Most people tend to judge the quality of a book or CD by its cover. No matter, how many money and time may have gone into producing the content, if the cover is amateurish you have already lost half the battle even before you begun.

The more professional approach would be to treat the cover of a CD or DVD as its calling card that informs the targeted audience about the content in an attractive way. A customized CD or DVD graphic cover is the first step in appropriately packaging a product that is to be commercially released.

Basically, an appealingly designed cover serves three main purposes, such as

Helps in selling the product

A professionally designed CD cover gives presents your product in an appealing way and grabs attention of the buyer from among the stacks of other CD releases on the shop shelves. To make your CD get noticed from the clutter of competitive releases is a big step in ensuring better sales and that is what a good cover does.

Gives the CD or DVD a unique identity

Cover art helps the audience to distinguish from various CDs or DVDs. It informs the targeted audience about they can expect inside the CD. For instance, if it is a music CD, the name of the album, the singer’s name and song tracks are neatly listed in the cover.

Allows the audience to know the product

The more professional the looks of the cover, the better are the chances of your CD being picked up by the buyers.  A tastefully done cover with say, a picture of the artist (if it is a music release) or a still from the movie (if it is a film release) and so on goes a long way in convincing a customer about the quality of the content inside and prompts a purchase decision.

Why a professional graphic designer?

It is true that nowadays it is possible to design page layouts with the help of various software applications, but very people have the required designing skills or adequate knowledge of hardware and software to ensure a professional looking CD cover. CD packaging is a crucial marketing step, and an experiment by amateurs is not a good idea. Don’t think of designing a cover by yourself if you don’t know the basics of designing. 

There are many CD and DVD duplication service providers in London, New York, or say Mumbai, who also deal in CD packaging and CD cover designing. Good graphic designers have the talent to take the rough cover concepts of the customers and transform them into a great cover design. At times, they also come up with a complete graphic concept, design and cover layout to give your project maximum marketing impact.

Moreover most of the "professional" graphic designers design CD covers on a Mac platform using QuarkXPress with Adobe Photoshop & Illustrator, and exporting the final layout from Quark as a printable PDF. It ensures minimum printing complications and a good quality final product.

Frankly speaking, there is no substitute for hiring a trained graphic designer to work on your cover design. They have experience, technical skill and knowledge of all the proper tools of the trade to give a final product that you will be proud of.