Legendary book designer Chip Kidd talks about his inspiration
What do you do when you're stuck? One more thing.
The Jurassic Park cover story, narrated by book designer Chip Kidd
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Designer Chip Kidd was given a dream job: designing an iconic book cover for a future blockbuster: Michael Crichtons.Jurassic Park🇧🇷 And when the pressure to perform is so high, you quickly become creatively paralyzed. Spark & Fire follows Chip on his journey in and out of the doldrums as he creates one of the most recognizable book covers of the 20th century. He tells the story in his own funny and direct words, with plenty of clever and practical advice for anyone starting their own creative quest.
episode of this episode
Chapter 1: Homework
Chico-Chip:My editor-in-chief, Sonny Mehta, told me, "Think 'Jaws.' I say, "Okay. They want to do something that's as iconic to this book as it turned out to be the Jaws movie poster." And I remember thinking at the time, 'Okay, this is how it's going to happen. Not in a million years I might be able to do this. So forget that thought because if you try something like this you are doomed to fail.
Hostess June Cohen:This is graphic designer Chip Kidd. He's about to tell us the story of the book cover design forJurassic Parkby Michael Crichton. You can probably picture the T. rex in profile on this cover. It's such an iconic design that you almost forget someone designed it. But of course someone did. And that was Chip Kidd.
And as Chip tells us the story of this creative journey, you'll hear how he keeps finding inspiration by letting go. Leave the pressure aside for starters. But also your own assumptions, your first attempts. and even the whole project. You'll hear Chip going through inspiration and ideas, what he does when he quits, and looking for happy coincidences.
And here's what you need to know about Chip Kidd. Today he is the most famous book designer in the world. At the time he was a junior designer at Knopf-Verlag and he wasn't sure if Jurassic Park would become a bestseller or be adapted into a blockbuster film that pioneered the use of computer generated graphics. But I knew the expectations were high. And here our story begins.
The original music you will hear is by our composer, Ryan Holladay, who accompanies the story.
Left, cover designed by Paul Bacon for the hardcover edition ofKiefer1974 for Double Day. On the right the original poster from a sheetKieferthe film, featuring poster art by Mick McGinty, who was inspired by Bacon's design and typography. Book Club EditionKieferfrom Ken's Book Cellar in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. 1stdibs movie poster image.
Chapter 2: Telling stories around the campfire
Chico-Chip:I was then a young up-and-coming designer and about 26 years old? One by one, the editors tell a story of each of the books on their list. I call it the corporate equivalent of storytelling around the campfire. Sonny Mehta, our editor-in-chief, would always come last.
He simply said, "This is a Michael Crichton thriller where scientists discover a way to bioengineer dinosaurs and we'll be excited." and let's get started. Spielberg had already bought it, had already chosen it. Now, of course, film people are always picking books and they may or may not get made, but we knew all along that Spielberg made that choice.
Chapter 3: Start with what you know
What to do if an idea doesn't work? Set it aside and find the next one.
Chico-Chip:We started generating ideas. "What would dinosaur skin look like if you were up close?" Like standing next to him. And it looked like nothing. It basically looked like a bubbling sheet of leather, which is probably correct.
You start with what we really know. What do we really know?
You are standing in front of a title that no one knew what it meant at the time. If the book is calledworld of dinosaursand then you show dinosaur skin, maybe that's possible, but nobody knew what a "Jurassic" was back then. So you have an abstract title and you put an abstract image in it and you get an abstract square, which in this case wasn't good. That didn't work.
They needed something like a visual hook for the audience. Especially when the reader has no idea what is to come. It's like, "Okay, I don't know what a 'Jurassic' is, but look, it looks like it could be a dinosaur." I start doing visual calculations in my head as to what that really means. What do we really know?
A 1971 Aurora model Allosaurus owned by collector Trevor Ylisaari that he keepsa website dedicated to the Aurora models.Growing up I was a huge fan of movies like A Million Years BC. with squishy stop-motion dinosaurs. I was a kid in the 1970's and they had these model kits from a company called Aurora and they made a whole bunch of dinosaurs. So I got really excited and built them all, from Allosaurus to Stegosaurus.
