I helped the Ane Lab with some cover art for their recent paper presenting a network-based model of Aspergillus fumigatus gene regulation. They created a exploratory website anyone can use. The cover can be seen on the Nucleic Acids Research page here.

I drew this cover in Adobe Illustrator. I used a paper texture purchased from True Grit and the built-in Splatter effect in Illustrator. I really like the splatter effect, but geez they slow Illustrator down. I wish Adobe would change how those effects are encoded to be more efficient.

Dr. Ane is one of my favorite long time clients, and I've helped with figures for proposals, a few papers, and other covers. But one thing that made this cover a little different is that the other recent covers from this journal were AI generated. Here is one particularly egregious one:

I think the quality of these covers is low... I've had other journals ask me to sign and certify that no AI was used in the production of the cover art. It's really different journal-to-journal.