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Chip Kidd is a graphic designer and writer living in New York City and Stonington, Connecticut.
His first novel, The Cheese Monkeys, was a national bestseller and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. His first book, Batman Collected, was awarded the Design Distinction award from ID magazine. He is the co-author and designer of the two-time Eisner award-winning Batman Animated. He is the editor-at-large for Pantheon, where he has overseen the publication of Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth, Dan Clowes’s David Boring, and the definitive book of the art of Charles Schulz, Peanuts (designed, edited, and with commentary by Mr. Kidd). He has also written about graphic design and popular culture for McSweeney’s, Vogue, The New York Times, The New York Observer, Entertainment Weekly, Details, 2WICE, The New York Post, ID, and Print.
His book jacket designs for Alfred A. Knopf (where he is associate art director) have helped spawn a revolution in the art of American book packaging. His work has been featured in Vanity Fair, Eye, Print, Entertainment Weekly, The New Republic, Time, Graphis, New York, and ID magazines, and he is a regular contributor of visual commentary to the Op-Ed page of The New York Times.
His designs have been described as “Monstrously ugly” (John Updike), “apparently obvious” (William Boyd), “Faithful flat-earth rendering” (Don DeLillo), “surprisingly elegant” (A. S. Mehta), “a distinguished parochial comic balding Episcopal priest” (Allan Gurganus), “Two colors plus a sash” (Martin Amis) and “not a piece of hype. My book was lucky.” (Robert Hughes).
Mr. Kidd is also the lead vocalist, percussionist, lyricist, and co-songwriter in artbreak, a new band described as “The New Pornographers meet The Cars” (Unbeige).
He does not, apparently, sleep.
Read Chip’s Editor’s Statement at Pantheon or find out more at Wikipedia. For more on Chip’s design work, check out Book One or Veronique Vienne’s Chip Kidd. Or, just cut to the chase and contact Chip.
LATEST JOURNAL ENTRY
Rough Justice.
The new book I worked on for Alex Ross, Rough Justice
RECENT CLIPPINGS
The Learners Paperback in The New York Times Book Review
The paperback edition of The Learners (available now
[read “The Learners Paperback in The New York Times Book Review” in its entirety…]
Chip Bids John Updike Adieu
Editors and writers remember John Updike over at Slate Magazine, and Chip is among them (and so, for that matter, is J. D. McClatchy):
Working with and for Mr. Updike was an honor and a treat, and because he was so prolific—not only in quantity but in type of book (novel, poems, essays, criticism)—there were many different kinds of design scenarios. One extreme was his habit of drawing up by hand the entire cover layout, including type specs, which I or another of us in the art department would then execute. On the other end of the spectrum, he would occasionally let us do whatever we wanted. And then everything in between.
[read “Chip Bids John Updike Adieu” in its entirety…]
The BDR on Being Digital
Joseph Sullivan over at The Book Design Review covers, so to speak, an oldie but a goody from Chip’s portfolio (and one that hasn’t yet made it into the Work. section of this site, but never fear: it’ll be there soon enough), Nicholas Negroponte’s Being Digital (1995):
I was lucky enough to live in London in ’94 and ’95, and I picked this up in a bookshop in Camden Town. I had no idea who Chip Kidd was, and only a marginal interest in graphic design at that point. But even I knew, back in ’95, that this was a pretty sexy way to package ideas.