chip kidd
by: melanie lรถff-bird
chip kidd
melanie lรถff-bird
the kidd years | 5
Charles I. Kidd was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, September 12, 1964. Like many kids of the time, he grew up in a comfortable middle-class suburb of Shillington which offered little to entertain besides daytime television shows and comic book stores. As the summers and school days dragged on, young Chip Kidd sought comfort in the graphic tales of caped crusaders. A true child of American pop-culture, Kidd quickly became Batman’s biggest fan and at age two was already equipped with a full Batman costume, cape included, that he took every opportunity to wear. To this day, Kidd is still a self-proclaimed Batman aficionado and maintains a thriving
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comic book memorabilia collection. Chip Kidd admits that he “did not grow up yearning to become a book designer”, and was more keen on being Chris Partridge on The Partridge Family. Unfortunately for young Kidd, and fortunately for the rest of the world, he “did not drink or take drugs so professional musicianship was out.” Kidd’s love of music ended up fueling some other artistic tendencies as the backs of his junior high school notebooks were often littered with typographic
“i just want to make things” sketches of popular rocking 70’s bands. Yet, Kidd did not consider himself destined to be an “artist” since he barely knew what that even meant and graphic design was an even stranger concept. All Kidd knew was that when he grew up he wanted to make stuff. What kind of stuff? That question was still up in the air when Kidd joined the Wilson High TV Crew, a television studio that covered the school’s sports and extracurricular events. Almost completely staffed by students, Kidd and his adolescent schoolmates put on a weekly live show called Wilson Highlights. The show was broadcasted every Monday night on a local cable channel, which was a rather rare oddity at the time, and gave Kidd’s inner AV geek the freedom to roam without restriction. Everyone on the team did a little bit of everything, from directing to interviewing to manning the camera, and Kidd felt so at home amongst these elements that he decided to apply to Penn State University as a communications major. He had decided that the television was the thing he would spend the rest of his life making. That is, until Kidd enrolled in an advanced Spanish class with Mrs. Loraine Kovary. One normally does not enroll in a language course seeking artistic inspiration, opposite page:
A young Chip Kidd, Halloween 1970.
Left:
Japanese Batman figurine featured on the Batman Collected gatefold designed by Kidd, NYC, fall 1990.
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top to bottom:
Amnesty International poster usig split-font silk-screen designed by Lanny Sommese (one of Kidd’s design professors at Penn State); Chip Kidd with Sommese at his college graduation party, spring 1986; Kidd with fellow classmate Barbara deWilde, Penn State University, mid-1980s
but Mrs. Kovary unknowingly provided Kidd with his first art history lesson by exposing him to the brilliant world of El Greco, Goya, Picasso and Dalí. Kidd’s entire approach to drawing and painting was transformed by this discovery, even though he had never taken a single art class in high school. About the same time, Kidd also began making title graphics for the weekly Highlights show and soon realized that he had much more fun creating these designs than actually making the show. With his newly founded artistic spark, ignited Kidd decided to switch his major to Art, much to the dismay of his parents, and begin an unlikely journey into the depths of design. Although the Penn State design program is now regarded as one of the best of country,
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“it wouldn’t be the last time i made a random decision that turned out to be utterly prescient.” it was a small and relatively obscure part of the Art department when Kidd entered the university in the fall of 1982. It was an earnest freshman advisor that first urged Kidd to enroll in an introductory design course and become a part of the budding 18-20 student program. With eccentric, dedicated professors and a relatively competitive entry portfolio requirement at the end of the second year, Kidd was anxious yet excited to begin. Thankfully, he quickly found his niche and dedicated himself to the basic course assignments, eventually passing his portfolio test to become an official Graphic Design student. Kidd often reflects upon the potent lessons of his Penn State professors who forced
LEFT:
Pages from Chip Kidd’s senior thesis, a typographic children’s book about percussion instruments.
