Blown Covers

Thank you to everyone who wrote in this weekend to help us figure out the new monthly Blown Covers contest format. Your advice was invaluable. Here’s what you told us:

1. Keep the deadline short. Artists need the pressure of a deadline to force them to the drafting table. So - you only have a week! But, you’ll also have the weekend. We’re not monsters.
2. Keep the submissions private. Though many artists submit for reasons other than a shot at the real New Yorker cover, part of what makes this contest exciting for us is that Francoise can and does pull images from the general pool to hold for consideration at the magazine. This is why we ask artists to keep their submissions confidential until we post them. We’d floated the idea of asking artists to upload submissions to a public gallery, but those public images would then be ineligible as covers. So! We’ll continue to collect submissions through the contest submissions page as we have been doing. 
3. Don’t open the contest to voting. Many of you told us that you value having one person’s opinions and sensibility to work for. So, we’ll continue to judge the contest ourselves, and we’ll continue to eagerly read your comments on everything we post. 
4. Keep up the Artist spotlights. Ok! As you’ll see on the new calendar below, we’ve devoted one week to our favorite non-blown covers images. I’ll also be posting a few extra things on non-designated days when I have time. 
5. Create a newsletter. With a monthly schedule, it may be more difficult for artists and our followers to keep track of new contest themes and deadlines. We’ll be setting up a newsletter that you can subscribe to, through which we’ll alert you when we announce new themes. 

Thank you all for your enthusiasm, talent and support. We’ll post the winners of last week’s contest later this week and then we’ll begin on the new format by announcing a new contest theme this Friday.