giwake
Home Music Games Other

Album Cover Making #1: Issues With Fonts

Alternitavely: "Why Can't I Find A Good Handwriting Font?"

As I work on my album Road Trip Radio, cover art becomes an important part of production. Most musicians make cover art by themselves, but the rich ones usually commission an artist to make a cover for them.
Unfortunately, I am broke as hell (mostly thanks to a recently stolen wallet) and artistically inept. So it's like the worst of both worlds. Do I badger random artists in the vain hope
that one of them will take pity on me, not post me on @forexposure and give me free artwork OR do I attempt to make my own artwork which will most likely be not good?

It's a lose-lose situation. But the latter has 2 upsides. A: I won't be an asshole to random artists AND B: I'll be able to keep all the money I MAY make from the cassette sales. (which are already at a minimal profit
of about $2.50 per cassette if sold at $10 each.)
Unfortunately there's a small issue with making the album cover. Right now the current plan is to make it look like the box of a recorded-over blank cassette, with handwriting showing the album title in a scribble.
I drew a quick and dirty cover to explain it to a friend.
Album Plan Cover
While I was able to take a good photo of a blank J-card, I just can't bring myself to write on one. So the next best thing has to come into plan: Writing on it with Photoshop.

But there's a major issue. I can't find any fitting fonts. I'm currently on page 14 of Dafont's handwriting section and all I can find are similar generic "quirky" fonts that you usually see at makeup shops that
have a bizarrely horrid smell to them. They all look too nice, as if someone had spent hours delicately tweaking each and every pen stroke until it was just marketable enough to sell to advertising execs
looking to make a quick buck. I had a quick look in the "Trash" tab and the closest thing I could find is a font labelled "Stranger Things"... which is weird because it has no relation to the show as far as I can tell.

I want the stuff that looks like it was drawn by a 13 year old on a bumpy car ride with their left hand and upside down from a t-bone accident. It's all too sterilized.

God, I sound like a boomer.


Home Next