Best Album Cover Design Advices 2025

• Start Canva Launch Canva and type “Album Covers” into the search bar to get started.
• Look for some motivation Numerous album cover layouts with various themes are available on Canva. Add terms to your search that most closely match what you’re looking for to narrow it down. The template can be clicked to begin designing. Add text and images to Canva’s millions of elements to liven up your album cover. Drag and drop the images from the library onto your design, then put some text on top.
• Make your design unique. Add your photographs, branding elements, a different color scheme, or even backing music if you want to share your album cover digitally to personalize it.
• Post, print, or distribute When satisfied with your design, you can save it as a JPEG or PNG file, share it on Facebook or Instagram, or print it out in high definition.

 Nina Chanel Abney

Klaus Voormann’s

Yeezus is probably the most well-known album cover that Abloh created. The Yeezus cover was created in conjunction with Justin Saunders, Joe Perez, Matthew M. Williams, and Kanye West and went through numerous revisions before settling on its ultra-simple layout.

Album Cover Designers make an average of $53,881 per year, or $25.90 per hour, according to Ziprecruiter (as of May 2025).

Even if you just get paid $350, at least you know they will value your job and you got compensated. Mid level band ranges from roughly $1,500 to $6,000+.

• Obtain a degree in the field Many people who design album covers have fine art or graphic design degrees. Even though employers may not always demand formal education, you should consider earning a bachelor’s or master’s degree in one of these areas to help you develop useful knowledge and abilities in the workplace. The degree you’re pursuing demonstrates your dedication to your field. A formal degree can also assist you in developing a network of contacts, some of whom may be able to provide references or point you in the direction of future employment chances.
• Improve your design abilities Develop your design talents regardless of your educational goals. If you decide against getting a degree, consider enrolling in an online course or working toward certification to advance your knowledge in this field. By practicing your talents, you may improve your craft and even add more pieces to your portfolio.
• Acquire expertise To obtain experience working with musicians, bands, labels, and producers, think about pursuing an internship in the music business. Making these connections can make you feel more at ease in this setting and could lead to future employment prospects. You can gain knowledge and prepare for the future by participating in an internship with other professionals who share your interests. Additionally, it indicates your expertise and commitment to your field, which potential employers can find admirable.

• Format your file as a square of 1600 × 1600 pixels at 300 dpi. Always work at 300 dpi or above, keep the square of the proportion, and remember that digital music distributors will resize your files to fit their specific requirements. This will make your work suitable for printing. Remember that you can always save several versions at various lower sizes, but you can never resize higher.
• Using the paint bucket tool, fill the document with a backdrop color (G). The images will stand out and feel more alive with a bright background. Since you should always start from the bottom up when creating a work, the color or background you choose will impact your decisions as you continue to add parts.
• On top of the background, add your following layer in this article. The artwork should be placed in the document’s center.
• Double-click the “fx” icon at the bottom of your layers menu to add a drop shadow to the artwork. Select “Drop Shadow” and adjust the opacity and angle to 75% and 120, respectively. As you can see, there are additional options in the effects menu. You should experiment with these additional elements, such as angles and strokes, to see how they affect your composition. Enjoy yourself while working on this. By simply clicking on something I’ve never tried and seeing what it does, I’ve found a lot of useful tools.
• Press Command+J to duplicate the art layer, then Command+T to rotate the newly created square.
• This is when color selections start to become interesting. To make our cover stand out more, we’ll import some pictures of liquid from a lava lamp and give them a more “psychedelic” color scheme. But first, we must distinguish the lava from the surrounding area. Select > Color Range after opening your file. Click on the document’s white when the Color Range box appears, then set your fuzziness to 140 and click OK. To pick the inverse, which will be the droplets, press Shift+Command+I. Press Command+J to copy them to a new layer after that.
• Drag the lava lamp droplets (or other carefully chosen images) into the album-cover file. We’ll now start experimenting with color to give this a more psychedelic look and feel. To open the Hue/Saturation dialog box, press Command+U. To alter the hue of each lava lamp droplet, move the Hue slider. You may change the colors however you want, experimenting with how they affect the background.
• Create a new layer and draw a square shape with the marquee tool (M). Fill the square shape with vivid color (I used hex #08ec59) using the paint bucket tool (G). Drag a duplicate of the square using the arrow tool (V) while holding down the Option key. Align the two squares with your guides’ square shapes by moving the two squares. Select “Exclusion” from the Layer Blending menu in the top left corner of the layers palette near the opacity slider. The darker colors below the square are pulled into the design to produce this intriguing pink and green combination.
• Let’s discuss font options since typefaces might be challenging. For those unaware, there are two types of typefaces: serif (the type with tiny flourishes at the ends of the letter strokes) and sans-serif (the type without flourishes); both have subcategories.

Sayoko Yamaguchi, a Japanese actress and model, is featured in the cover image by Hideki Fujii, created by Patricia Mitsui and Geoff Westen. Walter Becker and Dorothy A. White were the photographers for the inside shots.

Takashi Murakami

Virgil Abloh

Instead, Prince claimed that he hired artist Doug Henders to create the artwork because he believed that people were sick of seeing themselves in pictures.

Robert Fraser, the art director for The Beatles, created the album cover for Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was published on June 1, 1967.

Craig Braun

Richard Hamilton

The artwork for the cover was created by NTA Studios designer George Hardie and was designed by Thorgerson and Hipgnosis.

Although Shawn acknowledged @jayy babyxo97 as the work’s inspiration, other fans have pointed out that the image resembles a filter that can be applied using the photo-editing program Photo Lab. One person even displayed the Inner Bloom filter in use in several photographs.