Album Cover - Color

Album Covers

Learn about the parts of an album cover and the meaning behind it

Album Design

The overall style of your album cover is the combination of color, imagery, and typography. These three elements should work together in harmony to create the desired effect.

Color

Color selection is an important aspect to all design, and the same is true of album covers. Even a black- or white-heavy album cover represents a thoughtful decision on color: it evokes a different feeling than a vibrant, multicolored cover, right?

Open Ended

Which of the 2 covers do you prefer and why?

Things to note about Color:

• Color Theory

• Color Schemes

• Color Psychology

Color Scheme & Theory

If you’ve identified a color that you’d like to use in your album cover, you may want to stick with it throughout—if it worked for The Beatles with the White Album, it could work for you too—but you may not be looking for a minimalist, monochrome look for your cover. Fortunately, color theory also identifies complementary colors to help you select secondary and tertiary hues to go along with your dominant color.

Monochromatic

• Monochromatic basically means using all one color

• Can use shades to express dimension

• Will often give a sense of simplicity and minimalism

• Can tap into certain moods or allow music to speak for itself

Complementary

• For complementary colors, the rule is, the color directly across from the color on the wheel is the most complementary

• Complementary colors bring out the best in each other, and can create dynamic visuals

Open Ended

Name a pair of COMPLEMENTARY colors

Analogous

• Analogous colors are close to each other on the wheel

• Usually will work in harmony

• Gives more dimension than monochrome colors, but they can still have a blending effect

Triadic

• Triadic colors effectively draw from three equal sections on the color wheel

• These tend to be more stimulating than analogous colors

Color Psychology

There is a lot more to color than might meet the eye, and to learn more about color theory and how it is used in branding. In other words, colors can make us feel a certain way. hey have emotional attachments, which is why companies often use specific colors in their logos or product packaging.

The same can be applied to album covers, because as a musician, you want your audience to feel a certain way when they hear your music. The album cover—a visual representation of your music—allows you to enforce that feeling in another way. If, for example, you want your listeners to feel happy and playful when they listen to your music, you might want to lean into yellow and orange in your cover design.

For more subdued and melancholy music, darker colors, especially dark blue and gray, will help set the tone in your album cover design.