Design an Album Cover for Janet !

Jackson family fans are taking out their art sets again, and this time it's not to draw pictures of happenings inside a courtroom... Janet Jackson is running a contest where loyal fans (or anyone else) can take a crack at designing the cover art for her new album due out September 26.

The contest is in cahoots with Yahoo Music and contestants can use up to 33 images of Jackson to put on the cover they design. I'm assuming none of them include everyone's favorite wardrobe malfunction...

Anyways, this is a great way to spread the news of an upcoming album, as well as get fans involved. For all those diehard Jacksonites, this creates a nice opportunity to show how much they care about Janet by taking the time to enter the contest.

Janet personally picks the four finalists who get to have their cover art actually produced and distributed on some selected publicly sold albums. Yahoo Music reports:

Janet does not give participants any parameters for their designs. She wants them to be uninhibited and to "go for it."

"That's what it's really about," Janet says, "for them to manipulate it and get creative, and go wherever their images takes them."

I don't know how much WOM this contest will generate, but it's caused news outlets such as Billboard to comment on it, so I guess it's doing something. While a contest like this can get some buzz going about a new cd, it's hard to judge in this case because it's not too hard for a Jackson to get press.