Commissioning Artwork

[Hagard]

Hi I was just wondering I'm in the early stages of getting my bands first recording ready for relish and I'm looking towards commissioning some art for the front and back cover and what's the popular consensus over size, do you do it on 12inch LP size or CD thats 12cm by 12cm front and 11.75cm by 15.1cm back, or do you go by poster sizes of 16 x 20, 18 x 24, 20 x 30, 22 x 28 and 24 x 36.

what has been your experiences in this subject? 

[Jake]

The first thing I would do would be to jump on Pirates Press website and download the appropriate templates. If you're doing vinyl and CDs, start with the vinyl art, since it's the larger format and will be easy to scale down to CD size.

http://piratespress.com/cms/art-templates

[Hagard]

That's very useful thank you.

I was wondering if you good people saw the art work as a part of the whole?

[Pissy]

There was a time when buying an album and sitting down in ones bedroom, listening to it, looking at the artwork, reading the lyrics, while the whole album played from front to back was the total experience.  In that respect, yes artwork is a huge part of the whole.  in a digital download setting obviously not so much.

but in terms of how to approach the aspect ratio of the art, Jake is right, go with the LP size and scale down for the CDs.  Pixel interpolation occurs in the other direction leading to a cloudy image on the huge LP cover.

Coming from a screen print background, I tend to gravitate more toward the cool things that can be done with the physical sleeves.  Like an octagonal trifold or gatefold.  You can do this kind of stuff yourself if you have the time.  Dischord did it this way for years having glueing parties at the house and whatnot.

Oragami sleeve?  Paper house project sleeve?  Custom band related wrapping paper that someone needs to destroy in order to get to the album?  that kind of stuff gets me off.