INNER KIDD
Eric Mondor
ABOVE AND OPPOSITE: Vintage Batman packaging. Kidd began collecting Batman things when he was three years old.1
LEFT: A photograph from Halloween 1968. On the left is Kidd’s brother, in the middle is his mom, and on the right is Kidd, all sporting Batman and Robin costumes. Kidd claims that he is still that child inside. He says, “I never really grew up and grew out of my love for Batman.”2
Prologue 3 Chip Kidd, in the 26 years he has been working for Alfred A. Knopf Publishing Group, a division of Random House, has become somewhat of a superstar for his work designing book jackets. He has designed over 1,500 covers to date and counting, and has also gained recognition as a writer, musician, and editor. 3 Born on the 12th of September, 1964, Kidd was exposed to graphic design early on in his life through the package design of Batman and Superman toys. Kidd was two years of age at the time that the Batman television series featuring Adam West began airing in 1966, and like most kids at the time, Kidd fell under its spell and grew up reading comics and collecting anything and everything that had Batman on it. Only, unlike most kids, Kidd never grew out of his love for Batman and other comic book superheroes, but instead it followed him throughout college at Penn State University and into his later career.4 In fact, comic books have played a huge part in his design work as well as many other projects he has worked on in his career. It is arguably the reason that makes Kidd’s work so successful. Looking at Kidd’s vast collection of work, it is easy to see just how much of an influence comic books and comic book culture has had on him. And that, my friends is what this book is about.
Above: Chip Kidd
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Working With Photographs
ABOVE FROM LEFT: The Farewell Symphony by Edmund White 1997 New York Alfred A. Knopf [Hardback] The New Testament Translated by Richmond Lattimore Photograph – Andres Serrano 1966 New York Farrar, Straus & Giroux
Kidd gained a quick following after he began working at Knopf. He helped revolutionize the industry of book jacket design by using photography in his fiction book cover designs, offering a distinctly non-fiction aesthetic to the books that gives an overall impression that the story could have actually happened. He was not the first to do this, but he has a knack for choosing a picture that is perfect for the cover he is working on that is both visually and conceptually intriguing, stimulating the imagination of the bookstore browser and inviting the reader to make connections between the cover and the text inside.5 He is well known for his signature two rectangles vertically stacked compositional approach, and has been called “the guy who splits his covers in two equal rectangles”. This approach is very reminiscent of the panels found in comic books. In Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud, he talks about how the space between panels is just as important as what is happening inside the panels because “human imagination takes two separate images and transforms them into a single idea”. This is exactly what Kidd’s book covers do.6
Among many of the book covers that Kidd designed that employ his vertical panel technique are The New Testament translated by Richmond Lattimore, Was by Geoff Ryman, Savage Art by Robert Polito, The Farewell Symphony by Edmund White, and American Tabloid by the popular American crime novelist James Ellroy. The Latter three also utilize a half tone colored dot pattern which help lend to Kidd’s comic book aesthetic. Furthermore, he often crops the images he uses closer to the eyes of the subjects, and plays with the placement and scale for an interesting composition reminiscent of comic book style and pop culture.
