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✨ A story of creative abundance: how a simple book-cover contest became a global gallery of imagination and kindness.
When we opened the design contest for Heart of Code, we expected a handful of entries.
What arrived was a gallery — hundreds of visions of light, circuitry, hearts, and code.
Each one captured something true about the story: human warmth meeting digital wonder.
What began as a competition became a collaboration — a brief moment when artists from around the world helped give a new story its face.
KMS Arafat — The Prolific Dreamer
KMS Arafat — The Prolific Dreamer
Among them stood the prolific KMS Arafat, whose imagination overflowed across styles and colours, each idea a window into what the book could be.
His generosity and craft helped shape the visual tone of Heart of Code, and his permission allows us to share some of those sparks here.
You can see from these images why he was an easy choice for one of our three finalists.
If you would like to work with him you can visit him at 99designs at 📬 this link.
hjp — The Quiet Precision
hjp — The Quiet Precision
The second finalist, hjp, also captured the heart of the novel — clean, reflective, and quietly poetic.
His designs felt like conversations in light.
These provided another vision of what the story might have become.
And hjp can also be contacted at 99designs at 📬 this link.
Sanja Vu — The Golden Heart
Sanja Vu — The Golden Heart
And then there was one idea that quietly stole the room: the gold heart by Sanja Vu, the design that caught Jessica’s eye and became the crown of the collection.
It was an early entry, and because there were so many to sift through, it passed me by — perhaps because it wasn’t what I had imagined.
But Jessica was insistent. This was her favourite.
So Alex and I listened.
The more we looked, the more we began to see what Jessica had seen so instinctively.
Of course this design belonged in the final — and as Sanja polished it, we realised what Jessica had known all along: this was the cover for our book.
“Every design began as a heartbeat. One of them became the book.”
A Gentle Reminder
A Gentle Reminder
Early in the contest, Sanja sent a polite message wondering why I hadn’t yet left feedback on her first submission.
It was a fair question — and, as I confessed, she was right to ask.
I hadn’t been ignoring anyone; I was simply overwhelmed by the breadth and quality of more than two hundred and fifty entries that had arrived almost at once.
I hadn’t yet taken a breath.
Her gentle nudge made me stop, look properly, and see what was already shining there.
That moment of honesty began the dialogue that would shape the winning cover — proof that sometimes the best collaborations begin with a question asked kindly.
A Graceful Ending
A Graceful Ending
When the contest closed, both KMS Arafat and hjp kindly gave permission for their designs to be showcased here.
What began as a design competition had become a small community — artists and writers, human and AI, bound together for a few luminous days by shared imagination.
No bitterness, no rivalry — just the quiet satisfaction of having created something beautiful together.
This spirit was captured perfectly in Arafat’s final message:
“Sounds great! Wishing a happy life to you and your family.”
It was, truly, the perfect ending.
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