Type 2: Journal 3, Chip Kidd

I watched the video "Chip Kidd Explains His Process" and in class today we watched Chip Kidd's Ted talk about designing book covers in order to prepare our minds for the project we're starting. While I did get distracted by the yellow piping on his suit jacket, I can say it was thoroughly informative and entertaining. Probably because Literature was always my favorite subject and I get to design for one of my favorite books, Slaughterhouse-Five, I was already enthusiastic to design a book cover before we began this morning. But Kidd's message was clear and exciting to me- when you design a book cover you are telling the story of the book through your imagery. You try to encapsulate the main themes and messages in an enticing way so that people have to pick it up and see what its about. The segment when he talks about how he designed the cover for "My Name is Red" by Orhan Pamuk by creating a story as you pull it from the shelf is an amazing example of how to do this. But for others, like "1Q84" by Haurki Murakami, he took the main essence of the book and applied to the jacket and cover in a beautiful and interactive way. The designer is an "interpreter and translator" of the text to the visual design. And I hope to create three designs for Slaughterhouse-Five that can convey the incredible truths and pay respect to the novel that is truly a classic.