Above: American Tabloid by James Ellroy 1993 New York Alfred A. Knopf [Hardback]
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above: Was by Geoff Ryman Photographs – Bettman Archives and Geoff Spear 1992 New York Alfred A. Knopf [Hardback] LEFT: Savage Art by Robert Polito 1995 New York Alfred A. Knopf [Hardback]
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LEFT: Pastoralia by George Saunders 2000 London Bloomsbury Publishing [Paperback]
Right: Created in Darkness by Troubled Americans Edited by Dave Eggers, Kevin Shay, Lee Epstein, John Warner, and Suzanne Kleid Illustration – Charles Burns 1993 New York Alfred A. Knopf [Hardback]
BELOW: Further Adventures by Jon Stephen Fink Illustration – Chip Kidd 1993 New York ST. Martin’s Press [Hardback}
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Working With Illustrations Later in Kidd’s career, he started using more illustrative imagery when designing his book jackets, whether the drawings be done by Kidd himself as in Jurassic Park by Michael Chrichton and Further Adventures by John Steven Fink, or through appropriated imagery as in George Saunders’s Pastoralia or by working in close collaboration with a number of artists, most notably Chris Ware and Charles Burns who also happen to be comic book artists. Not only have they done illustrations for some of Chip Kidd’s book cover designs, but Kidd has also worked for them designing covers for their novels and comic books.7 Kidd uses illustrations in his book cover designs in a very similar manner to how he uses photography. All of his usual methods of cropping, scale, and splitting the composition into panels come into play.8
RIGHT: Bat-Manga: The Secret History of Batman in Japan Chip Kidd, Geoff Spear, Saul Ferris Pantheon, 2008
below: Mythology: The DC Comics Art of Alex Ross Edited by Chipp Kidd Photography – Geoff Spear Pantheon, 2003
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left: Rough Justice: The DC Comics Sketches of Alex Ross Edited by Chipp Kidd Pantheon 2010
Inner Kidd Kidd is well known for his work at Pantheon–a separate publishing group within Knopf–where he has worked on a number of different projects. He has edited, curated, written, and designed graphic novels, comic book anthologies, covers, and artist books. Working at Pantheon, Kidd works with something that he is very passionate about, and it allows his inner kid to run wild. Comics are after all what got him interested in graphic design, and have proven to be very influential in everything he does. Kidd himself spoke in an interview with The Comic Archive about how comics have played a role in his work as a designer. He says that he always had comics on his mind when he was in college, but he didn’t view it as something he was good enough at to pursue. He turned to graphic design and says the problem solving aspect of it was very appealing to him. He recalls that “[in college] I was starting to solve problems using comics and comic related visual approaches, to the point that my teachers were starting to give me shit for it.”9 He told USA Today that the first cover he ever noticed was “no doubt for some sort of Batman comic I saw when I was three...the colors, the forms, the design. Batman himself is such a brilliant design solution.”10 Some the projects Kidd has undertaken at Pantheon include Bat-Manga! The Secret History of Batman in Japan, Rough Justice: The Sketches of Alex Ross, Mythology: The DC Comics Art of Alex Ross, and Peanuts: The Art of Charles M. Schulz. Kidd has also worked on other books within Pantheon as editor and, in some cases, designer. Some of the clients Kidd has had include Chris Ware, Dan Clowes, Kim Deitch, Mark Bayer, and Charles Burns.
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End Notes: 1. Vienne, Véronique, and Chip Kidd, Chip Kidd, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003, p.22 2. Kidd, Chip, “Pivot,” Lecture, Pivot: AIGA Design Conferance from AIGA, Phoenix, October 14, 2011. 3. Vienne, Véronique, p. 8.
10 4. Kidd, Chip, Interview by The Comic Archive, Personal interview, Chip Kidd’s studio, May 9, 2011.
5. Eskilson, Stephen. Graphic Design: A New History. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007, p. 387. 6. Vienne, Véronique, p. 17. 7. Kidd, Chip. Book One: Work, 1986-2006 : album. New York: Rizzoli, 2005. 8. Eskilson, Stephen. Graphic Design: A New History, p. 387. 9. Kidd, Chip, Interview by The Comic Archive. 10. Minzesheimer, Bob, “Chip Kidd, book cover designer, unmasked.” USA Today (Virgina), September 3, 2003, http://www.usatoday.com/ life/books/news/2003-09-02-chip-kidd_x.htm (accessed April 22, 2012).
Bibliography: Kidd, Chip. Interview by The Comic Archive. Personal interview. Chip Kidd’s studio, May 9, 2011. Eskilson, Stephen. Graphic Design: A New History. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007.
Kidd, Chip. Book One: Work, 1986-2006 : album. New York: Rizzoli, 2005. Machado, Samir. “sobrecapas: Chip Kidd | Livros de quadrinhos.” sobrecapas. http://sobrecapas.blogspot.com/2011/08/chip-kidd-livrosde-quadrinhos.html (accessed April 22, 2012). Minzesheimer, Bob. “Chip Kidd, book cover designer, unmasked.” USA Today (Virgina), September 3, 2003. http://www.usatoday.com/ life/books/news/2003-09-02-chip-kidd_x.htm (accessed April 22, 2012).
Kidd, Chip. “Pivot.” Lecture, Pivot: AIGA Design Conferance from AIGA, Phoenix, October 14, 2011.
Vienne, Véronique, and Chip Kidd.Chip Kidd. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003.
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Collophon: Designed by Eric Mondor Ink jet print at Maine College of Art Composed in Futura and Garamond Premier Pro