First-ever Smash Cake contest: Make our cover layout suck less!

Okay, folks. We need some help.

We have the cover art picked out, a piece by the fabulous Jasmine Worth, and it’s ready to go.

We’ve also decided that we’re going to go with a trim size of 8.5 x 8.5, in black and white, on gloss paper. It will be shiny and partly darkish and very pretty. We know that.

Here’s the problem:

The concept of a square book cover and a rectangular painting are not playing nicely with each other in our brains. We’ve been over and over it, and it’s just not coming together.

The artwork is definite; we love the piece and have already worked out details with Jasmine, so there will be no changing it. It’s perfect, and we’re using it. Period.

But how do we make it all fit smoothly?

We’ve been Photoshopping all week in hopes of posting a finished cover image to show you by the weekend–and here we are on Friday night, still nonplussed. (Except now, we’re more tired.)

We’re graphic designers, even. We do this for a living. But it’s like trying to edit your own work; we’re just too invested. Forest, trees, and all of that. We’re stuck!

Therefore, we are turning to you, you fabulous creative people, and hoping you can help us out.

Here’s the deal:

Show us something that inspires us into creating a great result, and win a free copy of Smash Cake Issue 1 mailed to you when it hits the stands in the fall.

In fact, if you are the one who gives us the “eureka” element that makes sense of the layout problem, we’ll send you your issue when the review copies get mailed out. You’ll get to see what’s inside Smash Cake Magazine before everyone else, and the global bragging rights will be endless! (Or something. We don’t know. We’re making this up as we go here.)

Here’s how to play:

Go to the comment trail of this post, and link to an image that is:
1.) square (or close) with a rectangular object as the focal point
2.) well-textured
3.) striking
And give us some random food for thought on what we could do.

We will not copy any found image. That’s not what this is about. That would be plagiarism, and that is wrong. We will not recreate any image that is posted, nor use any original part of it. We know how to design, photograph, and color. We just need to see some layout options that work; nothing more, nothing less. Our fonts are already chosen, our overall color scheme is set, our interior ad sizes and rates are finalized–and did I mention that Jasmine Worth is awesome? She is.

We’re not looking for a knock-off job of someone else’s design. We’re only having trouble articulating our own. Show us someone who gets it, who makes the layout jump off the page, and who can inspire us to fix our graphic stalemate using our own elements.

We just want groovy links to pieces that make us think, to layouts by people who have solved the SQUARE + RECTANGLE problem long before we even had it, and to pics that will springboard our bothered brains (and bloodshot eyes) into the perfect solution. Album covers, posters, other book covers, your mom’s recipe cards on Flickr, whatever! Just give us some new ideas. Ours haven’t worked yet.

Here’s how to win:

After some unspecified amount of time (sorry, no clue), we will announce the name of the commenter who gave us the lightning bolt that made everything click, and mail him or her one free copy of the magazine out of the very first box we receive from the printer. We will contact the winner via email, so be sure to include a valid email address when you’re commenting or we won’t be able to get back with you to find out how to deliver your prize.

One final word: please DO NOT hotlink your image entries to the site. We need only the HTTP address (from your browser bar above) cut-and-pasted into your comment, so that we can click and view the image where it is already located. Hotlinking is bad, in case you don’t know, because it uses up all the bandwidth paid for by the person whose page the image originally comes from. We don’t do that.

We do nice things.

And contests.

So, are you game? Get to linking.