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hip Kidd graduated from Pennsylvania State University with a Bachelor degree in graphic design in 1986. In an attempt to leave Pennsylvania in his past and move on to bigger and better design, Kidd moved to New York and actively searched for a graphic design job, carrying his portfolio with him from interview to interview. With no hope in sight, he finally caught a break when someone suggested he look into Random House. For the time being, he could get some freelance work creating book jackets. Although he never planned on designing book covers for a living and
would have preferred to work for a multidisciplinary firm, he followed this course of action and received his first assignment from a woman named Judith Loeser. His sketches were quickly dismissed when he showed them to the editors a few weeks later. Loeser, however, found them intriguing and passed them on to Sara Eisenman, the art director of a publishing company called Alfred A. Knopf, who just so happened to be looking for an assistant. Upon viewing his work and consulting with her boss, she hired him on to the Knopf staff. Kidd has been designing book jackets for them ever since.
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HE N E V E R PLANNED ON DESIGNING BOOK COVERS FOR A LIVING.
YEP. I DIDN’T SEE THIS ONE COMING.
New York City, Home of Knopf
hip Kidd has worked at Knopf from 1986 until present day. He has worked for the same company for almost 28 years, and according to the book Chip Kidd he had designed over 1,200 book covers as of 2002 and reportedly designs an average of 75 jackets a year (Vienne 8). If this statistic holds true, Kidd should have designed over 2,000 by the close of 2013. Although his name is most often associated with book jacket design, he has branched out into a number of other fields and positions. He has since become the editor-at-large for Pantheon, a publishing company that is part of Knopf, overseen the creation and illustration of comic books, and written his own books. His accomplishments include winning the National Design Award for Communications and the Use of Photography in Design award.
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ost of Kidd’s work is done for Knopf in New York, New York; however, he also occasionally does some freelance work. When it comes to process, his first step when designing a book remains to always read the book before he begins designing. This is where his inspiration for a particular cover comes from. He lives by the idea that, “the solution to a problem always lies in the problem itself,” which was wisdom passed
on to him by his mentors (Kidd and Updike 8). According to Vienne, Kidd is, “a pure product of American pop culture,” as he was influenced from an early age by daytime television, comic books, and toy packaging (Vienne 8). He recalls that he has been influenced by his superiors, Carol Carlson and Sonny Mehta. Other influences include Alvin Lustig, a famous book designer, and Peter Saville, a famous album cover designer in Britain (Roberts).
Some of his earlier book jackets consist of strictly typographic solutions. One example of this is the jacket Kidd designed for the novel Geek Love (figure 1) in 1989 which consists of a wonky font he created which captures the essence of the book about the creation of circus mutants.
figure 1
“A PURE PRODUCT OF AMERICAN CULTURE”
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t is clear that Kidd attempts to capture the essence of the book in the jackets he creates, yet not in an obvious way. He definitely enjoys forcing his readers to think. One way he has accomplished this is by using photographs, which can be construed by viewers in a number of different ways. Using photography on book jackets was revolutionary at the time. Carol Carson is credited with coming to the solution of using photographs in book jacket design in the 1980s while working for Knopf (Vienne 13). Hence as Kidd continued designing covers,
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he transitioned into using a combination of text and photograph. Kidd enjoys using somewhat abstract photographs; he likes his pictures to be taken from strange angles such as the back, to manipulate his images by cropping them, to zoom in to the point of an object being barely recognizable, and to use blur effects to focus on a certain part of an image. Vienne states that Kidd has, “perfected a shallow depth of field approach,� thanks to the assistance of photographer Geoff Spear who has become skilled in the use of a macro lens (see figure 2) (Vienne 18). He is sensitive to the details of a photo and likes to use these minute details to portray a concept.
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s he progressed in producing book covers, he became comfortable utilizing a layout consisting of the cover being split into two panels, which he generally used to create two-image collages. His designs often consisted of a picture in one panel and type in the other or some combination of the two laid out in a two-panel design. This is true of
the jacket he designed for The New Testament (figure 3) in 1996, which he claims to be the favorite cover he has designed. When looking at this jacket, it is clear that he has divided the cover into two panels consisting of an upper and lower half. The top half contains the title and book information, while the bottom panel contains an image that is both cropped and magnified.
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Chip Kidd’s book jackets appear to not have any unifying theme or design style. He is often described as, “not having any recognizable style,” when it comes to his design work and he takes that as a, “great […] compliment” (Kidd and Updike 6). Although he does not necessarily have a style that defines him, it appears safe to say his designs evoke thought, are often simple, and refined. Figure 4 depicts the jacket for The Book of the Penis, which he designed in 2000. This cover is clever as the leaf alludes to the story of Adam and Eve and is movable as it can be lifted up. It exposes nothing but it accommodates to the naturally curious human mind. The ruler on left side also alludes to the human obsession with size in regards to this body part. Therefore, this proves the extent Kidd is willing to go to design covers that properly illustrate what a book is about, while also being inventive and innovative.
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hip Kidd, at only 49 years of age, is a fairly recent up-and coming designer. Although no
other designers have yet claimed him as
influential to their work, he has no doubt revolutionized the book jacket design industry. Described as the, “figurehead in the highbrow world of literary book jacket design,” Kidd’s work with book jackets will most definitely influence other book jacket designers in the future (Vienne 10).
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he has no doubt revolutionized the book jacket design industry.
WORKS CITED Kidd, Chip. “BIO/ CONTACT.” GOOD IS DEAD. N.p., n.d. Web. 2 Feb. 2014. <http://www.chipkidd. com/contact.html>. Kidd, Chip, and John Updike. Album: book one : work, 1986-2006. New York: Rizzoli, 2005. Print. Roberts, Cary. “Judge Chip Kidd by his Covers.” The Austin Chronicle. N.p., 8 Sept. 2000. Web. 25 Jan. 2014. <http://www.austinchronicle.com/books/2000-09-08/78515/>. 2008. Photograph. PopMattersWeb. 22 Feb 2014. <http://www.popmatters.com/article/ author-designer-chip-kidd-has-a-new-novel-and-a-long-resume-of-impressive-a/>. Pugliese, Joe. Chip Kidd. 2013. Photograph. WIREDWeb. 22 Feb 2014. <http://www.wired. com/design/2013/09/qq_chipkidd/>. Vienne, Veronique. Chip Kidd. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003. Print.
A comic strip Kidd designed, inviting people to attend one of his lectures. This invitation truly represents his sense of humor and fascination with the genre.