How do I design a CD cover & tray

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How do I design a CD cover & tray?

Designing a CD/DVD cover and label is not hard if you understand the basic rules of design. With your graphic designing skills, imagination, inspiration and a few basic rules, you can design beautiful and captivating CD/DVD covers, labels, and jackets.

The basic thing to remember is that the drawing canvas for a cover and/or jacket is different. You have a limited space which you have to use to showcase the contents of the CD/DVD. The designs should be bold and captivating, normally, using bright lively colors to showcase the originality of the content and add to the aesthetic value and portray it on the CD/DVD cover, jacket and the label.

CD/DVD Cover and/or Jacket

The CD cover is often a square shaped disk cover that has a piece of paper tucked in the front lapel of the cover. DVD covers are often jackets that are made of cardboard material. They are like a book which is closed from the upper and the lower side. You can slide the DVD into the jacket from the right side of the cover. It is rectangular in shape.

You have to understand the limitations of a CD cover or a DVD jacket. A small space is available to showcase your design. To effectively convey a message through a CD or DVD cover design, you have to understand the core content of the CD or DVD. For example if the DVD is a music disk, you have to be imaginative with the kind of music it has in store. If it has rock music tracks, you can use circles and ripples in the background to portray the intensity of the music and use funky/vibrant fonts colored with bright colors to portray the intensiveness of the rock music. Similarly, if you are designing the CD cover of a movie, you need to select the most provocative or suggestive scene in the movie and create a still. Use subtle colors for background according to the situation and use the scene to attract consumers to buy the CD/DVD. It is only limited by your imagination.

Always use the content of the CD or DVD to get inspiration for the covers and the labels.

Labels or Tray cover

The label of a CD or DVD is round in shape. The design can be printed on the CD/DVD’s printing surface or it can be used to generate a sticker type of paper to be pasted on the CD/DVD surface.

You can take the CD/DVD cover and/or jacket design and tweak it accordingly for the label. Make sure you use the middle circular gap creatively. For instance, if you are using Fonts as the main central design, the letter O can be used to creatively to cover the middle gap or finger insert.

In a nutshell, the only difference in designing a CD/DVD cover and the label is the canvas that you are limited to. Designing could be done in Photoshop or any specialized software for CD/DVD cover and labels. However, Photoshop gives you a variety of other tools to create stunning cover and label designs. Therefore, it is necessary to use the software you are comfortable with. Designing a CD cover and label is all about attracting the consumers using innovative designs.