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CD Artwork - 3 color shennanigans
TimTheSloth
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I'm designing a CD, needs to be 3 colors. I'm not all that experienced with the 3-color limited pallet. Does anyone have any thoughts or ideas about this CD design? Some of the shading lines are obviously preliminary.
Here is the rest of the CD for context. If there is something terribly wrong here feel free to point it out as well. Bar code, spine etc. still to be added.
Here is the rest of the CD for context. If there is something terribly wrong here feel free to point it out as well. Bar code, spine etc. still to be added.
TimTheSloth on
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1. you might want to experiment with slightly darker blues for more contrast. (Personal perference) Also, why are the coloring styles of the wave so different? Personally I like the background pattern more.
2. The uneven line of surrounding the name of the band near the edge of the cd is awkward. Let the edge bleed off the edge of the cd.
insides:
1. text saying who plays what is too tightly leaded(a bit hard to tell because of the resolution). Put a little more space between the lines of text, bottoms of some lines of text are nearly touching the tops of others and that will make it tough to read.
2. Consider moving down the image of the dude with the hat on. It's too close to the text. You could also adjust the width of the text so it fits the length of the page.
back:
1. You see how there's a line separating the grass that the band is sitting on and the bare ground? Move the titles down a little bit so that line runs across the whole image. It'll look more consistent.
there's probably more stuff but I'm so blitzed out of my mind that I can't think of anything else
I was pondering getting rid of the uneven line defining the water, the idea was to make it seem like it was something like a container... still up in the air about how it works visually. As far as the difference in styles I didn't really intend the background to be specifically waves as much as a vaguely turbulent solid visual element that called out and contrasted the other focal elements.
I forgot to mention in the original post that the brightly colored lines on the inside are safe/crop/bleed lines so they won't be showing up in the actual print.
i assume that only the cd itself is 3c? the rest of the design looks 4c.
last cd i did, it was 3c, but they meant RGB. so it was, technically, full color. if you don;t have a cd place picked out, pm me and i;ll give you the name of the guy i work with.
They asked for the artwork in RGB format?
The CD you've designed looks to me like it could be run two colour. Or, a base coat* plus black. Is the light shading grey or a light blue?
*Screen or litho printing CDs usually involves applying a white base coat before printing and may sometimes be considered an extra colour
i know that some of the big format (10'x8' display) printers use rgb too. or atleast the guys running it specify 100dpi rgb jpg (quality maxed out). something with the rip software likes it better that way.
Nah, you can't print with RGB because you can't print with light.
Could be that the rip software gets better colour out of RGB artwork though. Digital ink tends to have a wider colour gamut than litho, so I guess pre-converting files to CMYK might take out colours that would otherwise print ok on a digital.
How did your CDs look btw? I recently had some printed digitally and the substrate the CD was coated with was a bit less than great (to put it politely) so fine details and text are a bit squidgy. Litho definitely gives a much better finish if your prepared to fork out for a minimum run of 500.
the last one i did turned out... ok. but it was boring corporate stuff, so there wasn;t much to it. back when i was doing band cds for fun (and not much profit), we usually did 1c and 2c stuff on the disc.
and the diskmakers self serve thing specifies:
Image Requirements:
1. Image resolution must be 300 dpi
2. Image color mode must be RGB
and they only seem to have full color/black only. i dunno if its different if you talk to them.
so for the OP, are you saying that you are only using a few colors, or that you are printing with 3 inks, because there is a big difference.
Diskmakers is great! Lots of good deals there. When you work with 3 colors you can sometimes make cool colors by printing one color on top of the other knocking down the transparency a bit. Though, I don't think you can do it with that particular color cobination you're using.
At the diskmaker's page you can download a template for the CD and CD box you're gonna be using. It's very helpful. One less thing to worry about on your design list.
Aye, that's normal with digital print. The machines all run four colour inks (basically like a desktop inkjet) so you can't do spot colours efficiently, but you can always print 'just black' which is usually a bit cheaper because they'll buy loads of black ink and can make the printer only print via the black channel.
If he's getting them screen printed, he'll be able to specify spot colours. He'll need to make sure his artwork is properly set-up though. Basically the same thing as if you're designing t-shirts.
Tim, are you comfortable with setting up spot colour artwork, because I can give pointers there if you need it so you can get the artwork out the door ready to print first time (hint - if the file is RGB or CMYK photoshop then it probably isn't print-ready for spot colour printing).
I will post up some edits later today.
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You'd need to change the size of your type, or place the copyright info in one line below the line art just inside the safe area.