Wannabe designer
Out of context: Reply #4
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- Nairn0
Your first mistake was coming to NT on a Saturday, looking for serious advice (damn you, blaw).
If you are serious about designing your own CD covers, the one bit of software you'll benefit from is Illustrator, which can handle the imagery and text suitably for print.
Once you've done that, you should turn off your PC and spend a while dissecting source material you respect (other covers, magazines, etc)
- how are elements positioned?
- how is imagery treated?
- what limitations are imposed?Adobe's Illustrator is, on the one hand a very easy tool to use - on the other - a pig to learn, but there are plenty of books and tutorials out there to assist.
What I will say, however, is that achieving effective miminalist design is truly one of the hardest things to do (for me and many others, anyway), and is more grounded in logic and design rules than other design aspects - especially when dealing with type and information - hell, even simple photography (colour treatments, positioning, etc)
Like most things, I'm not sure that 'design' is something that can be achieved quickly and easily - it's one of those things that you have to be a) interested in b) dedicated to and c) have a slight talent or proclivity for.
If it was do-able straight out of the box, there'd be a heck of a lot less whining and moaning on this site mid-week :)