We had two covers this week: one on the world’s fiscal delusions and the other on Turkey’s chance to sack a strongman. They are both gripping topics. All around the world, government finances are worse than politicians seem to realise, and that will affect taxes and public services. Meanwhile, in a country of vast strategic importance, voters may be about to end a 20-year slide towards autocracy, inspiring democrats everywhere.

Illustrating budgets is hard. No one wants to look at someone counting a heap of beans. So we riffed on the notion that politicians are living in a “fiscal fantasyland”. One idea showed a rainbow, suggestive perhaps of “The Wizard of Oz” or the legendary place where a crock of gold can be found, with a brick wall behind it. The path politicians are currently following leads to disappointment. Another idea was based on “Rapunzel”, the fairy tale. A handsome prince scales a tower, using a long receipt rather than a maiden’s tresses. A lovely idea, but probably best to avoid images of royalty this week, in case British readers think they have something to do with the coronation.

For many people “fantasy” means swords, sorcery and monsters. We conjured up a picture of an accountant rolling multi-sided dice, as if playing “Dungeons & Dragons”. And another of an accountant’s shirt pocket with a sword and a wand nestled among the pens.

An image of happy figures dancing in a dream world, blinded by receipts, was so good that we worked it up into an almost-final cover. But in the end we preferred a different vision of fiscal fantasyland. An early sketch still had a dragon in it. We took it out and added a skyscraper-like calculator and magic coins glinting in the clouds. The end result was attractive and completely unreal—like so many politicians’ promises.

Leader: Governments are living in a fiscal fantasyland
Finance & economics: America faces a debt nightmare

For Turkey, the cover shown to readers in mainland Europe, the Middle East and Africa, we considered an image we nearly used for a previous cover. This showed President Recep Tayyip Erdogan pushing the star and crescent of the national flag off a cliff. But the big story this month is that voters may be about to push Mr Erdogan out of his palace. We needed something suggesting that his time may be running out. A photo of him trapped in an hourglass captured this idea neatly.

However, we wanted to emphasise the role of ordinary voters. If enough of them ignore official propaganda, which blames the country’s economic woes on foreign plots rather than on Mr Erdogan’s rather original monetary policies, they could save their country. We considered a picture of a tatty Erdogan poster, as if defaced by protesters. Another idea, of a falling ballot box about to deliver a knockout blow, was a little too comic.

So we put a workman on a ladder and showed him covering the strongman’s face with a poster of the Turkish flag, suggesting that the country wants to move on from the Erdogan era. We liked this a lot, but we decided to emphasise the headline more. Democracy has been in worldwide decline for at least a decade. Turkish voters might be about to do something important to revive it. We tried a cover with just the words. Then we added some campaign badges to heighten the sense of drama. How that drama ends, the world will have to wait and see.

Leader: If Turkey sacks its strongman, democrats everywhere should take heart
Briefing: Could Turkey’s strongman be on the way out?
By Invitation: A more democratic Turkey is within grasp, says Kemal Kilicdaroglu