I was so used to seeing this type of image on the cover of the model box, for example. I had a childhood model of these toys, but therefore: do something different. You don't want to do something like that. I started experimenting with different dinosaurs. I love a triceratops, I love a brontosaurus.
There's a scene in the book where they suddenly get bombarded by pterodactyls, which is cool. So I said, "Okay, let's try a pterodactyl!" What have I done. It was elegant but not scary at all.
At this point several weeks, maybe a month have passed. This is one of our biggest titles on this list. We have to preach that sooner or later.
Most of the 1966 British fantasy adventure film postersA million years B.C.feature a very tall Raquel Welch, but the real stars of the film may have been the stop-motion dinosaurs they drewthe legendary Ray Harryhausen🇧🇷 The British Film Institute collects his original drawings.Chapter 4: Banging your head against the wall
What do you do when you're stuck? One more thing.
Chico-Chip:If you get stuck, if you bang your head against the wall, if you've been working and focused on that particular project for a long time, give yourself a break. Give yourself a breather and do something else because your subconscious will keep working on what's giving you trouble.
I love to... docrossword because it helps me to think conceptually. My favorite example, the clue was... and I'll just spell it out for you. A number of people. OK? A number of people. And the answer is ANESTHESIA, because it's not about a number of people, it's about a number of people.
And that, to me, is the magic of a really good crossword answer, because it forces you to think about the language differently. So it kind of helps me to create book covers.
Crossword puzzle makers really have a lot of fun.Chapter 5: The Discovery
How do you find an elusive idea? Go in search of serendipity.
Chico-Chip:Somehow, I wanted to get away from all of these portrayals, both in pop culture and in science books, and still be true to who I really am. And all roads lead thereNaturehistorical Museum.
I firmly believe in serendipity. I'm not smart enough to have a clear plan in my head at this point other than just go out there and see what happens. Exit the commercial building, take the subway two blocks away and take the shuttle fromthe A train,as the song says, up to your own stop. And you go out, pay the entrance fee and enter. And then there's that faint, familiar smell from when you were a kid on a hike. Suddenly you are eight years old again.
Then you go to the dinosaur room. Everything is marble: the benches, the floor, the walls, the ceiling. There is nothing that could absorb noise. So try not to make too much noise because everything you say will reverberate and you don't want to disturb others.
Probe AMNH 5027,Tyranosaurus rex, was discovered as a nearly complete skeleton in Big Dry Creek, Montana by the famous fossil hunter Barnum Brown. It has been a centerpiece of the American Museum of Natural History for more than a century. This image from the 1960s approximates what the museum's dinosaur room looked like in 1989, when Chip Kidd showed up. Photo courtesy of the American Museum of Natural History / METRO Project 2007Looking at all the different dinosaur skeletons and bones and display cases and large display cases will immediately set your imagination into fourth gear. And you try to imagine what these things must have been like when they were alive. You represented all different kinds of animalsT. rex type rules the room.
He can sit in a specific spot where he can see the large open window behind him to let in the daylight.
This 1927 slide image illustrates Chip's idea that the skeleton is also a silhouette, concealing and revealing. Unknown (Photographer), "Tyrannosaurus rex. left side, January 1927”, AMNH Research Library | digital special collectionsI had a sketchbook. Back then you didn't take your phone and take a picture of what I would do today because it would be so much better than anything I could draw.
It's backlit, and subconsciously or consciously you realize you're not just looking at a dinosaur skeleton. You are looking at the silhouette of a dinosaur skeleton. And that's changing. I've always loved silhouettes for what they hide and reveal at the same time. Lots of detail is obscured and fused into a solid image, but all those bits of light come through too. So it's reminiscent of something between the remains of the animal and the animal itself.
Then go to the Natural History Museum bookstore and shopthis great book.
It was about an inch thick and not a richly illustrated book. It was basically a technical book on dinosaurs.
