Patrick Duffy: Designing an album cover

Patrick Duffy is a founder of Attention Communication and Design, an entertainment-related design firm based in Toronto. Duffy is a Juno Award nominee for album design, and a five-time winner of the annual Canadian Country Music Award for Album Design. His album art credits include Blue Rodeo, Great Big Sea, Paul Brandt and Michelle Wright, and he has done work for Canadian major labels EMI, Warner and BMG, as well as lots of independent stuff "because it's fun to do." He teaches Graphic Design and Print Production at the Harris Institute for The Arts.

Be resourceful, not cheap
"Too many indie album covers look like somebody's brother or girlfriend designed them," says Duffy. "Most indie artists think of the artwork last and it's generally done with whatever money is left over after they've paid for everything else. Good design doesn't have to be out of reach financially. The trick is to be as resourceful with your graphics as you were with the actual recording. Most designers in the music biz are willing to discount their services if they like the band or just want to do something outside the label system. Art and design school grads are often willing to work for next to nothing just to start doing this kind of work.

Where to find designers?
You find designers the same way you find everything else in the music business, through networking. Ask other people who they used, find out what it cost them. Call up a reputable indie label and ask who's doing most of their assembly or pre-production work.

Make sure it stands out
The most important thing is to make your cover look interesting from a distance. You're dealing with something that is only 4 and 3/4 inches square, and it's going to be competing for shelf space with hundreds of thousands of similarly shaped things. So make your artwork as bold and graphic as possible while also appropriate for your type of music.

Just because a certain type face is your favorite doesn't mean it's appropriate for your album cover. You shouldn't make people guess too much about what your record is. The name of your band should be obvious on the cover. It doesn't have to be as crass as a major label might like it, but the buyer shouldn't have to hunt to find it. Go into record stores yourself and look at the racks with a critical eye.

Concept should reflect content
If you're a goth band, your cover should at least suggest that fact. If your music's not fancy, don't go for a fancy cover. The last thing you want to do is confuse people. If you're a handsome guy and that's a selling point for you as an artist, then by all means, that should be part of the concept. Same goes if you're a beautiful woman. And it doesn't have to be done in a cheesy, sexist, crass way. It's not necessary to have a smiling artist on the cover although for some genres, like country for instance, the audience expects to see a picture of the artist on the cover. And if you're using a photo of yourself, have it taken by a good photographer, not your girlfriend with an instamatic camera.

What it costs
To be fair to my profession I'd say bands should expect to spend at least $1,500 for the design. That should take you up to the film stage or what we used to call camera-ready art. Production costs to generate film for printing will cost another $1,500. You can get away with spending less if you access the right people but you really do need professionals to assemble the finished art and bands should spend money at this stage if they want it done right.

Service bureau considerations
When your send the work to a service bureau your files should be idiot proof. You should include detailed instructions and the files should include all the fonts and high resolution images necessary as well as some kind of color proofs, whether they're mock ups or color photocopies or laser copies

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