VINYL COVER AND TEMPLATES

Artwork is an integral part of your vinyl project. Below, you will find vinyl cover templates for 7-inch or 12-inch, center labels, gate-folds, inner sleeves, and more. To make the best of your artwork please read our recommendations carefully.

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Tips for Cover Design

Before designing your cover, please consider the following:

All cover designs:

CMYK color profile;
5mm bleed on the edges of the covers;
At least 300 dpi/ppi;
Exported as Acrobat 1.3 pdf;

All fonts need to be made into objects:

In Illustrator, it is called “Create outline.”
In Photoshop, it is called “Convert to shape.”
In InDesign, it is called “Create outline.”

Lines and font sizes:

The thicknesses of lines have to be no less than 0.15 mm in positive printing and 0.25 mm in negative printing;
Line thickness for hot foil and embossing has to be at 0.35 mm;
Fonts should have a minimum size of 5pt for positive printing and at least 7pt for negative printing.

Colors:

Black text and lines should be adjusted to overprint with CMYK backgrounds; for metallic and daylight colors, there should be no overprint command;
In combination, the summary of all colors should not be higher than 280% for the ink coverage;
For deep black effects of 100% black, you should under-layer the black with 50% cyan (100% black and 50% cyan);
White fonts on deep black in 1C should consist only of 2 colors, black (+ 50% cyan), not more.

Other requirements:

PDF 1:1, exported or distilled without scaling;
Colour export settings Fogra39
Partial varnish, hot foil, or embossing on the exact position in 100% with one color on a separate page or less;
Without visible cutting lines, folding lines, and punching lines, instead – if necessary – cutting and folding marks;
Outside the bleed area – this is also binding for color bars;
Single placed and centered per page for multipart products, f. e., labels or booklets (single pages or imposed double pages) or similar.

Etching for Vinyl Records

Both traditional chemical etching and new technology laser etching are available to order at RPM Records. We will help you to choose the best method depending on your artistic vision and the nature of the image at hand.

A popular choice among our clients is a single-sided short playback release with etching on one side, or a double LP release with three sides of music and one side etched.