THE
CHEESE
MONKEYS BOOK COVER PROJECT by brooke vaske
the beginning After reading the book, I decided that I got a chaotic vibe from it. It was crazy, quirky and disorderly. However, although the Fall Semester was fairly calm, allowing the reader to meet the characters, the Spring Semester was a mess. Some imagery that came to mind while reading the book was gesture-sketch-like images. No form had solid edges. I also imagined every scene as having a vintage, 50’s televisions screen filter. Before I started creating my sketches, I did some research on the time period. I looked at popular art and typefaces from the late 1950’s and tried to find pieces of work that conveyed a chaotic feel. I found that neo-dada and abstract expressionism conveyed the right message for my work. Jasper John’s False Start (1959), inspired me to create a collage as the background for my cover. What better way to represent chaos than tearing pages of magazines apart and pasting them into a single composition? I also found an album cover from the time period with the font News Gothic on it. I thought that a bold, straight forward sans serif would create great contrast with a chaotic background.
inspiration
during + process initial sketches I tried to explore themes such as chaos, gesture sketches, flames and the 1950’s in my sketches.
The
Cheese
Monkeys By Chip Kidd
The
Cheese
Monkeys By Chip Kidd
e h t ese e h c keys
n o m B
p i h yC
d d i K
The
Cheese
Monkeys By Chip Kidd
The
Cheese
Monkeys By Chip Kidd
The
Cheese
Monkeys By Chip Kidd
during + process final sketches In order for the chaotic background to work, I needed to explore ways to make the type stand out on the page. I decided to experiment with spilling paint on it.
during + process rough final
the final book cover
the final front matter
THE
CHEESE
M NKEYS
THE
CHEESE
MONKEYS A NOVEL IN TWO SEMESTERS
by chip kidd
SCRIBNER New York • London • Toronto • Sydney • Singapore
Copyright Š 2001 by Charles Kidd. Yes, Charles. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or part in any form. Scribner and design are registered trademarks of Macmillan Library Reference USA, Inc., used under license by Simon and Shuster, the publisher of this work. The author is deeply grateful to the Bogliasco Foundation for its generous support. Published by Scribner 1230 Avenue of the Americas New York, N.Y. 10020. Book design by Chip Kidd, who wrote it in Quark 3.2. Text is set in Apollo and then, at a certain point, Bodoni. Cheese Monkeys logo designed by Mr. F.C. Ware. Manufactured in the United States of America. 13579108642 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available. ISBN 0-7432-1492-7.
TABLE OF CONxiv PRELUDE
TENTS
FALL SEMESTER, 1957 2 21 57 85
i. registration ii. ART 101: introduction to drawing iii. ART 101: introduction to drawing (cont’d)
iv. winter break
SPRING SEMESTER, 1958 96 115 149 173 213 266
i. ART 127: introduction to commercial art ii. the first critique iii. the second critique iv. the third critique v. the fourth critique vi. the final exam
FALL
1958
SEME -STER
during which we construct our course of study
i. REGISTRATION
“So, What are you taking?”
At that point I could have said a lot of things—I could have said, “ If i don’t get
the classes I need after waiting five hours in this line, I am taking that clipboard out of your sausage-fingered hands, breaking it into ten thick splinters, and slowly introducing each one of them beneath your cuticles as a way of saying Thanks for herding us like a flock of three thousand Guatemalan dirt pigs into a ventilation-free hall built for three hundred in order to ask us questions we’ve already answered so many times our minds are jelly and our jaws squeak — an act which has to be covered somewhere in the Bible as punishable by any manner we, in His righteous stead, see fit.”
But I didn’t. I mumbled for the umpteenth time that year-long day of that first
awful month, my tongue thick with shame,
“Me? Art.”
Majoring in Art at the state university appealed to me because I have always
hated Art, and I had a hunch if any school would treat the subject with the proper disdain, it would be one that was run by the government. Of course I was right. My suspicions were confirmed the minute I entered the Visual Arts building on arrival my freshman year and took in the faculty show in its gallery. I beheld: melting lop-sided Umbrian? hillsides, nudes run over by the Cubist Express, suburban-surrealist flower ladies going about their daily tasks weeping blood tears the size of water gallons, and kittens. Yes, kittens. I thought, “Now these people hate Art a lot. This is where I belong. Perfect.” 1