Work Text:
First of all what program are you going to use, if you own photoshop, great, go with that. Here is a video tutorial on the basics of photoshop. if not try gimp, it is a freeware version of photoshop. Don't want to get that involved try canva A free online phot editor, not as powerful as photoshop, but it has design templates ready to use. It has free stock photos (Unsure if can all be used for profit, but some can) and starting designs where you can replace photos, it will also make font pairing suggestions for you.
okay, moving forward, some basic tutorials and refernce lists
An article with lists of free stock photos that explains how to legally use them
A reddit post with a list ofLists of free stock images sites
A huge website with free fonts
An article about 8 basics for good graphic design
A good short article (With photos and examples) on what typography design is and how to understand using different fonts - the design rules for text, or typography is completely different than basic design rules.
An article that goes beyond the basics with good tips to make your typography design better
BASIC ASS BITCH DESIGN TIP #1
when you find something that works, stick with it.
For maximum ease of things looking good and not having to spend too much ntime experimenting or growing as a graphic designer my first go to thing is rectangles in squares. For podfic the standard is square images, most pictures are rectangles, adding space at the top and the bottom of the image makes it a square and leaves blank space for title and author in the image
BASIC ASS BITCH DESIGN TIP #2
Use texture, it makes things better.
You might notice those bottom two (electric sheep, and daisy bunches and heather branches) Look better/More interesting the two above it, that is because instead of a flat color, i used something called texture. Texture is a term for a close up image (either of a real object or generated by computer or illustration) that has an interesting texture to it. Here is an article on some more advanced texture techniques, I don't use any of these that often, I just add it to a blank space to make it visually interesting. Like the images below.
The wait for it one, I searched for interesting textures and ended up with these cool paper close ups that were cut in the shape of mountains. For celestial, the background is what is called geometric texture (Usually a section by itself on stock image websites) for electric sheep i used a geometric background too. All that means is it is a bunch of geometric shapes repeated. For you’re not a Sarlacc I used a close up of marble and manually changed the color. For prison and Princeton I literally just googled hedge in google photo and used that. You can see texture helps fill a blank space in a way that isn't too distracting.
BASIC ASS BITCH DESIGN TIP #3
Pay attention to lighting! It is important
lighting is important if you are compositing pictures ( putting different pictures together.) For the cover for a fanmix (go Away closer) i made I used pictures of Obi-Wan and Anakin form Mustafar (The battle on the lava planet) but I couldn't find a photo of Padme with the same orange lighting, so I added a tint layer of see through orange to a different photo of her. It looks much better than the original photo, but you can still tell the lighting is different. If you don't want to bother with lighting or color tints, turning a picture grayscale is a great way to avoid it like I did for smaller by degrees. (I see many a star wars cover on here, it is possible that i might be Star Wars Trash)
BASIC ASS BITCH DESIGN TIP #4
Don't know how to do something? Google it!
So if i want to do something, but I don't know how, i will google it. Photoshop (And gimp, it is popular and a clone of photoshop, so you can mostly use a photoshop tutorial for gimp as well) is so widely used that everyone and their mother has made a tutorial for doing something in it. For example I wanted a picture of a red yarrow flowers on a man’s chest for the podfic of Hide a heart of war, but google wasn't providing, so I googled how to put a tattoo on a picture in photoshop. I found this tutorial and made this cover with it. The overall design of the cover isn't great, but the tattoo looks pretty darn good.
LESSONS I LEARNED FORM SOMEONE WHO IS DEFINITELY WAY ABOVE BASIC BITCH LEVEL OF DESIGN
Taking a good idea ans making it great
Soooo, creating a look, or cohesive design. Example one, i made the image on the left as a basic outline of what i wanted to do and sent it to my friend lavanderfrost for input on how best to go about it (She studied graphic design) the image on the right she made based on my concept.
You can immediately see how she took my basic concept and made it 100000x better, the dino is less distracting in the background, she uses the same Jurassic park font for the title of the movie, and mixes in two other that work perfectly with each other. She uses the cracked after hours logo at the top (The podfic was from that fandom ) and pulls the yellow from that, and the red from the Jurassic park logo for the other fonts.
BASIC ASS COVERS FROM CONCEPT TO FINISHED PRODUCT
creating the mood you want. I am almost done recording a story called where the people are by crookedswingset. It is a Marvel cinematic universe and deadpool fandom fic. It focuses on Peter (spiderman), Wade (Deadpool) and Vanessa (Deadpool’s fiance) and how the deal with the aftermath of the snap in infinity war and the loneliness they feel for different reasons. I knew from the get go I wanted a background of blurry or shadowy people on a busy street, preferably in grey tones. I searched free stock websites and eventually found this.
So with my background found, I needed the main people!! I googled "sad Tom Holland" (actor who plays spiderman) and I Googled "Tom Holland Photoshoot", and came up with a number of moody photos.
Then I looked for Morena Bacccuarin i had a harder time finding photos i liked, i used the terms "Morena Baccarin sad", Morena Baccarin model", "Morena Baccarin Deadpool"
In the last one she is very sad, but cropped faces and bodies are hell to work with because you have to center the whole design around the crop.
BASIC ASS DEIGN MISTAKES I LEARNED FROM
Don't work with close cropped heads
(I managed to do it for these two, but for a little bit closer [also note the use of a color tint on will graham] it feels really weighted towards the bottom and for shades of grey I had to base the proportions of the characters on Gohan bc cropped head. The two different shades of grey and the text in the center make it work.
Now back to overall design method
Then i went to look for pictures of Ryan Reynolds. I had to use something from a Deadpool movie, because of Deadpool’s scars. I tried googling "Deadpool sad" but it didn't give me anything. I knew of a scene from the first Deadpool movie where he follows Vanessa in secret in street clothes and i went to a screenshot archive and found some form the scene.
Now having multiple images for each person I decided which ones would go together and slapped the text on a first draft
I cropped the people at roughly the same height and added the text, i knew i wanted a bolder sans serif font, but something didn't look right. I posted in a group and asked for help. Someone suggested a bolder font in grey and see through
This was my second draft, they grey made it fade a bit to much and it still wasn't there yet typography wise.
This is the final cover, I added a blue stroke around the text (the glow) and desaturated peter and added a small pixelated filter over everyone.
PARTING BASIC DESIGN BITCH WISDOM
Lastly don't worry if you don't know every detail about using Photoshop/gimp. I certainly still don't know everything after like 7 years of playing around. But I do remember how to do certain things because I like them and use them frequently (stroke aka the outer color around the text, creating opaque aka see through layers, finding and using texture, the color change tool aka changing the color of an image). And anything else you can Google.