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This article first appeared in New Age Voice, November, 1999
I keep revising it, however.

The beautifully painted square wheel
CD packaging design
Love 'em and read 'em

by Carol Wright

This article is for anyone - graphic designer, label manager, musician, lyricist - who has a say in the graphic design
and typography of the CD packaging, advertising,
or other printed matter.

See also my "Designer Danger Signs"

I hired my friend Salim to organize my 1000 CDs. Salim pawed through the box of "possible vocals." She slapped them down one at a time on the carpet with a puzzled "wha' the…?!?" Finally, the whole box hit the carpet with a clatter. "How am I supposed to know what these are?" she whined. "Even when I open them up, I can't tell." We decided that she'd have to open the booklets all the way. The lyrics - or lack of them - would cinch the deal. After opening several, she commented, "I can't read any of these lyrics."

Why - tell me WHY? - any musician or lyricist or label manager would ALLOW the CD notes to go to the printer with the lyrics and notes so small or camouflaged that no one could possible read them? It's not uncommon to see liner notes in script, dedications written in a spiral shape, copy blocks set at right angles, headlines flopped and mirrored, type screened so that it disappears, and (the all time favorite) montaged images behind the type.

Artistic creativity has really flowered in recent years, and CD packaging artwork has been a feast for the eyes. But I'm not writing this to give points for originality. I'm here to deduct for penmanship. (Now, where's that red pencil?)

Why sabotage your marketing efforts by making your CD covers and notes hard to read? The music reviewer, DJ, and wholesaler buyer need to read the liner notes (even if it's just the track number, title, and track time), while the listener wants to savor the words to your songs and learn about the background of the music.

If your images and concept are too oblique (trendy, cutting edge, far out), you'll have to spend megabucks on ADDITIONAL marketing (advertising and promotion) to further identify and link the group, album name, and the musical style to the cover. Unless you have big bucks to link your major tour with your major T-shirts and your major ads in Rolling Stone and your major billboards, your CD cover has to carry the entire identity load as far as print reproduction goes. The back of the CD can add more clues, but I've notice that this valuable space is also often squandered on artistic self-indulgence. (See my comments on the AFIM Design Awards.)

AND, once you entice your buyer with fancy graphics on the cover, you don't need to keep selling, graphically, inside. It's admirable to maintain artistic continuity throughout your packaging, but don't toss legibility.

"Many of us, even in our late thirties, have trouble reading tiny type against a busy background. I had to use a magnifying glass. And trying to even find the lyrics to all the songs proved fruitless. . . . The liner notes should have translations so that people who don't know French will grok the entire depth and dimension of what they are doing.

"Who reads the notes? Fans do. And reviewers read them, even all the details of the guest musicians. Posterity needs them...once an act has cooled off and the web site is down and the promo kits are thrown out - what's left are liner notes."  - Letter to a record label about notes for a world album, from New Age Voice reviewer Antoinette Botsford

"In the music business packaging is everything. Consumers like to touch the product before the lay out the cash. If a store isn't playing your CD, let them imagine what the music is like. Describe the music in a short sentence or two. How will the customer know what they are getting? They'll know by what they read." - Liz Doan, Senior Buyer, Music Design

"It is often impossible to tell who the record label is due to various imprints, distribution companies, production companies, etc. For example, Eversound Recordings list Max Music and Eversound. Which is the label?" -Sherry Broyles, former editor New Age Voice

"My biggest three gripes are 1) no times listed for tracks, 2) tracks that are too long, and 3) tracks that segue way into each other with no breaks. I can't tell you how many times I've reached for an album to fit a song into a set and then not knowing how long the tracks were and not having the time to clock each one, just passed on the album for something else." - Forest, Host and Producer, Musical Starstreams

"Let's face facts: Crappy music sells in great packaging, but great music doesn't sell in crappy packaging. Buyers make the decision to purchase a CD within two seconds without ever hearing the music if the designer has done the job correctly. Before you design your CD cover, go to a record store and look at several hundred CDs, flipping through the bins very fast. See what catches your eye: do certain colors attract you, certain themes or styles positively impress you?" - PJ Birosek, music writer and music marketer, Musik International

"I simply WOULD NOT play the album if I couldn't read the liner notes and play times. I put the album back on the shelf." - Marcea "Osa" Caudill, former Portland DJ

Just like fashion, music, and art, type has its designers, its revolutionaries, its history, and its evolution. One typeface begs to be engraved on a wedding invitation, while another is suitable only to stencil on the side of a wooden crate. Broadway screams "show biz," while Circus shouts "come to the big tent!"

Type, like a mythic fairy tale, can carry a subliminal or societal meaning. Some faces were designed for the Nazi Party. Another says Catholic church. The type face for your album title, subheads, and body type can carry a lot of your message, or it can trip you up if you "go against the face" or the type is too fancy or small or cluttered to read.

Type, design, and readability. Is there was a "scientific" way to chose effective typefaces and layout? Yes. For nine years, Colin Wheildon conducted studies of type/design and comprehension levels. He tells it like it is in his book Type & Layout: How Typography and Design Can Get Your Message Across - Or Get in the Way (Strathmoor). The chapters "Eight Ways to Ruin a Perfectly Good Ad" and "How to Drive Away Your Readers" will ring painfully true with many advertising and CD package designers.

