You may not know Chip Kidd but you have seen his work many times before.
Born in Reading, Pennsylvania, Kidd grew up in a Philadelphia suburb, strongly influenced by American popular culture. While a design student at Penn State, an art instructor once gave the assignment to design a book cover for John Updike.
Kidd is currently the associate art director at Knopf. He first joined the Knopf design team in 1986. Publishers Weekly described his book jackets as “creepy, striking, sly, smart, unpredictable covers that make readers appreciate books as objects of art as well as literature. USA Today also called him “the closest thing to a rock star in graphic design today, while author James Elroy has called him “the world’s greatest book-jacket designer.”
Kidd creates an average of 75 jacket designs a year. His output includes cover concepts for books by Dean Koontz, Cormac McCarthy, Frank Miller, Alex Ross, Charles Schulz and David Sedaris. John Updike and others.. His design for Michael Crichton‘s Jurassic Park novel was carried over into marketing for the film adaptation. Oliver Sacks and other authors have contract clauses stating that Kidd design their books.
