Getting to know Chip Kidd

GETTING TO KNOW : CHIP KIDD

	AGE		41 (born in 1964, raised in a Philadelphia suburb)
	POSITION		Associate Art Director, Alfred A. Knopf
			Editor at Large, Pantheon Comics Division
	DEGREE		Graphic Design, Pennsylvania State University

CLICK ON ANY IMAGE BELOW FOR MORE INFO.

THE BIG EVENT (sorry, event now past tense) >

SOME BOOK JACKETS >

Kidd averages 75 jacket designs a year.

In his twenty-year career, he's created around 1,500 jackets!

SOME BOOKS WRITTEN OR COMPILED BY CHIP KIDD >

LEARN MORE ABOUT CHIP >

WHAT CHIP HAS TO SAY >

I'm a matchmaker, not a pimp. I design jackets that are elaborate versions of name tags at singles parties. I introduce the prospective buyer to the text, and they either hit it off and go home together or don't.

The whole concept of being a "celebrity" book designer is completely insane, a total oxymoron. It's like being the world's most famous plumber or something.

A "signature look" is crippling. Often, the simplest and most effective solutions aren't dictated by style.

REGARDING HIS OBSESSION WITH BATMAN : The wings, the horns, the angelically demonic visage : he is a gargoyle come to life. He just looks so damn cool. / I have this pathetic obsession with superheroes, Batman in particular . . . Never Marvel. Never Spider-man or the Hulk. If you’re a superhero geek, you’ll find we’re kind of like the Republicans and Democrats.

INSIGHTFUL COMMENTS ABOUT CHIP

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Milton Glaser
for quote in context, click image

Given the number of graphic designers in the world, when one becomes publicly visible, it's a miracle. Why they become visible is a great mystery; sometimes it's because of the unique quality of work; sometimes it's their sense of self-promotion. Chip is a brilliant designer, and he also has a great flair for the appropriate comment.

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Mason Currey, Metropolismag.com
for quote in context, click image

If there is one acknowledged star in the world of book cover design, it is Chip Kidd. (He was, in fact, characterized as a "superstar" in a 2002 episode of Jeopardy!) Even if you're not familiar with Kidd's name, chances are good that you've spent time with one of his designs in your lap. In his twenty years at the esteemed publishing house Alfred A. Knopf, Kidd has designed some of the most memorable book covers of, well, the last twenty years.

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The wealth and diversity of Kidd's designs is striking. There is no trademark look or repeated trope, but rather an unerring eye and visual intelligence that is fascinating . . .

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A good cover turns a sheaf of paper into an object of desire.

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Veronique Vienne : from book Chip Kidd
for quotes in context, click image

His peers don't feel comfortable with his fame. On the one hand they envy his bravado and his willingness to be flamboyant in a field that used to be the domain of tweedy practitioners, but on the other hand they resent the fact that to compete with him, they can't be mere graphic designers any more, they also have to be perceived as multitalented, articulate, charming, and funny.

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Because Kidd's name often appears on books that land on The New York Times best-sellers list, some authors even stipulate in their contract that he be the designers assigned to the cover of their book.

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His fame is the product of a culture that lionizes artists in order to turn them into commodities. / (Kidd is) a pure product of pop culture. / His greatest design influence was daytime television.

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Kidd has a winning public persona. A tall bespectacled figure, he looks like every college student's favourite roommate.

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Gary Sassaman
for quote in context, click image

There are two amazing things about Book One: How many jackets Kidd has designed in twenty years (over 800) and how many of them are memorable to me. I was stunned by looking at book after book on page after page and realizing I had seen them before, remembered them, and never realized they were by Kidd.

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Jeffery Zeldman
for quote in context, click image

We've discovered some of our favorite authors, not by reading reviews, but by picking up a book because its cover, designed by Chip Kidd, called out to us. What more could one ask from a book designer?

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Kidd almost never illustrates a book’s title. Instead, his cover photos create tension and energy and provoke thought by working against the title in subtly complex ways. Kidd makes the postmodern assumption that potential book buyers have learned to decipher media meanings; his covers are a game he plays with your mind.

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Penelope Green, New York Times
for quotes in context, click image

Mr. Kidd's home is more like a very expensive toy store. It reflects the same graphic punch seen in his book covers, which helped transform the American book jacket from a decorative bit of packaging into a striking evocation of the writing it contained.

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Jeet Heer, National Post, Canada
for quote in context, click image

Kidd learned a great deal from (Knopf jacket design team leader Carol Carson), chiefly the importance of daring to do the unexpected.

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Among his other virtues, Kidd is a careful reader of the books he designs : the jacket is always uniquely tailored to match the text.

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Jurassic Park also points to another of Kidd's defining qualities: his ease amid the clutter of pop culture. He has a scavenger's sensibility, of the type found on Antiques Roadshow. He loves to scour through flea markets for old scrapbooks and knick-knacks, rummage through attics for long-forgotten photo albums, and look for found objects on the streets of New York. In the piles of the discarded and forgotten, he finds many of his most haunting images, which often echo the emotional concerns found in the novels he's reading.

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As with reading a comics page, a Chip Kidd cover asks the reader to both see and read. Often the image is elliptically related to the title or contents of the book, but the reader has to make a guess as to what the connection is. Sometimes, only a reading of the book will make the full meaning of the cover clear.

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Chip Kidd does not look like the bookish type. After all, the word suggests someone who is shy, retiring and introverted. Kidd, by contrast, is boyishly ebullient, a quick-witted scene-stealer who seems more comfortable holding court at a noisy party than quietly contemplating life in a musty corner of a library. Yet few contemporary figures have had a bigger impact on the book world.

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Cary Roberts
for quote in context, click image

Kidd's own design process is more art than science. First, he reads the book. Then he employs what he calls "the magpie method," which is: "picking, choosing, borrowing things that have been done before." The process, Kidd claims, is "driven by nothing."

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And that about wraps it up.

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Like the Big Hat logo says :
Live large, read!

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Oh yeah, one more thing . . .

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Web compilation by Don Nissen,
Instructor of Graphic Design
(photo circa 1964)

Click photo to visit our department web site,
and see work created by our students and alumni

Created to encourage our students to attend
Kidd's presentation in Indianapolis, Dec. 7, 2005

Visual Communications Department
Ivy Tech Community College of Indiana
Columbus, Indiana

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