I created this design using a vertically centered ellipse, which I proceeded to rotate at 20 degree angles. Once I had gone around a full circle, I deleted some of the inner cells and colored in the ones that were left using gradient colors.
To add depth to the circle, I used a drop shadow on each individual cell.
Then, I added my name with a dropshadow, and used multiple layers of gaussian blur in order to get the rainbow glow effect behind my "Design Book" text.

The assignment was only to create a cover for our books, but I made it my own by adding a custom-made shape, and gradients.

The whole process was fairly simple. I found the directions for the rotated ellipse design on a designblog and followed along until I got the desired effect. Then I just played around with stuff until it looked nice.