No need to draw this out.
Avoid these three main categories to prevent your RouteNote release artwork from being misleading:
- High profile artists
If artwork contains a picture of a famous musician, even if it was an original drawing and it’s not under copyright, unfortunately this will be seen as misleading. If a customer is on a music store’s site and there’s a release with artwork that contains an image of a high profile musician, it’s not unreasonable for them to expect that the release has something to do with that artist.
This also applies to artwork that resembles famous album covers, contains famous band logos, or anything similar.
Ensure you avoid referencing famous musicians or musical works in your artwork.
- High profile organisations
Artwork also can’t make it look like your release is the official product of a company or organisation. Often, this involves sports teams or competitions. For example, it’s fine to write a song about your country’s football team at the World Cup, but if you include the official FIFA World Cup logo, your national team’s official logo, and a photo of the team, it might look like it’s an official release, put out by your country’s team.
Ensure you avoid using official or trademarked logos in your artwork.
- Charities
It’s absolutely fine to do a charity release, and give the proceeds to a high profile charity. It’s also fine to say in the artwork that it’s a charity release. What you can’t do, unfortunately, is name a high profile charity in your artwork, or use their logos, as this could make it look like the release is officially connected to the charity. Charities tend to be very protective of their image/branding rights, as they’re worried about them being misused to scam or mislead people. It’s fine if your release is for the benefit of a charity that you are officially connected to (e.g. a local charity you have involvement in) please feel free to mention them and use their logos in your artwork.
Ensure you avoid referencing specific famous charities or using their logos in your artwork.
Have a watch of our handy video below for more tips!
Check out the full RouteNote Style Guide here!
See also:
Does my artwork meet RouteNote’s quality standards?
Can I use any image for my release artwork?
Can I use a picture from Google as my artwork?