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an education | 11
Borzoi Books Catalogue Covers CLOCKWISE FROM Far LEFT: Fall 1991; Fall 1998
CENTER:
Knopf header cut and placed by Chip Kidd, NYC 1986
him, and his fellow seniors, to endlessly study the properties of time and sequence. Intense concentration on these elementary elements of design can be very frustrating for young designers who are eager to jump right into the challenges of more experimental print projects. Kidd especially felt a little resentful at the restrictive nature of this lessons but later recounts that it gave him a deeper appreciation of scale and pacing; two crucial important graphic
an education | 12
design tools. Unlike other popular art schools, such as Cranbrook and SVA, Penn State’s program was unique in that it was conceptually based. According to Kidd it “heavily stressed that the solution to a problem always lies in the problem itself, and that any preconceived notion of an approach to take before you properly define the problem was folly.” This is a lesson that has resonated throughout Kidd’s work and is one that all designers should take to heart. The modern style of book design that
“what chip brings to design is deceptively sophisticated and ultimately simple. his designs challenge the viewer and break the rules...his work is bold and sometimes loud, and always smart. it never fails to catch your attention.�
-SARA EISMAN
an education | 13
Kidd would eventually build his name around is distinct yet not repetitive. Individuality is the lifeblood of successful novel writing and should be reflected in the design that covers the content. Graduation gave Chip Kidd a hard shove into the reality of a starving artist as he rampaged the New York streets in search of a job. After pushing his portfolio to anyone who was willing to see it, and enduring countless rejections, Kidd stumbled upon an opportunity to do freelance book cover work at Random House. Ideally, Kid was hoping to work at a multidisciplinary design agency and had never given any thought to the idea of designing book covers. Yet, since there was seemingly no other options in sight, so Kidd phoned up Judith Loeser, then art director at Vintage Books and set up an interview. After their first meeting, Kidd was asked to design the cover for a self-help book dubbed How to
clockwise from far right:
AIGA Bookshow 1991 Call for Entries, designed by Chip Kidd, New York 1991; The Knopf design team, photo by Marion Ettlinger, 1995; Cover design and photography by Chip Kidd for Larry McMurtry’s Moving On, New York 1990; Cover deisgn by Chip Kidd for Henry Petroski’s Remaking the World, Knopf 1997.
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Work for a Jerk and ecstatically began sketching to meet the two week deadline. Due to anxiety or pure excitement, Kidd’s brain decided to veer in an oddly abstract direction for the project and set upon creating “colored-pencil-on-tissue” sketches inspired by an old EC Horror Comic (melted type and boldly ugly colors included). Unsurprisingly the editors hated it, but Judith thought it original and quirky and suggested
an education | 15
chip style | 17
that Kidd meet with Sara Eisenman, the art director of Alfred A. Knopf publishing. Kidd had never heard of Knopf and went into the interview completely oblivious to the fated importance of this singular moment. Fatefully, all it took was one hello, one portfolio review, one week and one open assistant position before Kidd joined Knopf as assistant to the Art Director. Upon receiving the good news, naive young Kidd told himself, “I [will] design book jackets for a year or two, build up my portfolio, and then go on to work for a design firm, like I really wanted. Yes, that’s what I would do.” And began Kidd’s infamous reign as Knopf designer supreme, a position he
Book Cover Designs counter CLOCKWISE FROM top RIGHT:
Chip Kidd & Barbara DeWilde, photo by David Berry, New York 1991;
Photo & design by Chip Kidd, Knopf 1989; Chip Kidd, photo by Peter Zarey, New York 1997; Chip Kidd, New York 2001; Chip Kidd, photo by Stephanie Rausser, New York 1999
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still maintains 25+ years later. However, the brilliance of Kidd cannot be discussed without taking into consideration the rich artistic environment fostered by his coworkers and art directors. When Sara Eisenman left the company in 1987, Kidd begrudgingly served as unofficial art director for a few months while Robert Gottlieb, former editor-in-chief, screened applicants to fulfill the position. The search finally ended when Carol Devine Carson arrived at the offices, a designer best known for her magazine design talents, she had no previous book cover experience but was brimming with same unique potential that had earned Kidd is job a mere two years before.
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Melanie Lรถff-Bird Saddle-Stitch Binding Printed at American University 4 color process Fall 2012 Neutra Text TF Demi SC, Book SC, Bold SC Adobe
Garamond Pro
Regular, Bold, Italic
Filosofia
Regular, All Small Caps
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biblography PRINT Vienne, Véronique. Chip Kidd. New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 2003. Print. Kidd, Chip, and Mark Melnick. Chip Kidd: Work : Book One : 1986-2006 . New York: Rizzoli International, 2005. Print. Kidd, Chip. The Cheese Monkeys: A Novel in Two Semesters. New York: HarperCollins, 2002. Print.
WEB Beach, Karen, “Who Is Chip Kid and What Does he want?”, www.aigaiowa.org/ events/2001/chip_kidd_html. Birnbuam, Robert, “Interview: Chip Kidd”, www.identityheory.com/people/birnbaum30.html Chip Kidd Presents: The Learners. Dir. Gary Nadeau. Perf. Chip Kidd. YouTube. YouTube, 18 Feb. 2008. Web. 25 Oct. 2012. John, Baker F. “Kidd’s Cover: First Novelist.” Publishers Weekly 7 Aug. 2000: n. pag. Print. Norton, James, “Going Cover to Cover with Chip Kidd”, 13 September 2001, www. flakmag.com/features/kidd.html
PHOTO Page #23. Black & White profile of Chip Kidd, photo by Belinda Lanks. New York 2006, http://www.fastcodesign.com/multisite_files/ codesign/imagecache/960/article_feature/ Page #22, T-Rex illustration, Chip Kidd, Chip Kidd: Work : Book One : 1986-2006 . New York 1992
“but that’s the nice thing about books: when you get to the end, you can always go back to page one. and that’s what I’m going to do. right now.”
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CHIP KIDD