Cover Art

[punkin]

In spite of some of the recent downer postings regadring the viability of home recording, I'm actually making a few bucks...not a killing but, it keeps me busy and, more importantly, I'm having good time. I'm covering my costs and very slowly chipping away at my studio investments.

I've been offering my humble studio to the locals and covered some grade school / high school events and such. I live in a small, granola-ish town and the people here are eating up the local talent. The evening coffee house scene is active and selling a few CDs.

My question is more on the "pretty pretty"...cover art. Most of my stuff has been acoustic folk. Generally, I ask the artist for a photo of themselves or something which they think might relate to the music and I try to work a little something up in Photoshop. I rip the CD's off one-by-one on demand and stuff the jewel cases with the finest colored card stock offered by Office Max, then splatter the papers with my trusty HP ink-jet.

This is getting a bit boring. Any ideas? I'm not wanting to get into photography or serious graphic art here. Just looking for a few ideas on how to spice things up a bit.


Thanks,


Please...no bashing... I just don't care for the wheezie sucking sounds that come from those who do it.

 

[Outlaws]

Okay. Office Depot doesn't sell good paper.

This stuff costs a bit more but you can make anything look 100 times better. Not all this stuff can be used in a printer, but thats okay........


Kelly Paper



....for the stuff that can't go in a printer, you can take a look at Photo Emulsion and Silk Screening. But I don't feel like digging that stuff up right now. Silk screen on some of that 80-120lb uncoated cardstock will look amazing.

 

[beat amateur]

In spite of some of the recent downer postings regadring the viability of home recording, I'm actually making a few bucks...not a killing but, it keeps me busy and, more importantly, I'm having good time. I'm covering my costs and very slowly chipping away at my studio investments.

My question is more on the "pretty pretty"...cover art. Most of my stuff has been acoustic folk. Generally, I ask the artist for a photo of themselves or something which they think might relate to the music and I try to work a little something up in Photoshop. I rip the CD's off one-by-one on demand and stuff the jewel cases with the finest colored card stock offered by Office Max, then splatter the papers with my trusty HP ink-jet.

This is getting a bit boring. Any ideas? I'm not wanting to get into photography or serious graphic art here. Just looking for a few ideas on how to spice things up a bit.

First, congrats on your success! I'm in the process of manufacturing my own cds using a similar approach. A friend of mine prepared the cover art in Photoshop (see samples at http://www.geocities.com/beatamateur ; upper left & right images are actual image files used for the cd) and we had them printed professionally. The bonus is they picked out good paper, printed up with great resolution, and trimmed them for us. I also burn the cds, stuff the case, and shrink wrap them. Rather than label the cds with a sticker, I prepared a stencil for spray painting them.

My biggest suggestion would be using paper with the appropriate weight and gloss, and look into having a small run printed locally. You can at least compare a few different quotes from printers with the cost of printing everything yourself.

I don't think we used a heavy card stock for my print job (maybe closer to 20lb?); it was similar in weight to what's actually used for mass-produced cds and so was the gloss. It folds nicely.

For comparison, the final cost of preparing one of my cds (burnt and sprayed cd, jewel case, insert w/3 color panels, shrink wrap) is $3 Cdn (about $2 US).

 

[Outlaws]

Re: Re: Cover Art

Rather than label the cds with a sticker, I prepared a stencil for spray painting them.

You evil evil evil man. You are going to trash somebodies CD player with that. Spray paint flakes as it wears. I take it you are not coating it with anything extra?