names, the visual styles, and the sounds. All of this helps you create a consistent brand around your music.
With the rise of streaming services, albums can now be either physical or digital. It’s important to consider both when you create album cover art. If you only focus on one, the other will suffer.
If you want to distribute music to digital stores and streaming services, you artwork needs to meet several technical criteria:
It’s also important to ensure there are no cut off text or images, an image compressed into one corner with white space, names of stores or their logos, and words that indicate temporality like “new” or “limited edition.”
If you are also considering a physical version of the album, such as a vinyl, things can get even more complicated. It’s important to do your research to ensure your format is correct. For example, your cover artwork must check certain points like:
These are just some of the requirements for vinyls. Physical album covers require a lot more formatting than digital ones.
To get people talking and interested in your music, you need to create the perfect album cover art. It makes your brand more memorable and helps your music stand out among the others.
You’ve already put an incredible amount of work into writing, recording, producing, mixing and mastering your music. That same amount of work should go into the album cover art. Luckily, there are many tips and tools that can assist you in the process.
If you are a musician wanting to be as close to the creation process as possible, make sure to start out with an AI-generator like starryai, which helps translate your exact vision into the art.
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