Penguin Magazine has announced the winners and runners-up for this year’s Cover Design Awards, an award for emerging designers that received around 1,800 submissions this year.
Until 2022, the competition was known as the Student Design Award, but it was open to emerging designers without higher education, and about a third of this year’s finalists were such designers.
The adult fiction category called for submissions for Daisy Jones and the Six, written by Taylor Jenkins Reid, a novel about a 70s rock band that became a Sunday Times bestseller and was later adapted into an Amazon Prime series.
Cadi Rhind won first place with her heavily shadowed design, pictured above, which was inspired by 70s music playing on road trips with her dad and her subsequent interest in typography and design from that era.
The adult non-fiction book of the year was Atomic Habits by James Clear, which explains how small behavioral changes can transform a life. George Griffiths won the top prize in this category for his layered, fragmented design made from pieces of torn material such as cardboard and paper patched together.
Finally, the children’s category for ages 9 to 11 was based on Nazneen Ahmed Pathak’s City of Stolen Magic, a fantasy take on colonial history. The winner was Charlotte Jennings’ design, which Anna Bilson, children’s art director at Penguin Random House, praised for “expanding the world within the book.”
Each winner will receive six months’ mentoring from a member of the Penguin Art department, and all winners and runners-up will receive a tablet and design book.
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