Curious about who does your album cover art...

[CosmicCadence]

Interested in knowing how others are going about creating or acquiring their album cover art.

Do you create your own art work or do you have someone else create it for you?

I've used a combination of my own photography and material available under a Creative Commons license, but have run into some issues with having my artwork rejected by online distributions, claiming the art work is trademarked (even though clearly not).

Does anyone out there create artwork for other members of AO? If so, would like to hear from you.

[synkrotron]

Hiya CosmicCadence

I am very much a DIY person when it comes to my album/track artwork although I have used the odd CC image on SoundCloud if it suits the track title.

I can hardly call myself a "graphic artist" though and out of my five albums on Bandcamp, four are "flame fractals" created Chaotica and one is a photograph of my own.

How about looking at who created albums for other Bandcamp albums? Might be worth contacting a few peeps there.

Strahinja Maletic, for example credits Sten Backman who also does some stuff for S1gnsOfL1fe

No doubt it will cost but I, too, would be interested in how much.


Here's a link to the cover Sten did for ÆTHEREAL CODE:-

http://www.greatbigcontainer.com/?po...aethereal-code


cheers

andy

[CosmicCadence]

Thanks synkrotron ! I'll follow up and will share what I learn....

[aoVI]

I do all my own cover art and have done designs for Scott Lawlor, Linnea, Ager Sonus, Wavepackets, and a number of other artists.

The source material is almost always my own, except where the artist already has an image they would prefer to use, in which case I may just be needed to clean up/enhance, crop, and do text or layout.

I have never run into any issues with copyrights.

If you are looking for a designer, my rates are the cheapest in the business; no charge currently, I usually just ask for a copy of the album so I can listen to it as I design. Yeah, I am one of those folks undermining economic value in the arts by giving stuff away.

Here are examples of my work on deviant art. The gallery goes back almost 30 years, so the quality may vary...

If I misread the intent in the OT, please forgive the crass self-promotion.



which reminds me, I have not put up some of the most current designs...

[CosmicCadence]

Thanks for sharing your examples aoVI - these are incredible! I've seen many of these before, not realizing you were behind the graphic design.

Hard to beat your price! While I prefer to do my own thing, I'm also on the look out for other resources that I can tap into when necessary. Perhaps if I get stumped by a particular issue or need some ideas, I'll reach out for some "consulting". What software do you use for your graphic design work?

[aoVI]

I am always open to helping on any level; from fully designing to giving feedback on design, reformatting file types, adding text/title to a design, etc.

Thanks for your kind words on the covers! Like my audio output, my visual stuff tends to have the rough edges and worn, broken look that attracts me.

I use Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 Design Premium (photoshop, illustrator, etc.), which is the last of the stand-alone licenses, iirc. It's all sub-based now.

jWildfire (a fractal design program) is a favorite for some of the source material. It's free and open to donations to it's author if you find it useful. You can find that here.

This is an open and standing invitation to you or anyone; feel free to msg me anytime. I love doing this sort of work.

[Immorpher]

I make my own artwork and quite frankly it is the longest (and least enjoyable) part of my process, since I am not a great visual artist. Since I don't charge money for my albums (not enough people would buy them to justify it) I can't pay an artist to do them. And since my wife is an artist, I know how often people try to scam free work from them, so there is no way I would ask something for free from an artist. Here's some random tidbits I have accumulated:

Software:
- Photoshop is a must for me. I would not be able to do any covers without it and luckily I learned it in a web design course.
- Inkscape is great for vector editing like fonts. I have my own font for my albums and Inkscape allows me to do this.
- Filter Forge - thousands of randomly generated textures and filters with almost endless customization. https://www.filterforge.com/filters/

Photography:
- Use my wife's DSLR to take photos of some things and combine them.
- Pexels - royalty free photos that I combine with others in photoshop: https://www.pexels.com/

Right now I have an album ready to go, but I am having issues with the cover. I cant get two pictures to combine properly without it obviously looking like a cut and paste job.

[The Quietist]

i do my own as well - it's all simple low fi graphic work but serves it's purpose well enough.

[Moosonee]

I do my own, I have a ton of photos to choose from that I have taken over the years and they generally do a good job of suiting the mood!

[Ambire Seiche]

same here, typically either a jwildfire render or unsplash.com photo edited in gimp, g'mic plugin gets used quite a bit. dafont.com for fonts

[Realm]

This is an open and standing invitation to you or anyone; feel free to msg me anytime. I love doing this sort of work.

Thanks my man ... will keep this in mind for the future. I didn't realise cover-art was 'your thing' too. Nice work.

[aoVI]

Thank you!

I'd be pleased to help in any way.

[The Quietist]

very nice work aoVI

[Maharg]

I do my own like many others. Its not too hard to do.

[aoVI]

Maharg Yeah, your album covers look freakin' awesome. Love your paintings and photos.