Chip Kidd -Dylan Nadeau

Does not have a style.

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“I’ve been described as not having any recognizable style and that’s one of the greatest complements I could have hoped for.”

— Chip Kidd

Portrait of Chip Kidd

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Book covers designed by Chip Kidd

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“I’m always thinking, what will this look like in a year? What will it look like in five to ten years?”

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Chip Kidd with his original illustration for the Jurassic Park book cover

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esigning about seventy-five book covers a year, Chip Kidd creates not only function with the book itself, but also as a separate work of art. He listens to authors ideas, learning how and why they wrote the book. Typically, he does not like to pitch ideas to them directly, but rather allows the text to determine what the end product will be.

Chip learned early on that he needs an assignment, he is not good at working with a blank canvas. In Book One (a book Chip wrote about his career as a designer) he says the constraints of having an assignment help to guide and give more structure to his ideas. If you can only use one font and two colors that just means you don’t have worry about which fonts work best together or how big your color palette needs to be.

Book cover designed by Chip Kidd

Chip Kidd’s illustration was used for the Jurassic Park movie logo

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Simple...

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hip Kidd prides himself on not having a style. For each book cover, Chip makes he is asks himself should it be simple or mysterious. This is because plain and simple gives clarity, and mystery begs to be decoded. He wants the viewer to be intrigued and have to do a little problem solving to draw the connections. He says in Go that when designing, to look at form you must think like a baby who does not have any idea what things mean.

In an interview Chip once said that all he does is visually solve the problem at hand and that sometimes it can take up to six months if necessary.

Book cover designed by Chip Kidd

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In Book One, Chip Kidd says he tries to stay as far away from trends as possible. He said that he was inspired by designers like Piet Zwart, Herbert Bayer, and Eilizzisty because of their ability to create timeless work. Chip finds it valuable that he was taught design before computers. When he interviewed Milton Glaser, he said “no graphic designer should be allowed to touch a computer until reaching the age of forty.” Chip said that is “a bit overkill” and he would agree with thirty, which is when he first started.

He says his hands and head constantly inspire each other and one must be able to use both.

...or Mysterious “The solution to the problem always lies in the problem itself, and any preconceived notion of an approach before you properly define the problem is folly. This was the greatest lesson I learned�

Book covers designed by Chip Kidd

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omics inspired Chip growing up and sparked his interest in graphic design at an early age. Chip is still in love with comic books to this day, especially Batman. He has even worked on some projects with DC Comics.

Left and above Book covers designed by Chip Kidd

Chip was taught at Penn State by Lanny Sommese and Bill Kinser. He got his degree in Graphic Design in 1986. Once he graduated he moved to New York. He looked all over for a job and everyone had their positions filled. After one month he found an opening at Random House doing freelance book jacket design. He said that he was worried about doing freelance work at first and missing out on having valuable job security. Despite this, he applied and has been their ever since.

Photo of Chip and his Profesor Lanny Sommese from Penn State

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SOURCES: Kidd, Chip. Book one. Rizzoli (November 1, 2005) Kidd, Chip. Go. Workman Publishing; 10.2.2013 edition (April 16, 2014) Chip Kidd’s ted talks Speech #2: The Art of First Impressions — in Design and Life.

Chip Kidd’s ted talks Speech #1: Designing Books is No Laughing Matter. OK, It Is. Chip Kidd: What the Stories Look Like — Conversations from Penn State.

IMAGES: http://chipkidd.com/home/portfolio-3/ http://news.psu.edu/ photo/300356/2014/01/15/chip-kidd-jurassicpark-artwork Kidd, Chip. Book one. Rizzoli (November 1, 2005) Kidd, Chip. Go. Workman Publishing; 10.2.2013 edition (April 16, 2014)

This Is only here to make my book look real

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