the MARTINI SHAKER

I’m a big fan of the work of Chip Kidd, first finding out about him from his novel The Cheese Monkeys: A Novel in Two Semesters. Interestingly enough, right after I read that book I picked up Naked by David Sedaris and notice that Chip Kidd designed the book cover. This of course led to some digging around, and I found that a number of recent book covers that I really admired were all done by the same super talented guy.

His first compendium slipped under my radar (it was published in September 2005), but nonetheless I’m jazzed about it. I encourage you to check out Chip Kidd: Book One : Work: 1986-2006 and see what innovative designs Chip Kidd has contributed to the book cover design industry.

Not only are the designs themselves top notch, he’s come up with some very interesting packaging for the books as well. For instance, take a look at the design for this compendium on his site. I’m not quite sure what’s going on, but it seems that the jacket is actually shorter than the pages inside. I haven’t gotten my hands on my copy yet, but I’m interested to see how the whole thing works out. The hardback edition of The Cheese Monkeys that I own was designed to look like a well-worn school textbook. There’s printing on the edges of the pages that if you hold the book just right spells out “good is dead”, and there’s lots of interesting typography all along the edges of the book jacket.

At any rate, I find his work interesting, and I hope you might too.