"How frequently," he writes, "are opinions on the validity of typographic design cast aside, displaced by the view that legibility isn't important if the product looks exciting? This is absurd! A design that looks exciting but is incomprehensible is nothing more than a beautifully painted square wheel! … Typography fails if it allows the reader's interest to decline. It fails absolutely if it contributes to the destruction of the reader's interest."

He continues, "It's possible to blow away more than half our readers simply by choosing the wrong typeface." In an ad layout offering the choice of two common faces - a serif (Garamond) or sans serif (Helvetica) body type - the comprehension level was "67% good" for the Garamond versus only "12% good" for the sans serif.

Combine these percentages with Wheildon's findings about using colored type on white background. Use a black headline to score 67% good comprehension, a dark color headline to keep 52% comprehension. To really drive away your reader, use a bright high-chroma color headline. Sure they attract attention initially, but Wheildon's studies confirmed the reader didn't stay to read the message (17% comprehension).

Here's some surprising percentages (I'll stop with these soon, I promise!) to help the designer choose a screened background: Comprehension levels for: Black type on white, 70%;  black type printed over 10% screen, 63%; black type over 30% screen, a puny 3%; type reversed from solid black or a color screen, only 0% - 2%.

Weildon also discusses layout: how the eye tracks over a page to search for interest, and the best position for headlines, kickers, graphics, and type blocks.

Weildon, taking a dose of his own medicine, increased the paid readership of his Australian newspaper by over 100% just by changing his publication's type and layout. You don't have to totally scrap a brilliant design to keep the reader (i.e., reviewer, DJ, buyer) involved with YOUR product. Use serif rather than sans serif type for body copy. Increase type size a point or two or three. Print small type in black against a white background. Reduce the background color screens from 30% to 10%.  Eliminate montages behind small type. Use flush left or justified for lyrics and copy blocks.
 

 
Design for one-inch size: Can you read the covers of any of the above CD covers? Maybe, maybe not, but this is the size displayed at the bn.com website for the initial listing (the online image will be at 75 dots per inch, while a printed magazine will look sharper at up to 175 dots per inch.) Gone are the days of the one-foot square LP cover surface. These days, design your cover to work at one lousy square inch. That's the space your cover gets on most online music stores and many review publications, including New Age Voice (and in black and white at that!).

My assessment of the black and white cover reproductions in one issue of New Age Voice provided 7 recognizable vs. 37 unrecognizable images at one-inch size. Not only could I not read the titles of the albums, I couldn't tell what the image was at all! At 1.5 inches, the readability improved to even. You want your art to JUMP off the page, don't you? Carefully look through this issue and back issues of New Age Voice (or other music magazines) and grok what works in both the ads and the album art.

Drop shadows, fuzzy edges, montages, and backgrounds: The main reason to use shadows is to have the image or type look like it is floating off the page - for CONTRAST. In the olden days, printers used harsh-edged shadows for emphasis. Now, everyone uses realistic shadows, often slapped on top of background patterns. Result: little or no contrast. Use shadows or glowing effects with contrast in mind; design what's best to highlight your type or image. Or harness the power of "white space" and dump that busy background altogether. LOOK LOOK LOOK!!!

Montages are tempting to use for world fusion albums. What better way to portray the rich variety of ethnic instruments and electronic sounds? The photographic montages of clocks and dancers in the liner notes of Adiemus III (below) are a rich feast for the eyes, but the printed version of Jenkins' equally fascinating copy was cannot be read without a magnifying glass.

Don't Fight the Printing Process. The film used in creating the printing plates has a limitation that may work against your design. Black and red both photograph as black; similarly, white and light cyan photograph as white. Let's say you choose red and black for your CD cover because the music is so sexy and dangerous. If a magazine shoots a halftone directly from the album cover, the red and black will both look black. So much for sexy. (See below) Similarly, white type on a pale blue sky may look appealing in color, but reproduction in black and white might give a faded image with no detail. Always adjust for contrast before finalizing that ad or album cover. However, you can't always control how your cover will be scanned. Paula Abdul's album looks exciting in red and black, but scan it in white, and the red turns almost black. Careful adjusting (if anyone cares, that is!) in Photoshop or other image program can help increase readability on the right image, but the hot punch is has been lost. Ain't grey great?

Another word about the color red. We've been culturally bamboozled to think that red is the most active color. If you want to really make your CD or poster stand out, make the type in red, right? Optically, red is a regressive color. As my father the optometrist told me, "Red is the first color to disappear at a distance. They used to make all hunting clothes in red until they really tested this." Of course, all this is confused by our reactions to the color as being sexy or Valentiny or Christmasy. Look at the above left CD where the PA is in the black area. In REALITY, the red hardly shows. Now, picture the PA in yellow or even cyan.

