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“Um…so what exactly is a Cheese Monkey?”
Good question. But strictly off-limits. We can tell you that The Cheese Monkeys is a witty and effervescent coming-of-age novel about headless waterfowl, fake plastic babies, and the basic tenets of graphic design.
It’s 1957, long before computers have replaced the trained eye and skillful hand. Our narrator at State U is determined to major in Art, and after several risible false starts, he ends up by accident in a new class called “Introduction to Graphic Design.” Art 127 is taught by the enigmatic Winter Sorbeck, professor and guru (think Gary Cooper crossed with Darth Vader)—equal parts genius, seducer, and sadist. Sorbeck is a bitter yet fascinating man whose assignments hurl his charges through a gauntlet of humiliation and heartache, shame and triumph, ego-bashing and enlightenment. Along the way, friendships are made and undone, jealousies simmer, the sexual tango weaves and dips.
As readers, we too are under Sorbeck’s bizarre spell, spurred on by his demand: “Show me something I’ve never seen before and will never be able to forget-if you can do that, you can do anything.” By the end of The Cheese Monkeys, the members of Art 127 will never see the world the same way again. And, thanks to Chip Kidd’s insights into the secrets of graphic design, neither will you.
Scribner, 2001. 275 pp.
Perennial, 2002. 274 pp.
Harper Perennial, 2008. 290 pp.
Read an excerpt or a deleted scene (PDF) from The Cheese Monkeys (and the deleted scene comes with a preview of The Learners at no extra charge) or order the new edition of The Cheese Monkeys from Amazon or from Barnes & Noble.
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.