I’ve been completely engrossed in Chip Kidd’s Book One over spring break. Uninterrupted reading is a luxury I can’t afford these days, so I read in fifteen minute bites. I’m amazed by how many of Kidd’s cover designs I recognize and even own.
I have a lot in common with Chip Kidd. We both design books: he for uber publisher Knopf, and me for university presses. He and I both collect retro stuff like album covers, books, and ephemera. Yet somehow Chip Kidd has risen to become the most widely-known designer of the past decade, while I am, well… not so much. He is my age, and is the design rock star I am not. Waah!
His work has graced the cover of so many bestselling volumes of prose and poetry that he has himself become a sort of svengali hitmaker, especially among novelists. Getting a Kidd cover is one of the rewards for being a Sucessful Writer. Kidd’s work has graced covers of books by Cormack McCarthy, Larry McMurtry, Dean Koontz, and David Sedaris. I first became aware of Kidd’s work while designing books at University of Illinois Press in 1994 when the marketing manager sent me a clipping on his design for All the Pretty Horses.
Chip Kidd appears to be singlehandedly responsible for making book design hip, using combinations of odd photos to change how book covers are illustrated, and how authors are percieved. Over the past decade or so he has raised standards so high that now you can see great design in your average Barns and Noble — no small feat. Rather than merely depicting the setting, characters, or events of a book, Kidd’s covers amplify the author’s words with a new reality.
Here are a few of the amazing titles he’s designed: The New Testament, Dreaming in Cuban, Naked, Geek Love, The Secret History, and Crime Wave.