You are really asking for graphic trouble if you use red type against a complex background. I don't know what it is about this that people won't accept. I pointed this out to a graphic designer in early stages of her design (I had to scan her cover from an early proof). The type hardly showed on the color version, and on the black and white scan of her cover...the type disappeared. I showed her the result scan, and then showed her how much airbrushing I had to do to give the type any contrast at all. I guess people are just suicidal deep down. She did nothing to improve the final product, and this will be a very expensive design decision for the singer/songwriter. Perhaps she explained it to the client and he decided to keep the red. Too bad. They're stuck with it now. But, boy is that cover sexy (not).

And keep black-and-white contrast (not just color contrast) in mind when shooting your artist photo. Don't let your artist blend into the background, as I did with my own shot. I had a colorful enough sweater to stand out against the tree for color reproduction, but the shot was reproduced in black and white, so I retouched the photo to make the background lighter. Moving to another location to shoot would have solved the problem in a minute. Live concert shots are especially hard. How many floating heads have you seen? There's help! Get concert photo tips from Jon Sievert, author of Concert Photography. See also my Concert and PR Photography page.

Beware of using gold or silver foil stamped type: Foils usually photograph or scan as black. Again, watch for contrast. Sometimes the image can be touched up in Photoshop or another program to make the effect more realistic or have more contrast. (One idea is to add a contrasting highlight or darker outline in the actual printed piece.) You can't always demand that the magazine or catalog will touch up your image or even contact you for an image that works. The best plan: Plan ahead.

Label identity or album originality? Some album covers are designed to look part of a label family. Both ECM (see left, above) and early Windham Hill (see right) used consistent designs for their label, and the purchaser knew he could trust anything from the label. Peter Gabriel's Real World label took the gutsy position of using covers with abstract photographs or art, with almost no type. (See center image.) The distinctive Real World color striped logo shows on the edge of the CD cover and also through the clear plastic spine (not shown) upon which is written the name of the artist and the label. Only time will tell if this bold tactic works.
 

  Tips to Remember...

VERY IMPORTANT!! Put easy-to-read CD title, artist, AND numbered/timed track listings on the CD itself. Visualize a DJ grabbing for a quick filler and he can't even read the CD title. Visualize someone reaching for the cd in their car on the freeway and trying to find the right track to play. Visualize that romantic moment and she's wasting precious seconds groping for the liner notes to find her love song. Happens all the time.

"The entire New Age category is so broad, it's difficult to determine what style a CD covers. Unless you are Deuter, Paul Winter, or R. Carlos Nakai, few people will know your style based on your name. The most effective help for me when digging through piles of CDs is to look for text on the front cover that reads "solo piano" or something like "excursions into ambiance."  If the artist doesn't want to add this to the cover, then place it on a sticker. Always put the name of the CD on the disc itself!" - Phillip M. Dampier, Music Coordination, DX Radio Network

Always print the track number, track title, and times in LARGE print on the back of the CD cover and on the CD itself. DJs depend on this information to plan their shows and can't be fumbling for this information when they need to grab a track on the spot.

Talk to your manufacturer about costs and possibility of setting aside part of your CD run for later printing or assembly. That's the time to add that special award sticker, testimonial, or re-design your packaging entirely.

Use clear jewel cases and use the ½" front "spine" to print additional information.

Use stickers for awards, quotes, or description. A partial cardboard sleeve around the spine (perhaps an inch wide) can be used to tell about album content, reviews, etc. Using the cardboard sleeve also adds about 1/8" to the "printable" width area of the spine…a definite standout in the record bins.

Print spine with black type on white paper. Don't get fancy; sometimes this is all the customer or stocking person will see in the bins.

Print album name; artist name; and track names, numbers, and times on the CD itself. PLEASE print track numbers on the listings of inside notes.

Check out http://www.oasisCD.com for guidelines about how to size, design, and prepare files for this CD manufacturer.

What to include on the back of your CD: UPC code, company logo and name; company contact details (address, phone, email, website); a two-to-four sentence description of the music; a one-to-two sentence description of the artist, a "stock in" category line; a flattering artist photo; a track listing with song titles, numbers, and lengths; and copyright and country of manufacture. - PJ Birosek

Packaging ideas: Don't go with off-size packaging and liner notes; how can we store it? Many now carry their CDs in plastic envelopes: Booklets must fit. Now that many are storing their CDs only in these plastic sleeves, pay more attention to what is in the booklet. For instance, is it too thick to fit in the sleeve? Consider paring down pages.

Carol Wright has been a music writer for more than fifteen years. In a previous career, she was a member of the International Typographical Union, and only a unit shy of a minor in advertising. She's broken more than her share of typographic rules as a designer of books and magazines. (She's not up on the latest  in computer graphics, so don't ask her to design your album covers.)

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  Graphic design resources

typoGRAPHIC, an interactive site about typography (not the same information as Wheildon's Type and Layout book, but fun to explore), with interesting links to other typograpic sites.

Communication Arts magazine. This is what most designers read to get their ideas. There was once posted an article called "The Root of the Problem" bemoaning the lack of real DESIGN and TYPOGRAPHY training these days. Unfortunately, it was rotated out of the websited.

My PR Photography page