Awards: Third Annual ASME Best Cover Competition

American Society of Magazine Editors announced the best magazine covers of the year (US editions) on October 6 in the following Categories: Cover of the Year, Best Celebrity Cover, Best Concept Cover, Best Fashion Cover, Best News Cover, Best Leisure Interest Cover and Best Personal Service Cover, with special recognition of the year’s best coverline.

AND THE WINNERS ARE…

• Cover of the Year – New York, March 24, 2008:
The cover treated the scandal concerning the fall of Governor Eliot Spitzer, after the stunning revelation that he had patronized a prostitution ring, in a bold yet disarming way that managed to make news itself—telling the story of the governor’s fall with a wry and unflinching point of view. The word “BRAIN” in a bright-red box with an arrow pointing to the area of Spitzer’s anatomy that seemed to have been thinking for him cover required no headlines. The image succeeded powerfully all by itself.

• Best Celebrity Cover – Texas Monthly, May 2008: Willie Nelson and guitar

• Best Concept Cover – The New Yorker, February 11 & 18, 2008: “Eustace Tillarobama”
This anniversary issue cover of The New Yorker reinterprets Rea Irvin’s classic Eustace Tilley image to produce “Eustace Tillarobama,” a two-headed playing card image that featured the leading Democratic presidential candidates dressed as the New Yorker icon, sharing his famous monocle. Half of the run featured Obama on top and Clinton on the bottom; in the other half, Clinton had the upper hand.

• Best Fashion Cover (Tie) – New YorkLook, Spring 2008: Catwalk; Vanity Fair, September 2007: Gisele Bündchen

• Best News Cover – New York, March 24, 2008: Eliot Spitzer’s “Brain”

• Best Personal Service Cover – TexasMonthly, June 2008: “The Top 50 BBQ Joints in Texas”

• Best Leisure Interest Cover – New York, June 30, 2008: “The Summer Issue” (John McCain and Barack Obama at the Beach)

To view the cover image gallery, visit www.magazine.org/bestcover.