crazies: a guide to the mdc

what not to do on a graphic

sandwich and i find a lot of flaws on mdc covers. here is a list of most that we despise so much that they annoy and amuse us greatly. please read the list carefully, for you never know which ones you need specifically to keep in mind.

large watermarks: yes, your graphic is precious to you, but no one wants to steal your shit. if they use it as their examples to get hired, they're gonna get fired because they can't produce similar or better graphics than the ones they stole. we want a cover that shows interest in our stories, not where to go to get a crappy cover that we don't want to use, but you harrased us to use it and made us die in the burning pits of hell for using a graphic that has your name as the main focus. we don't want to have a cover that's secretly a large ad in disguise. you can avoid this by making your watermarks 10px or smaller. put it somewhere unnoticeable, so it blends in but is still legible. you don't want a 30px watermark at the top and center of your graphic in bebas and a bright color; no one wants that. if you can't do this, just don't put a watermark 'cause no one wants to steal your shit anyway. 

overcoloring: this is when your graphic's model looks like he/she's sunburnt, bleeding, purple from loss of oxygen, friggin snow white, thrown into orange powder, or all of the above. this is a huge problem. you will see people with sunburnt models just because they want people to know it's colored. the thing is, we don't need to know if it's colored or not. we can tell it's definitely overcolored.  coloring your graphic was to balance out the colors to make the graphic match, but now that you're turning your models into alien-zombie-werewolf-vampire-demons *shivers*; what is coloring anymore???? this is avoideable by minimizing your coloring or paying attention to the colorings you use. if the coloring is making your model look like he/she's about to pass out from lack of oxygen but making your background look totes fab, you can layer mask the coloring group and erase the parts on your model's skin using a brush on the color black or #000000. let's get one thing straight here though: you can only use psds for photoshop, .xcfs for gimp, and the gradient/color things for pixlr editor are .pxds.

illegible text: this is where your text is blending into your graphic so well that you can't even read it. use a color that is part of the graphic that isn't going to blind people from seeing it too bright or pop people's eyes out for trying to read the darn title. don't  use invert to make everyone see it. It never looks like it belongs, and it doesn't tie your graphic together or anything. it's a horrible mistake that you shouldn't use unless you inverted the whole entire graphic for a cool effect. another thing that causes illegible text is the font. the font shouldn't be super fancy just because you like the font. the font should first match the graphic and secondly, be legible. don't depend on stroke, outer glow, and/or drop-shadow to save you every time. sometimes, they don't look good with your graphic, so always initially depend on the color. always use a color that is on the graphic. a neon green cover with an inverted barbara palvin, a bright #ff0000 red title, and a dark blue subtitle and a same colored author's name with outer glow/stoke will do you and your customer no good. keep it simple enough to read and not blind half the wattpad population. 

ugly text placement: the title is dangerously close to edge of the graphic, the text is on a crowded area, and/or it is just very random and subtle. sometimes, it's ok to make the text fall off the graphic but only when it's intentional. always keep a large margin between the sides of a graphic and your text. otherwise, your text seems too big and in the way. adding text to a crowded area of your graphic will ruin it by hiding the detailed *cough* messy *cough* *cough* parts of your graphic, so it's better to show off those parts rather than cover them up with your fat ugly text. a random text placement would be one that's just on the graphic and seems to have nothing to do with the graphic and is just floating there like a frickin ghost. your text should blend into the graphic some way that doesn't pertain it to be useless, stupid, etc.