OUGD404 - Chip Kidd - Book Design

OUGD404 - Chip Kidd - Book Design

Chip Kidd's talk at Offset in 2009 about designing book covers and the processes he underwent for some of the covers he designed not only imparted some incredibly useful advice on book cover design, but gave some great contextual insight into being a real life designer.

With the wisdom he has gained from many years in the industry, Kidd talked about the hierarchy of designers, publishers and clients/authors. He highlights how a lot of the time, a design you feel passionate about or a design you feel is successful, is discarded by either the publishers or the author/ client for any number of reasons. Ultimately this brings to light the fact that the very nature of designing a book cover, is the process creating a face to an authors vision, and while the design must be concise and compelling, it must also convey this authors vision suitably. This also means that when designing book covers, you can't retain your own style or identity, you have to extract it from the story or narrative of the book.

When it comes to gaining advice on designing a book cover from Kidd's talk, he had some very insightful points. Firstly, immerse yourself in the source material; this is the vision which needs to be visually communicated so this is what must be considered and learnt the most carefully. If in a rut or stuck for ideas - go back to the source material. Also you have to do your research; get inside the head of the author so that any design created runs parallel to their own ideas. Finding out obscure or previously visually unused information about an author can be utilized incredibly successfully for a book design.

Kidd's cover for Bret Eason Ellis' - 'Imperial Bedrooms' - is refined, engaging and menacing. It chews up the dark motifs of the novel and spits out an equally ominous cover by employing appropriate imagery, bold red sans serif type and the book's title forming stark white eyes on the gloomy silhouetted subject of the cover.