Taking a stab at a SILENT CITY cover

So, while tinkering with PhotoShop yesterday, I decided to take a stab at working up a cover for SILENT CITY. Above is what I came up with. Thoughts? Am I being pretentious by even posting this?

Obviously, the images need to be a bit more hi-res and the smudging may work better as a dark red (Blood! Get it?), but overall I was pretty happy with the end result.

I also blacked out my name (which would be under the "A NOVEL" line) for obvious reasons.

Anyway, just thought I'd share.

Go ahead, judge a book by its cover. Please.

This is pretty neat:

As part the first year of Hearts & Minds, Creativity partnered with Penguin Books on a talent contest, asking artists of all types to conceive a cover design for one of the publisher's upcoming titles. Penguin, as you may know, appeared in our Creative Marketers report last year, for bringing an updated art-driven aesthetic to its book covers. Notably, its Graphic Classics have become veritable collectors items, with cover art reimagined by contemporary artists like Frank Miller, Tomer Hanuka, Roz Chast and Art Spiegelman.

Penguin and Sam Taylor, author of The Amnesiac, kindly offered up Taylor's upcoming novel The Island at the End of the World as the foundation of our competition. Designers, illustrators, painters and photographers contributed more than 300 ideas for the cover design of Taylor's new book, and a jury comprised of Penguin editor Alexis Washam, creative director Paul Buckley and Creativity editors selected the 25 finalists presented here.

Click here to view the other 24 finalists. I've posted my favorite up top.

Also, here's an item about the best covers of 2007, from The New York Times.

And just to personalize things a tad, here are a few of my favorite book covers, off the top of my head:















What are some of your favorite book covers? What makes them great? Feel free to include links to the images.

[Via Galleycat]