Album Art - Ali Dark

I design album art as a hobby.

My style could be described as digital grunge, and suited to rock or electronic music.

I sell these services via Fiver and Behance, of you can get in touch with me here.

The price is $50 (Australian) for a simple square image that can be used digitally or for a CD or vinyl. You can also enquire about a full print-ready CD design including tri-fold insert and back liner – or whatever you need.

I’d need some photos provided if you’d like photographic elements, but let me know if you need help here because something can always be arranged.

Check out my work below to check if my style will suit your tunes.

Under the examples of album art there are also some thoughts on what makes great album art, along with examples of my favourites.

What makes good music cover art?

great cover art does a few things. It needs:

visuals that represents the feeling
subject matter that presents the overarching idea/theme
to be genre context aware (positions the music)

Album covers should present the overarching theme

Some covers present literal ideas. Check out the cover of Rage Against the Machine’s self titled debut. This s a good example of a cover that puts forward an idea – that some causes, notably social causes, are worth the ultimate sacrifice. We can imply from this that something is wrong with our society, if it requires such a protest, which is very much the overarching idea presented in the album.

Nirvana’s famous Nevermind cover does something similar, in a much more whimsical way (Nirvana was a much less serious and literal band than RATM is). The idea is that from a young age we are led by greed. This is also a statement about society, and our enculturation into it.

Here’s one of mine, for a hypothetical post-punk band with a hankering for the apocalypse.

Album covers should represent a feeling, or brand.

The visual design also matters. It presents a brand, in that it will

help the viewer position the album in a wider context
inspire desired feelings in the viewer about the artist, and themselves.

Brands are feelings and branding is an effort to direct those feelings. In the same sense music has a brand, because people feel about it a certain way, and they listen to it to feel a certain way. The visual representation of the music should also represent this feeling, to help the listener realise it’s what they want.

Album covers need to be aware of wider context

Nothing exists in a vacuum and part of any design process is a competitor analysis, where the playing field is analysed to gauge where the needle currently sits on important variables.