Acclaimed graphic designer Chip Kidd visited the Savannah College of Art and Design last Wednesday, April 16, to address students at Trustees Theater. He spoke about a few of the covers he’s designed and about the process of working with authors, publishers, agents and colleagues. He also showed a few of his designs that were rejected and explained why they were. Kidd attended Penn State University and currently works at Alfred A. Knopf publishers in New York City.
Kidd designs book covers because, he said, “[I] totally fell into it. I had some book cover assignments in school, but those were really a part of a smaller, much rounder graphic design education, and … at the time the model for me was a big group design firm that did all sorts of things and I thought that would be really interesting to be involved in — all sorts of different kinds of projects. No such job was offered to me when I came to New York, and the first job that actually was offered to me was to be assistant to the art director at Alfred A. Knopf publishing, which I very eagerly accepted.”
The biggest change in design over the past 20 years is the computer. Kidd added, “I can do now in 15 minutes what it would literally take me three days to do.”
Kidd has also written two novels thus far. “I think it’s kind of corny to say it, but I think writing is designing with words,” he said. “It’s getting your message out there with what is essentially a visual medium.” His first novel, “The Cheese Monkeys,” came out in 2001 and “The Learners” came out this year. Both are works of fiction based around a central character named Happy. In “The Cheese Monkeys,” Happy is in college studying art, and readers follow him through the first two semesters. In “The Learners,” Happy has graduated and gets his first job in graphic design. In the first book, Happy says that majoring in art appealed to him because he hated art and going to a state school would be perfect, as they would treat it with the appropriate disdain.
In reference to his own college experience, Kidd said that he liked school very much. “One of the interesting things I learned in college, one of the many, was how to eat a meal by yourself. Because in high school — junior high, high school, whatever — the social death knell would be having to go to lunch hour at a table by yourself and eat by yourself,” said Kidd. “So we had, you know, we had dining hall — at least I did for, like, the first three years — breakfast, etc. And I don’t know how it evolved, but I basically came to a place where I could go to the dining hall by myself with something to read or whatever, and just sit by myself and eat in public and not feel weird about it and accept it.”
