This week, we pitted five designers, ad agencies, and design firms against each other in a competition to create our cover. The entrants: former Kate Spade design director Alan Dye, the Wieden+Kennedy ad agency (Nike, Nokia, ESPN), designer Carin Goldberg (whose work includes those ubiquitous Vonnegut paperback covers), branding firm Wolff Olins (which ran the New Museum’s launch campaign), and motion-graphics outfit Gretel (which works for MTV, among many others). The competitors submitted a total of 25 concepts between them. Says New York design director Chris Dixon, “Everyone did such amazing work that in the end we wimped out and picked two”—one for subscribers and one for newsstands. Both of the winners, and several of the worthy runners-up, are presented here.