Bill's Guide to Preparing Elements of a CD Package

2. Text inside the booklet.

This stuff falls into 3 categories generally.
First is the listing of musicians. If pretty much the same players played on all the songs in the recording, it’s best to just list them all in one big group. Use the format:

Players name; inst. #1, inst #2, etc -- listing as many instruments as each guy played.

If the make up of the band is radically different from cut to cut, it may be better to list each group separately by tune title.

If the band is basically the same from cut to cut with a few additions, put the special players at the end of the list and you can use special symbols like *, • &Mac198; etc to match them to certain tunes.

Secondly there are the credits. Typical credits include, Executive Producer, Producer, Recording Engineer, additional engineers, Studio Credit, Mastering engineer, Photography, cover art, cover/booklet layout and design.

Then there are the acknowledgements. These would be the thank-yous to people who may or may not be directly involved with the project in a non-performing way, or just influential people in the artist’s life. Also if there are any instrument or equipment endorsements, they would go here.

Lyrics

If you want to include lyrics be aware that in almost every case it will involve more panels on your booklet, driving up the cost considerably. Lyrics are best brought to me on disc with all the songs put in one word processing document, listed in the same order as on the CD master, saved in your word processor’s "text only" format. Files saved this way generally have the file suffix ".txt". These can be either brought on disk or emailed to me as a file attachment. DO NOT paste them into the body of an email message as that will add unwanted carriage returns at the end of lines...

Format the lyrics this way:

1. Song Title
First line of lyric
second, etc.
~~~~~~~~~~
Last line of lyrics...

2. Song Title
1st line etc..

Remember to include blank lines between verses/choruses and after the last line of the song but don’t include them if you’re going to do things like this:

“last line of verse 2”

Chorus

“1st line of verse 3”

Leave the space before and after "Chorus" out as it will just clog up your document with a lot of spaces I’m going to just have to take out later. When you have lyrics it is always a challenge to get them squeezed into the space allotted.

And I hope it goes without saying that: DON’T TYPE THE LYRICS IN ALL UPPERCASE LIKE THIS!!! Use upper and lower as appropriate and there should generally be a comma or a period at the end of every line. The usual rules of grammar apply here to so don’t blow it on: there’s vs. theirs or any of those common pitfalls.

One last thing:
USE YOUR BLEEDING SPELL CHECKER!!! I will not be responsible for misspellings. I am on the lookout for that stuff and will mention things that I see, but I won’t take the rap for it!

The last page of the booklet typically is similar to the Tray Card in content with slight layout modifications: a listing of the tunes, their times, copyright assignments and the like. This is usually a full color page so don’t waste it!

A word about color vs. black and white: In the booklet, since your front cover is in full color, any other panel of your design that is on the same side of the same piece of paper may also be in full color for no additional charge. But if you do the other side of the paper in full color too, it will cost about an additional $400! In a 4 page booklet, pages 1 & 4 are color and 2 & 3 are B&W. In a 6 pg folding 1, 5, & 6 are color and 2, 3, 4 are B&W. In an 8pg booklet (not folding) 1 & 8 are the color pages; if it’s folded then 1, 6, 7, 8 are the color pages.

Also, the lyrics pages are frequently good places to drop in small (postage stamp sized) B&W candid photos that may have gotten taken during the sessions or wherever. You can also take photos and make them full-bleed (to the edge of the page) but highly reduce their contrast so they’re mostly grey, and put the lyrics right on top of them. This is fairly common.

Major Element #2: The Tray Card

This is the "back of the album" as you see it when it is all packaged and sitting in the stores. Notice that it is not square! Design adjustments will need to be made...
This is where you have a list of the tunes and times. Don’t blow off the times! They are very important to DJs and CDs with no times don’t get played as often. Typical format for a tune listing would be formatted like this in your word processor
1. <TAB> Song Title (composer in paren. type is 2-4pts smaller) <TAB> Time <Return>

The tray card is typically a full color panel.

For some additional bucks, ($50 plus cost of printing) you can have your jewel case fitted with a clear plastic CD tray which will allow 2-sided printing on the tray card. Not a big deal but the cool thing about this is you can have that normally black plastic vertical area to the left of the front cover on the front be clear with a clear tray, and then move the Album title/Artist to the 2nd side of the tray to show through there, the newly clear area. This allows a more "pure" version of your cover art, especially if the nature of the photo or painting is ruined by just putting letters over it, or lettering is impractical due to an extreme light area/dark area transition thing in the photo or painting.
Printing in black & white on the 2nd side of the tray is about $60 and if you want full 4-color printing on both sides of the tray card, it will be about $400 extra.

The bar code goes here as well. It will generally be supplied by the manufacturer

Major Element #3: The Disc

Nominally, the disc is a two-color environment; all colors for inclusion on the CD must be picked from the PANTONE series of solid colors. You must specifiy them by number which you can find in a swatch book or many page layout software programs have them as a series of color schemes you can choose from. On the CD you can have screens in one or both colors (so photos are possible although the resolution isn’t so hot) or you can use one color 100% solid on the whole disc (or part) and use the other color to print on top of it. This is definitely recommended if you are going to be using screened photos. You can also "fake" a third color by using "reverse type" to allow the silver of the disc to show through the solid color to give certain elements a different look. Additional colors on the CD will be about $60 extra per color.
You can put the tune titles on there or not, some people just put art only on there with no lettering whatsoever but I think this is dangerous; you should at least have the name of the artist and the album title somewhere in case the disc ends up in a CD wallet or disc changer (both instances have the CD separated from it’s jewel box).

So here’s the Checklist

[ ] Front cover photo or artwork
[ ] Musician listings
[ ] Credits
[ ] Acknowledgements
[ ] Lyrics (optional; separate word processing file please)
[ ] List of Songs with composers and times (separate word processing file please)
[ ] Copyright and Publishing Assignments
[ ] Tray card layout, usually includes color photo, additional photo/text for 2nd side (optional)
[ ] Disc itself layout and color choices (pick two...)

Hope this helps. Of course there are a million variations on all this, most of which have something to do with cost. It’s a good idea to go looking at the art and design of some of the CDs in your collection and see if anything design-wise catches your eye and you can use similar concepts in your design.

Good luck and spellcheckproofreadspellcheckproofreadspellcheckproofreadspellcheckproofread!!!