A Look at the Best of the Best of New York Cover Competition -- New York Magazine

On the Cover

Published Mar 3, 2008

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.

Competition breeds the best. If only one pizzeria existed in New York, of course, there’d be no real winning slice. Thankfully, we’ll never know what that sorry situation tastes like, since pizza—like dance parties, dog runs, and fried chicken—has to evolve upward here.