Cover up!

Only two weeks ago we presented you the cover options for our upcoming volume of 200 Best Digital Artists. I wanted to keep the winner a secret until the issue came out and I could officially present it to. Unaware of my intention, however, my dear colleague Diana Dragomir, in all innocence, went ahead and revealed it on her Facebook account. So, for the ones who don't receive Diana's feed here is the cover of our Digital Artists special. It's by Surachai Puthikulangkura's Illusion Studio in Bangkok, and was originally created for Playboy brand condoms. Surachai is the highest-ranking illustrator/digital artist and also the man interviewed in this new volume of 200 Best Digital Artist. So, this is what it will look like when it comes out at the end of the month (although we still might be fiddling a bit with the colour of our logo). 

Isn't it gorgeous? Those who have read the blog in which I presented the cover options for 200 Best Digital Artists, are bound to notice that this image had not been among the choices back then. Neither you nor us who work for Archive in Vienna, New York, London, Bucharest, Rome, Frankfurt, and Berlin could agree on one of them for the cover, so I tried to find an alternative which would win over a majority of us at Archive. This is what we finally came up with! Although, to be honest, it was mostly Christine Thierry's and my decision to opt for this stunning (and depending where you are from, slightly provocative) digital image. So there you are. 

No rest for the wicked, however. We now have to decide what to put on the cover of the first issue of Archive magazine in 2019, which will be published simultaneously with 200 Best Digital Artists worldwide Vol. 19/20. These are the options we have:

Number one comes from a poster campaign for Ford Original Parts by JWT in Santiago de Chile. 

The second one is from a campaign for Adidas and features legendary tennis player Billie Jean King. I was amazed that none of my colleagues in Vienna had even the faintest idea who she was. Ok, the famous tennis match between her and Bobby Riggs took place in 1974, when most of them weren't even thought of, let alone born. I guess the whole affair, which is also the subject of the recent movie "Battle of the Sexes," starring Emma Stone as BJK and Steve Carell as Bobby Riggs did not get as much attention and coverage in the then rather backwards and insular country as Austria as it did in the US. Anyway, the agency behind this campaign is TBWA\Chiat\Day, New York.

 The third cover option comes from McCann in Bogotá and advertises "musical pillows" by the Spring Mattresses company.

Another famous artist makes an unexpected appearance in cover option no. 4. The image is taken from aa Swiss campaign by Zurich agency Ruf Lanz and it's for Welti-Furrer, a company specializing in national and international fine art shipping.  Headline: "We transport art as carefully as if we had created it ourselves."

Our final cover alternative for Vol. 1-19, a poster from a campaign by J.Walter Thompson, Hong Kong, for a campaign to promote exclusive movie deals and credit card offers by the HSBC bank. The illustration is by Cuson Lo.

I hope there is something here that you like. At any rate, let us know which one you favor. You can do this in the comments section of the Facebook post of this blog. Looking forward to seeing what your first choice of cover for 1-19 will be.