Introduction by John Updike
Rizzoli / 2005 / 400 pp
A catalogue of work by a book jacket designer so renowned (in a field short of celebrities) that he has the distinction of being the subject of a Jeopardy! question. With contributions from authors and colleagues, it is as much fun for the book-trade gossip as for the illustrations themselves. The inclusion of some rejected layouts (of Anthony Lane’s Nobody’s Perfect, below, Kidd notes that ‘Nobody got it’) show what could, and perhaps should, have been. A small complaint from one whose job requires them routinely lay out book titles and subtitles on a single line: the surfeit of colons results in the ungainly formation Chip Kidd : Book One : Work : 1986-2006.
