Working with text
Do-It-Yourself CD Cover Design
Working with text
Choosing the right typeface for your project can be a challenge. There are so many different fonts to choose from — which one is right for you? The first step in deciding on the right font for your CD cover is having a look at what other artists have used. Flip through the CDs at your local music store. What kind of fonts have your favourite bands used? Are they plain and simple? Ornate? Futuristic? Illegible? Now have a look at some covers from artists you've never heard of. Can you tell what genre of music they play by the kind of font they've used?
Fonts can fall into any number of categories — serif, sans-serif, transitional, modern, script, to name a few. There are plenty of books and websites dedicated to typographical design and I've included a few in the references section. Sometimes it's best to go through all the fonts in your system one by one and narrow it down to a few choices. If you can't make up your mind, ask your friends which typeface they prefer.
Whenever possible, use a desktop publishing program like Adobe Indesign or Quark XPress for typesetting. Photoshop has a lot of great filters and effects, but it doesn't handle large amounts of text set at a small point size.
When you begin to lay out your lyrics and liner notes, make sure the type is large enough to read. This may seem obvious, but I've seen many liner notes that are set in type so tiny you need a magnifying glass to read them. Try printing it out at full size and ask someone over 40 to read it. Remember, if you choose to put white text on a dark background (aka "reverse type") you need to increase the point size. What's perfectly legible at 10pt in black on a white background should be increased to 12pt in reverse. This is because we interpret a white-on-black object as being smaller than one which is black-on-white. And, if you're using an ink-jet printer, the dark ink of the background will inevitably bleed into the white text, making it even harder to read.
Secondly, try to avoid using a busy background for your text. If your background has to be busy, try adding a slightly opaque box behind the text in a contrasting colour. Always print out proofs to ensure that everything is legible.
When applying a style (bold, italic) to a font, the easiest way is simply to select the text you want to style and click on "bold" or "italic" in the style menu. While this will make the text look styled on screen, it may not appear that way when it comes back from the printer. Instead, you need to assign the appropriate font to the text using the font menu. For example, if you want to italicize a piece of text that is set in Times, you have to select the text and choose "Times Italic" from the font menu. Most font sets contain bold, italics and small-caps versions; some give you a variety of font weights to choose from.
Some CD manufacturers will ask you to include linked fonts so they can fix any obvious problems with the file. I prefer to send them files with the fonts outlined as paths. Adobe Illustrator allows you to easily convert your fonts to outlines. However, once the fonts are converted to paths, you won't be able to make any changes to the text, so make sure you've proofed everything first. You can still send the fonts with the file, but outlining the text will ensure that nothing unexpected happens when the file is opened on someone else's machine.