Planning - Do's and Don'ts

Before beginning work on our ancillary products, we went over some advice in class of what to do and not do when producing these pieces of work. This was handily given to us in the form of a handout and our teacher demonstrated these suggestions in Photoshop for us.

First of all, and one of the most important things to consider, is the font choices. We must make sure that they are clear and easy to read, as the consumer must be able to easily recognise the artist and album names, often from a distance. In addition, these must be of an appropriate size, which also applies for the images used. To help us to identify these conventions, we've been looking at existing albums. From this, we have observed that the artist name is commonly larger than that of the album name, and so I'll be adapting this for my own album. The font should additionally be appropriate in fitting with the overall house style (i.e. it should be consistent from panel to panel) and the artist's genre conventions, and should be carefully placed accordingly.

Photos used must be in focus and if they are the wrong size then the dimensions shouldn't be disproportionally stretched or constrained to fit the template. This is because this is never done in real examples and it ultimately gives off a really amateurish look. Colours should be chosen carefully. Usually, albums use no more than about three main colours which are appropriate for the text, images and background. The colours used should also ideally complement each other and be easy on the eye. Effects such as filters, whether on text or image, should be used scarcely, and only if suitable for the genre.

Keeping all of this in mind, I created the following example of how not to create an album cover...