The Importance of Artwork

In this day and age of digital thumbnails and the incredible shrinking album cover, you may ask, is album artwork still important?

In a word, YES. The vast majority of people will form an opinion about your music long before they hear it. Whether we like it or not, people often make snap judgments about a band from the first time they see their logo, their record or their website. Having a potential fan write off your music solely due to inferior design is something most bands and musicians can’t afford. It’s hard enough to get your music the attention that it rightly deserves, so it’s extremely important that you give people the right first impression and leave them with good feeling about your music.

Here are some great examples of logos before and after graphic design treatment by Alphabet Arm Design:

Just as many musicians have embraced new technology to help promote themselves, they have also become more and more savvy in regards to treating their band as a brand. Consistent usage of logos & visual elements on their packaging, merchandise and websites helps present them as serious and sets them apart from the herd. They have realized that their brand-be it good or bad-speaks for them when their music can’t. A poorly executed logo or album package doesn’t say any less than a good one; it doesn’t say the right things to your audience.

The question becomes, why compromise your music’s visual counterpart? At this point you’ve spent countless hours writing, rehearsing, recording, mixing and mastering, don’t let the CD art direction become an afterthought. Our advice is to find a professional studio who will develop the packaging-even on a shoestring budget-that adds a whole new element to your release, one that fuses with the music you’ve created. Although she may be hot, your drummer’s girlfriend probably isn’t capable of doing that.

Alphabet Arm Design partnered up with Sonicbids to give away complete CD art direction to a randomly selected Sonicbids artist that submitted to an opportunity during the final week of March. The winner is… Laura Hage of That Girl Laura! Stay tuned to the Lounge for more design and branding tips, and to see how Laura’s CD artwork develops.

This article was written by Aaron Beylea of Alphabet Arm Design. They are a full service design studio specializing in bold, creative and distinctive print design solutions. Services include: Logo Design & Branding, Collateral Design, CD Art Direction and Merchandise Design. One of their primary goals is to make the design process itself enjoyable for their clients. www.alphabetarm.com