As a musician you should also keep an eye on your visual brand. Creating interesting artwork for your release is definitely an area to express yourself. This article comes with some essential tips for an engaging cover artwork.
First of all, you will need to get the format requirements to make sure your artwork will be accepted by all DSPs:
* File format: JPG, JPEG, PNG
* Aspect ratio: square, minimum: 640 x 640 pixels, maximum: 15,000 x 15,000
* Color profile: RGB
* Maximum size: 50 mb
* Resolution: 72 dpi
* No further text than your artist name and release title (no text at all is also possible)
In addition to these specifications, make sure that your artwork is easily recognisable and not blurred, pixelated, uneven, misaligned or rotated, or has any other quality problems.
As for the design, your artwork should support your release: So you should for instance try and capture the mood, genre, or message of your release and underline it visually in your cover artwork. For recurring releases add some recognisable elements for your artist brand (e.g. same font, similar style). But don’t use the same image for multiple releases unless you create a series of releases with different editions.
Make it as unique as your music: avoid creating a generic artwork. Rather put some thought in it, take your time and do some research. You can get inspired by your musical influences, other artists of your genre and look how they arranged their artworks. Pay attention to frequent motifs, colours, and recurring imagery - but don’t steal from others. Create your own unique artwork which supports your artist brand.
Choose a font fitting your style or genre: say goodbye to Comic Sans or Arial, but also don’t get too crazy and make sure your artist name and release title are still readable.
Choose supporting colours and keep the contrast in mind: Carefully choose the colours for your artwork. Do you also have specific colours for your artist brand? Great! Then try to incorporate these. Try not to use too many colours or colours which are clashing. If you want to include some colour blocking use it cautiously. Also, don’t add text on a too busy background. Therefore, choose a font colour that stands out from the background.
Don’t make it too detailed: Avoid using small-scale elements. Those will make your artwork too busy, but also might not even be recognised because your artwork might not be displayed very big, for instance on Spotify or on mobile devices.
Get the rights straight: don’t use any material you don’t have the rights for – no unauthorised images, nor protected fonts or other foreign graphical elements. When choosing images, make sure you own them, got permissions (e.g. by buying a licence), or they are explicitly free for commercial use. If you let anyone else create your whole artwork, make sure to specify the copyright for that (add it in the C Line when creating your release on MusicHub). Typically, the label or band then buys the rights to the album artwork to have their name in the C Line.
Last, but not least: If you have some design skills and feel comfortable creating your artwork yourself, go for it. If you don’t feel capable of creating your artwork, don’t hesitate to get some support: there are services and designers out there to assist you with your artwork, but also free design tools where you can rely on some good templates and make sure you also meet the technical requirements. Do some research or feel free to reach out to us for further tips. Also, check out our social media channels: @joinmusichub (Instagram) and @joinmusichub.de (Facebook).