Everything was black and white. But there were all these detailed drawings made very meticulously based on existing bone fragments. It was an academic study of dinosaur bones. It didn't seem like they were using their imaginations. They only used what they found.
If you go on twitter there are whole memes of people finding the original drawing and then comparing it to what I did. It's not hard to find what's fine with me. I think it's cool, like, "Hey hey, that's where he got it from" and it's like "Yeah, that's where I got it from." So you can see what I've done with it.
Juni Cohen:Did you notice how Chip went to the Natural History Museum? I didn't have a rigid plan. He just went in search of happiness. And that's the theme you hear throughout Chip's story: Let go of everything, including your own expectations, so inspiration can find you.
After the break, Chip completes the reporting and sends it to Crichton. You won't want to miss the epic moment that follows.
The chip book in the American Museum of Natural History gift shop is calledPaleontology and evolution of vertebrates, by Robert L Carroll. Contains images from the work of Henry Fairfield Osborne, former head of the AMNH. The image here is from page 214 of Osborne's 1917 book.The Origin and Evolution of Life: On the Theory of the Action, Reaction, and Interaction of Energy🇧🇷 A free PDF of this 1917 edition is available on Google Books.Chapter 6: The Art and Craft of Finishing
How do you bring a creative work into its most perfect final form? It becomes a practical logistical problem.
Chico-Chip:They didn't want it to look like every other dinosaur book made before. Something about him had to be unique.
I am what I would call a minimalist. So he wanted something flat, graphic, his way, no frills. It will work if you break it down to its essential parts.
I pulled these technical drawings out of this dinosaur book. There was an image of just the skull, which I thought was cool, but it sends a very different message. That said, it could be a book on archaeology, no, the skull connects to the neck, which connects to the body, which connects to the hands and tail, and it's all there. I thought: it takes everything, completely, to understand what the reader will find. It's not about digging up these things.
So it becomes a logistical problem, literally a practical one. Many of the images I wanted to work with were small. God bless the Xerox machine. If you blow something up to 500%, you immediately lose line quality. If you want to lose line quality now, you're in luck. But if you want it to be literally sharp, you'll have to redraw it.
I just thought, okay, let's redraw it then. Anyone who's been a graphic designer and illustrator has had to learn to work with those damn Rapidograph pens, mechanical drawing pens, and, um, these pens.
I would put these ink cartridges in and depending on how thin they were they would clog instantly so you had to learn how to hold them properly so the ink would flow properly when held completely perpendicular to the artboard. But you have this incredibly fine line. If you make a mistake, you can let it dry and then take an X-Acto knife and scrape off the paint. And then just experiment. Just scribbling and seeing what the result was, what the effect was.
If you look at the skeleton you can see these pointed spears sticking out of the rib cage and it looks menacing. The chest looks menacing. It's like, wow, okay, that helps. That helps a lot.
I made this drawing and didn't know when to stop because I didn't want to fill it in completely. It leaves just enough for the imagination to point out dangers, sharp objects, things that could hurt you.
So at some point I stopped.
Chapter 7: The cloak we sent to Crichton
Chico-Chip:It's very easy. The background is white and the skeleton wraps around the spine and back. Then you have the feeling that it is big, that it cannot be contained in one area. It must be able to circulate freely through the jacket. Not just in front.
There was some concern that the pelvic bone intentionally wrapped around the spine in the back because only the tip was showing in the front, and someone said, "You know, I really don't think we should show the dinosaur penis in the book cover." "So I couldn't argue with that.
The inscription is basically what you would call utilitarian, which would mean a location sign in a park saying "This is the way to the T. rex cage" or whatever. I felt like, well, this feels new to me. It looks like this is going to be a dinosaur book like no other dinosaur book you've ever read.
This book cover of the first UK edition of Jurassic Park shows the body of the T. rex skeleton being wrapped around the front and back of the book, being careful not to let its pelvis rest on the cover. It also shows that the dinosaur's original design was very dark green. This edition is listed (and still available at the time of publication) by John Atkinson Fine & Rare Books.Chapter 8: You can do better
How can you learn to accept criticism? You put everything aside... and start over.
