The Telegraph has an interesting interview with Chip Kidd. Who, you may well ask? Well, as the article notes, you may not be familiar with Chip’s name but there is every chance that you’ve seen plenty of his work; you may even have some of it on your own shelves – Chip is one of the top graphic artists in the world pf publishing, creating images and cover layouts for a score of international bestselling works from Jurassic Park (he designed the now-famous silhouette of a roaring dino skull) to the works of Cormac McCarthy, as well as supervising Pantheon’s graphic novel range. And yet, most readers probably haven’t heard his name despite being exposed to his designs regularly, an aspect of his work (and that of most graphic designers, I’d imagine) that he discusses:
“I gave a lecture and one of the students introduced me. He said that he knew my work before he knew who I was, because he would draw the Jurassic Park dinosaur in his fourth-grade class. It’s exciting; I’m not bitter about it at all. But it does bring up the issue, with graphic designers, of getting credit for your work. If my name wasn’t on the book jackets, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Who’s the poor son of a bitch who actually designed the Brillo box that Andy Warhol used? That to me is a real bugbear.”
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