Chip Kidd visits Oz
Heard this quote? “Chip Kidd is the closest thing to a rock star in graphic design”. How about this quote? “Book design has been described as before Chip Kidd and after Chip Kidd.” What about this one? “The AGIdeas conference can be described as before Alex Tyers and after Alex Tyers.” Sound ridiculous? These are just the kind of grandiose statements about designers that make me dry retch. In an industry that is often lamented by its protagonists as being ‘invisible’ we are overly eager to clamour for visible design heroes. Fortunately, in the case of Chip Kidd, we actually have one.
I didn’t start out thinking that way though.
A couple of days earlier Andrew and I had planned the complete Sunday – Chip Kidd’s book signing at Metropolis, followed by a twilight football match at the MCG between Carlton and the Tigers. (Go Blues!)
I like reading, especially comics. I have a stack of publications on my shelves at home wrapped in Chip Kidd jackets. I wished I’d brought along my copy of ‘Created in Darkness by Troubled Americans – the best of McSweeney’s humour catalogue’, for Chip Kidd to sign. Instead I purchased a copy of Chip Kidd Book One and sidled up to the book signing table. After a brief introduction Chip proceeded to sign my book with the words: “I can’t think of anything to write. Sorry.”
I must say this was a bit of a let down. No clever witticisms or bon mots for me. He seemed either totally disinterested or brutally honest. I could only hope that Chip had a little more to say in his AGIdeas presentation.
Subsequently I arrived at AGIdeas with quite low expectations. Chip Kidd’s talk was late after being delayed by presentations from a guy who loves to stack rocks, a Sydney studio by the name of Zed preaching the virtues of ‘radicality’ (what the hell?) and by Graphic Thought Facilities’ tales of interesting gallery signage projects.
I found Chip Kidd’s presentation to be not only entertaining, but full of insight, considered opinion, and lessons for all of us. His talk was well-structured and planned. Chip had actually thought long and hard about what he could say to give us a sense of his perspective about our craft. More than just giving us a run-down on the work he has done, he revealed himself.
Chip Kidd lives pretty much at the centre of Chip Kidd land. Consequently, much of his work seems driven primarily by self references. From playing second fiddle to Batman as a child (his mother used to dress him in a very cute Robin costume she made herself) to snapping ‘Big Nozzo’ at the Portuguese fisherman village parade while staying with his partner in their weekender – its all there in his work. I couldn’t help but feel that these personal references must occur over and over, evolving and changing over time, in different contexts and in response to different briefs.
Even the words that Chip Kidd inscribed in my book started to make sense after he described a poster brief for Adobe that he received. It was largely the responsibility of Chip to develop his own brief, to come up with something that was suitable. Like many of us, he struggled with the blank canvas for some time, initially developing a poster that said ‘I couldn’t think of anything’. The client hated it. He then used the photograph of ‘Big Nozzo’ – a person dressed as a hideous green nose. Again, the client responded badly thinking that it was a big brain. Finally it took a frustrated conversation between Chip and the client to provide an inkling of a brief. The final solution utilised a commissioned illustration of an oyster by comic book artist and illustrator Charles Burns.
Chip likes to respond to briefs rather than making up his own. In his words, ‘that is why (he) is a designer not an artist’. I have often thought that one of the fundamental differences between artists and designers is that an artist defines their own brief while a designer interprets a brief that someone else has provided. It is great to hear someone tell you something that reaffirms your own thoughts, and makes you think harder about what you do yourself. Chip did just that throughout his presentation.
Chip reads every book that he designs – and not just the good ones. Again, this is part of the self referencing process for Chip. He reads the novels, lets them become part of him, and then uses his own interpretation and experiences to develop the design solution. How often do we as designers even consider the content that we are working with? How many design possibilities do we miss out on exploring because the text is treated as a design element rather than words with actual meaning?
I liked the way Chip Kidd brought a bit of classroom into his presentation. To demonstrate the importance of experimenting with different voices in design Chip gave a somewhat camp impression of the Wicked Witch from Wizard of Oz reciting the Lord’s Prayer. Sometimes it works, sometimes you need to use a voice that is appropriate. Chip also spoke a little about the use of scale of image – big works for him.
One theme in his work that mimics his self-referencing is the idea of a book jacket within a book jacket. Chip showed us a series of covers for crime writer James Elroy’s novels where he had employed this visual device – gunmen jumping from the covers of a novel, bad guys being punched right out of a page, crime vixens resplendent on an open book. Personally, I hated the look of these, but it did provide an insight into Chip’s thinking process and showed that sometimes if you try to be too clever the result can appear a little contrived.
Chip is a comic book tragic and gleefully showed us the work he has produced for two new comic book series – Superman, and Batman and Robin. He created mastheads for these by stretching type into perspective in Photoshop. On Superman the ‘Super’ was in the foreground, while on the Batman and Robin comic book cover ‘Robin’ was in the foreground – finally Robin was not playing second fiddle to Batman – at least typographically.
Crosswords are a passion for Chip. He uses them as a means to sharpen his word association skills. (I have been doing crosswords as often as possible since his talk to see if it will make any difference to me but no obvious difference so far…) Chip seemed to yearn to be back at home in New York doing crosswords after a month on the road in Australia – incidentally the longest he’d ever been away from home. He finished his presentation with the answer to a crossword clue that he had revealed earlier in his presentation – clue: ‘a number of people’, answer: ‘anaesthetist’. The audience was definitely not ‘numbed’ by Chip Kidd.
Every now and then you hear a speaker that actually makes some difference to the way you see things as a designer. Chip Kidd was one of these speakers.