Chico-Chip:As a book cover designer, you have responsibilities to at least, I would say, five different entities. And it's hard to tick all those boxes. It's often three out of five or two out of five or worse.
I want to make Crichton happy. I want to make Sonny happy. I want to make the marketing department at Knopf happy. I'm not really thinking about Steven Spielberg right now, but I want the fans, the readers, to be happy, and I think you need to think about yourself, too, because literally it's going to have my name on it.
But the author always has the last word. As a Knopf Pantheon company, we want writers to be happy. Let's not push with something they hate. Especially in this case.
One of the David Sedaris books I was working on,Dress your family in corduroy and denim, I must have done eight or nine projects that just didn't work out.
I came up with idea after idea and nothing came of it. I didn't give up, but I thought, "Okay, I'll take a week off and work on something else."
I was doing photographic research for another project. Then I came across this picture of this naked Barbie doll in a photographer's portfolio and the lightbulb went on in my head, a gas of ideas. It just clicked. I say, “Oh, okay, that's it. Is that. That would be perfect for this title.”
So at this point I thought, "Okay, they're going to agree or not." But they liked it and it was the best. They were right to reject the other stuff because that was for the best, and that's the best case when the author or the publisher or whoever says, 'You know what? You can do better." And then you figure out how to do better.
"Delightfully alienated and neurotic, David Sedaris is one of the greatest living American humorists," says the Puget Sound Library, which unveiled this book, with the now iconic Chip Kidd cover, as part of its 125th anniversary celebrations in 2004. . .Chapter 9: The Fax Machine
Chico-Chip:Crichton, was more of the "sit back and see what you can think of" type. I show Sonny. Sonny says yes or no. And at that point, it's up to Sonny to send it to Crichton. I mean you have some hope. You have hope but you never know.
It's 1989, "Ooh, fax machine. That's so nifty. And I remember someone once saying, "What did we do without fax machines?" Crichton sent this almost lewd statement about how much he liked it, which was really cool. "Wow, freaking awesome jacket." I saved it and I have it.
We certainly expected the book to be a success, but we didn't anticipate the magnitude of the success. I mean you have some hope. You can't control the zeitgeist with something like that.
Chapter 10: Coming Soon: Jurassic Park The Movie
What happens if your work is adjusted? You sit and watch.
Chico-Chip:All of these reports appeared in the tabloids. I remember page six of the New York Post about all these problems they had to make the film. Production would shut down. And they tried to make this new 3D computer generated thing that worked, and then it didn't work, and blah blah blah blah blah. It felt like, "Wow, this is doomed." It's either doomed or it's going to be awful.
My phone rings, he's a great attorney for Universal Pictures and, "Is there someone by the name of Chip Kidd?" And I said, "Speak." And they said, "Well, we want to license the rights to this picture if we want to use it in connection with the movie." And I know how sausages are made. I said, "I have to hand it over to our legal department." And that was the last time I spoke to anyone at Universal Pictures.
I used to buy a trade magazine that was more for toy licenses because I really liked toys. And this full-page ad came out: Coming Soon: Jurassic Park the Movie. And it was the first time I saw the film's logo. And that was very interesting, very interesting. They didn't change the design of the dinosaur in any way. They just added all this stuff that my design professor wouldn't have approved of. You know, the stylized typography, there's little palm trees in the background. The yellow circle. And it looked so different, but the design was the same. But this is show business, what you gonna do?
They did a little screening in Manhattan to show us the film. And that was just before he left, and that's when we saw him. To what extent that was integrated into the film. It's not just the movie logo, it's the park logo. It's the park's logo in the movie. The people in the film wear badges attached to their vests. Everything in the gift shop etc. etc. etc. And I mean our jaws dropped anyway because the movie was so good.
