Tyler Fugazzie

Getting Started

People like having something to look at while our ears are busy. Shapes, colors, figures, landscapes, words, objects, people. Our eyes need candy. The key to designing a good album cover is to start with the name of the album. Does that give you enough of a vibe as art direction to translate into a visual product? It should give you at least one possible element to work with. Try to make a couple album covers using the name of the album. Every good design takes multiple iterations so you have nothing to lose by just diving into the creative process.

Another approach for creating album art

If you need more than the name of the album, follow what the music is saying. A single instrument or melody can trigger ideas for a good album cover. Maybe those heavy drums become a deep dark blue. Maybe your squealing guitar becomes a vibrant red background. The nice thing is, you only have the colors of the rainbow to work with. Or black, white, and gray. These are some of the limitations that make a creative solution possible, just like the size and square shape of the typical album cover constrains the visual design enough to force sophisticated choices and sensible art direction. 

My favorite album cover designs

My favorite album artwork for my own music came from an AI tool that’s no longer available. I prompted it to give me “abstract surreal funky multicolored art” images that I would sometimes modify with “energy light metal electricity burst” and other terms that I believed would help generate the interesting looks I was going for to accompany my quirky and beautiful electronic music instrumentals.

It took lots and lots of prompting to find the covers I liked the most. This is where the AI shift in technology brings us: I’m not doing the generating that takes me from 0 to 1 but I’m doing the curating of the dizzying number of choices to find the right fit. That being said, Canva is a great free tool to use for designing album visuals and of course Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator are useful options if you can afford them.

Find inspiration from talented artists

If you need more inspiration, do your research on existing album covers from publicly available music projects. You probably have some favorites already since an album cover is like a piece of memorabilia that accompanies an album and if you listen to music, you’ve been exposed to many album covers made by very talented people.

We all know the famous examples but don’t be afraid to take lessons from lesser known artists too; some of the most imaginative art can come from people with a dozen listeners. I have 6,900 saved songs on Spotify so it’s very difficult for me to pick my favorite album covers as I like so many of them for so many different reasons. But I’ll share some examples since they might help you in your journey to create an impactful album cover.

Charli xcx’s Brat

A very recent entry from 2024 but I’m a sucker for bold simplicity and this cover does a great job of complementing an album of brash, jaunty hyperpop. The color is highly imitation-worthy and the text is unmistakable. You can recognize this no matter what size the thumbnail is on a screen or how large it’s displayed in person.

Some similar album covers include Fugazi’s 13 Songs, Kanye West’s The Life of Pablo, and Daft Punk’s Discovery.

blink-182’s Enema of the State

Sex sells. Healthcare is important. These pop punkers are irreverent. The people photographed for an album don’t necessarily need to be the band members or artist themselves to work. It helps if they’re attractive.

Nick Drake’s Pink Moon

Album covers can be paintings. They can be legitimate forms of fine art. You don’t need to stick with minimalism if your album is moody and diverse. From 1972, this design is a surrealist wonder and sort of fits into yet clashes with the vibe of 70s album covers overall. They were really hungover from the psychedelic era in that decade.

There are millions of album covers

Check out my Spotify account to see more of the music and album covers I enjoy. There are seriously hundreds and hundreds and I’m not spending the time to detail them all in this post. I’ve given you enough information to work with so hopefully you’re better prepared to start designing.

I can help you make an album cover 🙂

Email me if you want more advice or if you want to hire me for a flexible fee to design an album cover for you that accurately captures your music and provides listeners with an interesting teaser to your work.