The second talk I am going to review is by Chip Kidd, and
can be found at http://www.ted.com/talks/chip_kidd_designing_books_is_no_laughing_matter_ok_it_is.html
I chose this talk because I have had to design or make a
few books now for different projects and thought it would be interesting to
listen to.
Chip Kidd has an extremely unusual appearance as he walks
out onto the stage and has funny mannerisms that makes the audience laugh,
which I think is to relate to the title of the discussion and to show it is not
a stern discussion. After a jokey introduction he starts off by saying he got
into designing books by accident and that originally he wanted to be a graphic
designer but only ever was offered the job as assistant to the art director at
the book publishers Alfred A. Knopf.
He went on to talk about his experiences and lessons learnt at the company, he said that you either show words or you show pictures, you do not show both because that is treating your audience like a moron. Then he said he was able to use this theory on the first two books he helped publish, one was in a conversational style so the cover required words and the second was a biography so it required just an image for the front cover.
In addition he designed the iconic book cover for Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton which was then used as the logo for all Jurassic Park products and franchise. He also designed the book cover of David Sedaris’ Naked which has a sleeve with underpants on it, which slide off to reveal an X-ray of a pelvis, which I think is funny and a clever twist on a book cover and sleeve.
I found Chip Kidd’s talk extremely funny and intriguing as
it showed different ways of designing book covers, which I have had to do
myself and have found it quite challenging in the past, yet this talk has given
me new ideas for future techniques of illustration and design.
( 341 words )
No comments:
Post a Comment