The Blown Covers Of Mother's Day

The Blown Covers Of Mother’s Day

by The Awl

The May 7th issue of The New Yorker features a Mother’s Day-themed cover by Chris Ware. The art editor who oversaw its creation is Françoise Mouly, who, since joining The New Yorker in 1993, has guided more than 950 of the magazine’s covers, including some of the most iconic of recent years (including the September 11, 2001 black-on-black cover with Art Spiegelman, and Barry Blitt’s “terrorist first bump” cover in 2008). In the new book Blown Covers, Mouly shares cover concepts that never made it on the magazine, with sketches from a roster of New Yorker artists with whom she works regularly.

In addition to her duties at the magazine, Mouly also contributes comments to Blown Covers, a blog created and run by Nadja Spiegelman to promote the book. Each week, the blog hosts a weekly covers contest that mirrors The New Yorker’s actual cover schedule. Anyone is welcome to submit, and Mouly reviews all the images, picks winners, provides editorial comments and posts them on the blog on Fridays. Included here are images from the site’s Mother’s Day Contest, along with Mouly’s editorial notes. (There’s also a bonus sketch not seen elsewhere: it’s by the infamous Barry Blitt and was sent to Françoise at the magazine to liven up her Mother’s Day line-up.)

Mouse over each image to see Francoise’s notes on the entries.