Musicians use Adobe products to create album art

  • Published on May 14, 2014
Musicians use Adobe products to create album art

Adobe products like Photoshop and Illustrator are ideal tools for creating digital art works, from movie posters to album covers. Several designers use these applications when creating covers for famous musicians' records. Two musical artists, Meek Mill and Pattern is Movement, have seen success with their album art, which was created using these programs.

Pattern is Movement, a band from Philadelphia, released a self-titled album that features digital, colorful portraits of the group's two members. Adam Heathcott, the graphic designer responsible for the album art, used photographs of the men, then transported them to Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop where he brought out various colors with the applications. 

"I thought the band should be up front and center as it's a self titled album, but I wanted the world to see them how I see them: as infinitely complex humans made from a million prismatic points of color and influence," Heathcott told the Creative Review. 

Another digital artist, Chaz Morgan, has a history of using these applications to craft album art. According to The Source, he has worked with a number of artists, including French Montana and Meek Mill, whose album artwork was named as one of the best of the year.

Learning how to navigate programs like Photoshop and Illustrator is essential for creating artwork for musicians. Adobe Illustrator courses and Photoshop training, both of which are offered by American Graphics Institute, can help designers looking to break into this field.

About the author

 is a user experience designer, Photoshop expert, educator and author based in Boston. She is the author of more than 20 books on design tools and processes, including Adobe Creative Cloud for Dummies, Adobe Creative Cloud Digital Classroom, and Photoshop Digital Classroom. She has been awarded a Microsoft MVP three times for her work with user experience design in creating apps for touch, desktop, and mobile devices.

Jennifer delivers UX training and UX consulting for large Fortune 100 companies, small start-ups, and independent software vendors. She has been hired by Adobe and Microsoft to deliver training workshops to their staff, and has traveled to Asia, Europe, India, the Middle East, and across the U.S. to deliver courses and assist on UX design projects. She has extensive knowledge of modern Windows UX Design, having worked closely with the Windows team to create educational material and deliver UX workshops to key partners globally on behalf of Microsoft. Jennifer works with a wide range of prototyping tools including Fireworks, Photoshop, Illustrator, Blend for Visual Studio, XD, and Balsamiq. She also works extensively in the fields of presentation design and visual design.