Born the 12th of September 1964, Pennsylvania, US. Chip Kidd is a graphic designer known for his book cover designs and graphic designs in general. He graduated with a degree in Graphic design in 1986, from Pennsylvania State University. The very same year he started working for Knopf, a book publisher, as a junior assistant to the art director. From there he worked himself up to now be the associate art director, at the very same company.
Chip Kidd is the brain behind many clever and innovative book covers. In his Ted talk “The hilarious art of book design” he explains that the art of making book covers is to capture the story with a single image, illustration or typeface. Maybe an edit of some sort to make the reader really think whenever they see the cover for the first time. The cover has to be intriguing and true to the content of the book.
Just as other graphic designers, Chip’s work does not have his name on it. He doesn’t have a consistent style either. He is the face behind many clever ideas and book covers. The most successful one that is still relevant today is the cover design for the Jurassic park book. It’s a design he made by simply photocopying the engraving of a Tyrannosaurus skeleton, from a book page that he bought at the Museum of Natural History in NYC. He drew the dinosaurs silhouette and sent it to the author. The author ended up loving it, replying with “wow! fucking fantastic cover” via fax. They ended up buying the design, in case they would re-use it in the future, which they did. A reoccurring design you can possibly see everywhere, being an original product or a parody. It’s one of the more well known graphic designs out there.
