For independent musicians, album cover design can be a brutal challenge. You’ve slaved away on writing, recording, mixing, and mastering your music; you’ve somehow pulled together the cash to press up a bunch of nice CDs; and now you have to somehow figure out what to put on the front of the thing! But you’re not a designer or visual artist, and you spent all your money on all that other stuff. So what do you do? Well, I’ll tell you what you don’t do.

We’ve already covered the fact that turning to your buddy who happens to own Photoshop is probably a bad idea, but at least your friend is free (at least I really hope Christian Scott didn’t spend anything on that cover). Many CD manufacturing companies (one of the many types of businesses that have thrived in the past decade or so on the backs of struggling, self-funded musicians who will never make a dime from their own music) offer their own in-house design services, which seems like a great deal: these are professional designers! And since it’s bundled with the CD manufacturing package, you can get their services for an incredible deal! Yes, they are ‘professional’ in the sense that they are receiving (your) money for their services, but that doesn’t necessarily mean those services are worth it. Let’s take a look at a few albums that a certain prominent manufacturer is touting as some of their finest in-house design work.

John Tracy – Breaking the Chain

You know what these in-house designers love? Rough, distressed backgrounds with translucent stock graphics overlaid on them. They also love taking a word from the album title and incorporating it into the album art. Brilliant! On their web site they actually pat themselves on the back for, “rather than literally breaking the chain, [using] a subtle graphic device to reinforce the message of the title.” Ohhhh, now I get it! It’s a picture of a chain, like how the title is Breaking the Chain, but at first I was like “Hey, that chain’s not broken!” But it’s interrupted by the line of text, which is sort of like being broken! Genius!

Sydney Sprague – You Gotta Start Somewhere

Ah yes, more stock overlays. This cover actually would have been all right with just the ‘funky’ background, artist-supplied Polaroid, and hand-cut/written-looking text. But the in-house expert thought, “This needs something . . . some kind of stock visual non sequitur overlay. Ah, I have just the thing!” And so he grabbed the nearest generically floral filigree, slapped it in the top left corner, and pronounced his work complete. Here’s a design tip, courtesy of a very smart friend of mine. When you’re trying to think of a little something to spice up a job and you’re about to reach for the filigree, remember the Four F’s: “Foregrounded Filigree is Flawed Fundamentally.”

The title of this album seems almost a self-aware comment on the artwork itself: You’re not a designer, and you can’t afford a real one . . . you gotta start somewhere! (On further thought, maybe that should be this company’s motto.)
Joshua Harrell – Brighter Day

We can’t entirely blame the design staff for this one. The artist did, after all, have this photo taken of himself and then decided that it was just the perfect thing for his album cover. He’s even wearing a jacket that looks like its made of stock floral filigree! But still, the designer just took a bad thing and made it so much worse. The color palette and choice of fonts are just offensive to decent sensibilities, and the little pink sparkle effects on the text blocks are almost as cheesy as the amorphous blob of stock graphic elements floating next to this poor guy’s shoulder, looking for all the world like MS Paint just puked all over him.

Next to this lovely sample, the company helpfully reminds you: “Don’t forget, you can help us understand what makes you tick by filling out a Design Information form.” Perhaps this is a subtle threat, showing the horrors that await if you don’t clearly delineate your desires by filling out said form? Consider yourself warned.

Adam Rafferty – Gratitude

Ah, there’s our old friend, the translucent stock filigree, once again! Where would these guys be without it? This could have been a perfectly fine, if somewhat subdued and nondescript, album cover. The photo isn’t super eye-catching, but nor does it catch your eyes and then make you want to gouge them out (I’m looking at you, Harrell!) It says “Hey, I’m this pretty cool guy, and I just like to hang out in my leather jacket and sunglasses, finger-pickin’ my guitar (which, by the way, has a pretty decent built-in pickup and pre-amp).” The color palette is nice and warm and mellow, and while the text is more translucent than it needs to be (did they just discover that they could adjust the transparency, or what?), it’s totally fine.

But then, yet again, the designer feels he hasn’t done enough – it’s just not quite “designy” enough to merit the work of a professional – so he rummages around in his stock grab bag and throws on this (translucent!) garbage that adds nothing. I hope Mr. Rafferty didn’t offer too much unneeded gratitude to the hack responsible for this.