Penguin has announced the winners and runners-up for this year’s Cover Design Award aimed towards emerging designers, which received nearly 1,800 entries this year.
The competition was known as the Student Design Award until 2022, when it opened up entries to emerging designers who hadn’t studied at higher education, who made up nearly a third of the shortlist this year.
The adult fiction category invited people to create a design for Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid. The novel, which follows a rock band in the 70s, was a Sunday Times bestseller and has since been adapted into an Amazon Prime series.
Cadi Rhind won first place for her heavily shadowed design, shown at the top, drawing inspiration from the 70s music that soundtracked car journeys with her father, and her subsequent interest in the era’s typography and design.
The book for the adult non-fiction category was Atomic Habits by James Clear, which explains how small behaviour changes can be life-changing. George Griffiths earned the top prize for this category with his layered, fractured design, which involved piecing together torn materials such as cardboard and paper.
Finally, the children’s category for nine- to 11-year-olds is based on City of Stolen Magic by Nazneen Ahmed Pathak, which handles colonial history through a fantasy-tinged lens. First place has gone to a design by Charotte Jennings, which Penguin Random House Children’s art director Anna Billson praised for how it “opens up the world inside the book”.
Each winner will receive a six-month mentorship with a member of the Penguin Art Department, and all winners and runners-up win tablets and design books.
