Chip Kidd

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Chip Kidd has reinvented what if means to be a graphic designer, with his creative and unique style he has elevated the concept of book cover design to a whole new level. His legacy has grown into a collection of over a thousand jackets during his twenty-six years at Alfred A. Knopf, as well as their graphic novel division, Pantheon. Although Kidd is most well known for his work on covers for novels, what really interests me is

his work with graphic novels and comic books. Kidd has been a huge fan of comics since he was a small child; Batman particularly struck a chord with him, and to this day continues to be one of his favorite superheroes. Besides being a super fan, he has also designed a variety of Batman covers for a variety of different countries, including as well as writing his own Batman comics.

As well as being interested in more traditional comic books, Kidd is also very much interested in graphic novels. He’s a very big fan of artist and writer Frank Miller, creator of well-known graphic novel Sin City. “I’d been trying to attract Frank Miller’s eye for years, first in the pages of Batman Collected, then in Batman: The Complete History, both of which feature sections of his work.” Miller has a very distinct style that Kidd illustrated beautifully through his covers. Kidd was commissioned to create the Sin City original covers made in the 90s as well as the reboot covers designed released in the 2000s. The franchise has captivated the world and resulted in two films, as well as a continuing partnership with Miller in a variety of projects, including Batman: The Dark Night Returns. Although, at first Kidd was anxious about working with Miller, “Several years ago, it was my daunting privilege to redesign one of the most iconic comic book covers of all time, for a new re-issue of The Dark Knight Returns, and then its sequel The Dark Knight Strikes Again. Sometimes as a designer, being a huge fan of what you’re working on can actually be a disadvantage because you feel anything you do will be unworthy. But Frank Miller was totally supportive on both of these, especially the sequel cover, which was literally over the top. Definitely one of my proudest moments as a comics designer and fan.” Just as Frank Miller is restructuring the way people think of comic books, Kidd is changing designer’s attitudes towards comic books.

Chip Kidd is also close friends with graphic novelist Charles Burns, most well known for creating Black Hole, Winner of the Eisner, Harvey, and Ignatz Awards, as well as designing the cover art for Kidd’s book The Learners. The two have had a long-lasting partnership and have worked on multiple projects together. Kidd’s simplistic and clever style has a way of emphasizing the artist’s style instead of overshadowing it.

Kidd also frequently recruits Burns to create pieces for his cover art, including his famed book Created in Darkness by Troubled Americans.

Burns’ style is immediately recognizable, just as Kidd’s is; both have a way about their artwork that is indescribable. Kidd’s cover for Black Hole is easily one of my favorite graphic novel covers to date. He completely captured the essence of shame and anonymity in the book perfectly, while at the same time keeping it simpleand direct.

Kidd had the pleasure of working with one of the greatest graphic novelists of our era, Alan Moore. Alan Moore is most well known for his creations: Watchmen, The Storyteller and V for Vendetta. Both extremely politically radical and fantastic graphic novels that were both turned into excellent movies (V for Vendetta arguably more than Watchmen).

Moore commissioned Kidd to design the covers for the prequels to Watchmen entitled Before Watchmen, a look at the Watchmen’s lives and legacies before the original graphic novel. As per-usual, the covers Kidd designed were straightforward, simple, and elegant. When most people think about the graphic novel/comic book style, they think of bright neon colors with lightning bolts and speech bulbs.

But Kidd’s work shows that that era of comic is behind us, and that graphic novels and their sleeker style are the future.

Most recently Chip Kidd designed 40 covers for DC Universe’s Convergence a two-month storyline that involves both the weekly Convergence mini-series and 40 two-issue comics that focus on various DC heroes pulled from the publisher’s pre-New 52 history. But the real story with this is the incredibly daring covers by Chip Kidd. The design features half of the covers with gradient from the classic print colors. The colors of the gradient are Cyan, Magenta, Black and Yellow, the colors of print. Chip Kidd’s work continues to inspire me, he manages to take an entire story and cleverly illustrate it in a single cover. His work is direct, beautiful and has completely changed the book design industry.

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CH KID

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