Sticky Notes Blog

A blog of writing news, tips, and inspiration from Fat Plum

"I don't avoid repeating myself. I rip myself off all the time."

An interview with Chip Kidd, the extraordinarily-good book cover designer who is also an editor, writer, and expert on Batman, in which he discusses "his career, the Caped Crusader, misadventures in the film industry, and his aesthetic theories."

The Onion: What sets a good book cover apart from a bad book cover?

Chip Kidd: Well, the boring answer is, a good book cover makes you want to pick it up. End of story. It will intrigue you enough to make you want to go to second base, as it were, with the book. The silly answer is, "One with a big penis on it." It worked for me.

O: What would you want to avoid? What would make you say, "This will never work"?

CK: I've been doing this long enough that to even go there is a mistake. Let's limit it to designing covers for fiction right now. That's very much a theater of the mind.... One of the things I learned while majoring in graphic design in college, that I've always taken very much to heart... The teacher one day drew an apple on the blackboard, and then wrote the word "apple" underneath it. He pointed to the whole thing and he said, "You should never do this." He covered up the picture and said, "You either just have the word," then covered up the word and said, "or you just have the picture. But don't do both." It's insulting to the reader, or the viewer, or whoever. I think that's true. So what did I do on the cover for All The Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy? I showed a horse. I showed a pretty horse.

Posted by Cindy on June 02, 2004
This entry was posted in the following categories: Publishing