Label Design???!!!

[anx]

Jim Fish - to make text go in a circle you should use adobe Illustrator

just make a regular circle, then go to your tool box and hold the cursor down on the text option so a bunch of other options come up. select the T with the squiggly line next to it. then click on the circle and start typing.

when u want to bring your illustrator images into photo shop you can either save as a .eps and open it in photoshop or select file/export while in illustrator and export it as a tiff. dont go less than 100 dpi tho or it will look like crap

[Dustin Zahn]

I recommend just contacting your pressing plant and getting the template directly from them. Every pressing plant has templates for their projects. And, if you design your own, you'll probably end up having to copy and paste the design over to their template (which isn't so bad or too hard).

I also recommend trying to get down a style of art that only demands 2 or 3 colors max. By the time you start paying for 4 color labels, it can get pretty pricey. You can make some excellent looking labels using only 2 colors. Learning different shades of colors and what not is also a great way of upping your ante on design.

When doing sleeves, someone said to turn the cover inside out to give it that rough feel. While that is a great technique, remember some plants charge almost double for this. The reason being is that the un-coated side absorbs more ink, so they charge more.

Lastly, try and stay away from fonts that are too small, because they'll come out like shit on the actual label. If you're doing small fonts I've heard a few people recommend using Quark to do the text, but I've never tried it myself. I think someone may have already stated this, but I'll stress it again. Don't do the labels under 300dpi because the quality will be very bad. Doing at 300dpi will make your lines crisp and make your labels look oh so sexy.

Lastly, more of a personal preference, I like labels that have big words. Theres nothing worse than being in a poorly lit club and you're trying to read small print on a record to see what it is. If you have a record with bigger print you can see what you have in your hands and have it on the decks in the mix, in no time. Good luck!

[Jimfish]

cheers anx! thats just the job!