CD Cover Designs.

After my initial attempts I decided rather than throw myself in head first I would have a bit of a planning session. Taking aside the measurements I decided to put some notes onto paper.

As you can see from the image to the left I came up with a few ideas. I decided to go with a normal jewell case to keep things simple. I also decided to include an inside booklet so that I would cover the required '4 panes' as well as add an extra indie type touch.

I decided to have a single strong colour dominating on the front and back cover with simplistic black edges. This is because it would contrast greatly against other CD Cases or Album Covers thereby drawing the potential buyers eye to pick the case up. Or to prompt the thought "Huh that looks interesting".

Where as to add that little special 'indie' touch I also wanted to add a booklet with the lyrics of the songs as well as a few relevant images. To keep to the contrast ideas of the outside of the case I was going to have them be in a simple domination background image / colour with only a limited amount of imagery here and there.



This would mean that in total there would be 7 panes throughout the CD Case. Firstly with the Booklet acting as the front of the album with 6 panes and the Back of the CD case as the 7th.

Front of CD Case + Booklet

After looking at a few other CD Cases I decided to have our lead singer Owen as the face of the CD Case. I decided to use a medium shot so that we can have him singing as well as playing his instrument to bring in the aspiration listeners. I also employed a 'Ray of light' affect to draw the audience to look at Owen after reading the large title 'Blighters'. Furthermore by the way we're taught to read we then look from left to right thereby the viewer instantly reads the Album name.

The image only uses 4 imagery layers (once ; firstly we have a high-resolution papery texture to add a bit of unique with a low opacity of around 25%; secondly there is a radial gradient of yellow to green with an overlay setting to create the background; thirdly the rays of light with an overlay setting of only 35% opacity; finally there is Owen with a desaturated affect.

Creating the ‘Rays of Light’ was quite challenging. I employed the Pen tool and created a single ray where I then went onto duplicating it multiple times. After that I then transformed each image and rotated them in 20 degrees multiples until I achieved the final affect you see. For a more detailed explanation of how I achieved some of my editing look [ HERE ].

The text has numerous affects such as Shadow along with stroke to make it more imposing; there are 9 different text layers on the image. I wanted to create a affect as thought the Album name was traveling along the guitar and then falling off it to the ground which leads us onto the back of the CD Case.

Back of CD Case

Once again I decided to use the same background with a slightly different paper texture. Along with this I wanted to use a puddle like high resolution texture to create a ground affect. The idea behind this is that the ‘I’, ‘o’ and ‘n’ has fallen to the ground. Where I then went onto have the songs on the album displayed.

I decided to use a blue text as though the song names had fallen into a puddle. This affect may not come across clearly but it does have a very impressive manner of drawing your eyes straight to the songs which is the point behind the back of this case.

You may notice the edges, these are for the edges of the CD Case. I decided to keep them simple with a black overlay on the green background. By using this contrast anyone picking up the CD Case will be instantly drawn to the green thereby advertising the songs and band name.

Inside of CD

The 1st and 3rd pages of the booklet were designed to be annotations of the lyrics while also showing some imagery from the "Boy's in Motion" music video I had produced in my main production. Furthermore I wanted to name the band members somewhere in the album so that the audience knew who played what instrument and could visually link them. I achieved this on the 3rd page of the booklet (right image).

The 2nd and 4th inside images of the Booklet were also designed around the lyrics of the song. However I wanted to have a drastically contrasting colour to the imagery in the previously mentioned pages. So I went for a more graphic idea, similar to the front of the Album. Similarly the back of the Booklet (right image) went back to the blue colour. This created a graphic element, strong blue coloured picture then graphic element pattern to the booklet.

Overall the product came out successfully I personally find the 2nd inside image of the booklet (left image above) to be my best product. It relates to the lyrics far more successfully than the other pages while also keeping to a simple not to busy design.