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.
messy graphics: these are graphics that have too much. yes, manipulation is nice when you use it correctly, but when you start layering every single texture you find and your graphic looks a mix between rainbow and a shitload of...shit, then stop. you're making something to relate to the story enough to interest the reader, not give the whole plot 'cause that's a whole load of shit they don't need to know until they start reading; not to mention, it ain't pleasing to the eye. i don't wanna see the whole plot of a jb one shot of him getting surgery in becoming female or something like that. i want to see something cute that gives off a general idea of the story, not something massive that is your whole story. having a general idea or some inspo for certain graphics helps with the "messy" problems. ideas are usually not so abstract that it has 50 layers of different things, all of which have their own spot. if you're making a blend, it's understandable if you have many layers, but if its 50 different objects and images, there most likely is a problem. don't use more than 2, maybe 3, people on a cover. then it get's too messy unless you're doing their heads or part of the body. there's a reason that lots of 1d covers never look so great. keep it simple if you have to, but never do too much on a graphic.
pixelly graphics: these are really annoying 'cause not only is your graphic ugly, but it's low quality. you can make sure your graphic is high quality by saving it as a .png or .jpg at 100%. if that doesn't work, then it's the images you chose. an example of high quality image is in the media section of this chapter. if your picture isn't as high quality as that image, then don't use it. if it's close enough, then you can possibly use it, but it wouldn't be as good as using a higher quality one. there are lots of examples of high quality images on my weheartit (cathykiley) #SHAMELESSADVERT, mainly in my food/peeps/stocks collections if you need any more. finding high quality images is crucial to making graphics because coloring can reduce the quality of your graphic, therefore, you need the highest quality and save it at the highest quality. they are also nicer looking, improving your graphics. when you get PNG's, don't get one that is 100x100 sized and the thing isn't even filling up the whole space, get one that is at least 512x800 sized unless it isn't a significant part or you're manipulating something, so you don't have to stretch out the png to make it look pixelly and low quality.
over-topaz: this is when you used topaz clean on your graphic (found in photoshop) and your models/nature/background look like blurred then sharpened messes of ugly. your model's either looking like a doll or a wrinkled grandma. topaz is supposed to be used to smoothen your graphic. sometimes topaz is just bleh 'cause most graphics don't even need it, but people use it because it seems like a part of graphic-making where you have to topaz your graphic at least once. it apparently makes your graphic better somehow (if your model's a wrinkled grandma or a barbie doll), and sometimes it looks good, but most people will overuse it. i honestly don't have topaz anymore 'cause it kept glitching on me which froze my ps every time i needed to use it plus my ps, at on point, completely died on me. i uninstalled ps and months later reinstalled, but i didn't reinstall topaz because it was just ugh. luckily for you, there are these things called topaz presets which are presets of amounts of topaz that will usually look good. they come from other designers that use topaz, and you can make some of your own although your first preset will most likely look nasty. topaz presets from other more experienced designers are more trusted to look good and be nice. if you ever decide to use topaz, you're going to have to use a preset at first just in case unless you want to go through a blurred or wrinkled mess phase.
the wrong size: your graphic is called a "cover" and it looks like a square or a friggin banner. book covers are not shaped as squares or rectangles with the long sides on the top and bottom. so let's get this straight, book covers are 256x400, 320x500, or 512x800 in pixel length or any of their ratios. No i am not saying make a 5x149 cover, at the least make it 256x400. Banners have no correct size, but some common sizes are 700x110, 900x200, and anything where the width is bigger than height. I use 500x200 (even though that would make it called a signature). i know someone who makes them in 700x300 and other random sizes, but there is no "real" banner size. blends are these large more square shaped banners. they're close to the shape of a square, but they aren't exactly a square. a lot of people mistakenly call these banners when they're actually blends just like how some people confuse signatures to be banners. wattpad now uses signatures as a sort of banner size because people usually don't use signatures on wattpad since we don't have a section of our profile to add a signature, and people add their titles and author names instead of something random that they like or their name. in some cases people call the signature a signature-banner because its so different from a banner in width. (just had to get that straight because it's weird sometimes)
other mistakes: colorings are also known as "psds" although it isn't the correct term. a psd is a "photoshop document," and a coloring is saved through a psd thus people calling them psds. a psd can also be of a graphic or whatever people put into a psd file that keeps all the layers, so if you ask people on other websites (ex. deviantart), people may ask you whether you wanted their graphic or wanted the coloring. if we called all the colorings the file that keeps all the layers, on pixlr, people would call those layered documents .pxd's, on gimp, .xcf's, and on other programs, whatever they call them.
finally, there are many other errors people make when it comes to graphic designing that make us cringe so bad, but these are some sandwich and i find especially important (that we can remember). again, if there is anything that you find needs to be recgonized as a horrible mistake that is missing from this chapter, don't be afraid to comment unless you're here to make a excuse about whatever we found as a common error. we will shoot you down with our amazing arguments cause sandwich don't give up and meatball... she's just polite and makes you go away all happy like...bleh.