When the book cover design for the 1993 film Jurassic Park was approved, the design remained the same but some changes were made, which can be seen in this photo from the Kualoa Ranch film tour in Hawaii. The film's designers added silhouettes of palm trees, some color, and a circular border to form a circular logo. Meanwhile, designer Mike Salisbury chose Neuland for the words "Jurassic Park." Photo: Will Fisher/Flickr CC BY-SA 2.0Chapter 11: What it means
Chico-Chip:It means I'll get an obituaryNew York Times,and that will be the first line of the obituary. And hey when I came to New York and I was very young I just wanted to start doing something creative and this was the first job I was offered but the pay was very low. But I realized that if I continued, any design I would make would have my name on it. Book cover designers receive recognition for their work. and thusJurassic Park, it says: Design and illustration by Chip Kidd.
I say it's definitely one of the most recognizable graphic symbols of the 1990's, I'm very proud of that. It's really weird because once it's sold to Universal I'm no longer in the credits of the movie. I'm sure someone said if we give him credit he'll come after us for money. And I think that's why they didn't do it. It's a shame.
So it's kind of odd that there's a fraction of the fandom that knows I did this, but I'm sure there's a huge, much, much larger audience that loves the films and loves the logo or whatever it didn't I made it. So just interesting. That's interesting.
In 2014, Chip Kidd's archives, more than 250 boxes of material and nearly 1 terabyte of digital material, moved to the campus libraries at Penn State University, his alma mater. His student folder and the original designs for the cover ofJurassic Park, and much more, are now housed in the Eberly Family Special Collections Library, adding to their strong graphic holdings, including works by Edward Gorey and Lynd Ward. Photo: Wilson Hutton, Public Relations and Marketing, University LibrariesChapter 12: Layer by layer
How to turn a single success into a career? Set it aside and get to work.
Chico-Chip:If you're M. Night Shyamalan and you get The Sixth Sense, that's what makes your career. However, this is not the case when designing book covers. We live from the top down.
There was no way I would be able to do anotherJurassic Park🇧🇷 It just doesn't work that way. You can't do that. The only thing I could do felt remotely like the sequelThe Lost World, OK? Every book is different. I can't approach another book cover that way because it's a different book. It would be, I don't know, aesthetically dishonest to try to copy it.
There were a number of books that I worked on, I would say the covers became iconic because the books were iconic, and it came one after the other. well you doJurassic Parkbut then you doall the beautiful horsesby Cormac McCarthy. and then you dothe secret storyby Donna Tart. and then you dofootprints of the dayby Kazuo Ishiguro. And then you do this cover for an obscure short story group calledThe elephant disappearsby someone named Haruki Murakami. And then you do something calledmy name is redby Orhan Pamuk. and then you donoby someone named David Sedaris. It's just the group, the succession and the accumulation.
That was more important than anything else.
Juni Cohen:I want to thank Chip for sharing the story of his creative journey. And I want to thank you for listening. I hope you've gained something to bring to your own work, whatever your field.
Whether it's the way Chip completely lets go of the pressure to create something iconic and then creates something iconic. Or the way he was willing to push aside any idea that didn't work to make room for the next inspiration.
Maybe it was the way you solved crosswords when you got stuck, or spotted an idea for a cover while researching another. Or go in search of randomness - sketchpad in hand - and come back with this legendary T. rex.
Whatever you take away from Chip's story, we'd love to hear it. Tweet us @sparkandfirepod. Email us at[email protected]Or join us every Wednesday at 4pm live on the Clubhouse app. m. Oriental. There you will find me and the entire Spark & Fire team in the Creativity Club. And if you'd like to share this episode with a friend or co-worker, use this link: listen.sparkandfire.com/chipkidd.
Raptis Rare Books of Palm Beach, Florida has released this very special first edition of Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park, signed by Crichton and film director Steven Spielberg on the front cover and signed with an original drawing by Chip Kidd center back. . Unfortunately it is already sold, but you can see more at the Raptis exhibition.Jurassic Park at age 30.
About Chip Kidd
Longtime book designer at Knopf, where he designed the cover ofJurassic Parkand hundreds of other books (and now for Penguin Random House),Chico-ChipHe is the author of two novels, two non-fiction books and a study on Batman. keep following him@ChipKidd