Chip Kidd © Gerhard Kassner

Walking on stage it seems Chip is the only speaker this weird introductory jingle fits to. It felt like an old school Robin Williams entering the stage. Getting the biggest cheer so far he answers ‘You make me feel like Lady Gaga only with larger breasts’ he then shows us a pair of socks turning to Erik Spiekermann ‘Erik you left your socks in my hotel room’. He now has audience in pieces.

Chip tells us that he has a new mantra. His old mantra ‘OMG this is a fucking nightmare’ has been replaced by an anecdote from his local KFC in New York. Waiting in line the guy in front of him orders three buckets of chicken pieces with the lady behind the counter replying ‘is that for here or to go’? As this is New York, he explains, the guy replies ‘how the hell do you think I am gonna eat three buckets of chicken pieces on my own?’. Snapping back the lady replies ‘bitch, I don’t know your life!’ And now this is Chip Kidd’s new Mantra: Bitch, I Don’t Know Your Life.

Chip Kidd, photo © Gerhard Kassner

Chip then takes us through various book cover projects – all underlined with great anecdotes that in no way can be written down onto paper. Having done book cover designs for 25 years he has come from tracing the original dinosaur on paper as well as creating Augusten Burroughs’ Dry typography in denial book jacket by printing the whole cover on an inkjet and then throwing a bucket of water at it. Some of the books got returned by customers ‘this one is damaged’. Simply a good printing job he explains.

More recent book jackets are ‘The Stranger’s Child’ by Alan Hollinghurst, ‘Rome’ by Robert Hughes and ‘1Q84’ by Haruki Maraki. It is refreshing to hear that even Chip Kidd has moments of pure desperation when his designs get rejected in the third round. He even gets emails with the subject title ‘Jacket Crisis’ or an email where the publisher decides to solve the problem in house.

Where do you start? First you come up with a title. Batman: Death by Design. Working with the artist Dave Taylor he shows us the progress of the first 26 pages. A visual tribute to Fritz Lang and Hugh Ferris. Each character coming to life with its own story. Cynthia Sill the architectural sufragette and even a new villain the mean art critic Exacto. Chip Kidd is in his complete element creating the best nightclub ever – a huge piece of glass suspended between four skycrapers and even recreating the original Batman symbol which firstly was drawn without the head. And thats only page 26 of this 100 page graphic novel.

Chip Kidd

Writer / Graphic Designer (New York, New York)

The history of book design can be split into two eras: before graphic designer Chip Kidd and after. Time Out New York, Nov. 2005 Chip Kidd is a writer and graphic designer in New York City. His book jacket designs for Alfred A. Knopf (where he has worked since 1986) have helped spawn a revolution in the art of American book packaging. In 1997 he received the International Center of Photography's award for Use of Photography in Graphic Design, and he is a regular contributor of visual commentary to the Op-ed page of the New York Times. In the fall of 2006, Kidd's work will be included in the Cooper-Hewitt Museum's third National Design Triennial. Mr Kidd has also written about graphic design and popular culture for McSeeney's, The New York Times, The New York Observer, Entertainment Weekly, Details, The New York Post, ID and Print. His first book as author and designer, Batman Collected (Bulfinch, 1996), was given the Design Distinction award from ID magazine, and his second, Batman Animated (HarperCollins, Fall 1998) garnered two of the Comics Industry's Eisner Awards, as did his 2002 book Peanuts: The Art of Charles M. Schulz. As an editor of books of comics for Pantheon (a subsidiary of Knopf) Kidd has worked extensively with some of the most brilliant talents practicing today, including: Chris Ware, Art Spiegelman, Dan Clowes, Kim Deitch, Charles Burns, Mark Beyer, Ben Katchor and Alex Ross. A comprehensive monograph of Kidd's work, CHIP KIDD: BOOK ONE was published in October of 2005. The introduction is by John Updike and the 400 page book features over 800 works, spanning two decades, from 1986 through 2006. It's first edition sold out a week before publication and it has since gone into two consecutive re-printings. The Cheese Monkeys, Kidd's first novel, was published by Scribner in Fall of 2001 and was a national bestseller, as well as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. He is currently at work on his second novel, tentatively titled The Learners. Both books use the design process as a means to construct a compelling narrative.

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Joana Niemeyer, GraphicBirdWatching