Sketch out a rough draft of your CD cover before you even think about designing it in an image editing program. After you've sketched it out several times, make a very detailed design and then you can get on your computer and begin digitally designing. The more clear-cut your vision, the easier it will be to create.
Make sure the design sticks to the theme of your band, your music and your CD name. For instance, if you're a punk rock band and the theme of your album is "Political Corruption," you don't want to have a soft, fluffy album cover with frilly font.
There are thousands of CDs available at most retail outlets at any given time. Adding too much detail won't necessarily make it stand out. In fact, it could have the opposite effect. Another reason to refrain from adding too much detail is the fact that when your CD cover appears in thumbnail form on iTunes or other websites, the picture will look blurry and convoluted.
There are literally thousands of fonts to choose from, so it's easy to go overboard when picking one that will stand out from the crowd. But selecting a font that's too intricate can make it hard to read. Choosing a font that's difficult to read is counterproductive, since the whole point of a CD cover is to display your band's name and album name.
Several image design programs have the option of "Overprint Preview." Turn this on before you finish your design, as it can completely change the look of your CD cover. Sometimes, when designing, the overprint feature is turned off by default, but when you print the image, it comes out much lighter than you intended.
There's a lot that goes into designing a CD cover, and when you're getting into the details, you'll probably have to zoom in. That's fine for the time being, but make it a point to view your project at 100 percent every once in a while to get an overall feel for what it's going to look like when it's finished.
Before printing your project, turn off the "Scale to Fit" option. This option is used by default, so that regardless of what you're printing, it will be fit to the paper you're using. However, when it comes to CD cover design, you want to see exactly what it will look like when it prints out, so you need to turn off the "Scale to Fit" option to get the full effect of what your cover will look like.