Chip Kidd Quotations

Hey, have you heard that one about the difference between me, Wit, and my loutish cousin, Hilarity? No? Okay, so I walk into a bar, you see, very unassuming, and order a martini. Then the bartender, Hilarity, hauls off and squirts me in the face with a seltzer bottle, ruining my n ice new camel hair suit, dousing my monocle and my watch fob, soaking my cravat. So, do I let him have what for, and blow my top? I do not. I simply say: Sorry, I believe I said 'very dry'.

Yes, Garnett Grey was an Architect. Were a psychoanalyst to approach him from behind, tap his shoulder, and say 'Humanity,' Garrett'd spin and respond, without hesitation, 'Solvable'.

I am all for the iPad, but trust me - smelling it will get you nowhere.

I think the genre of comics sometimes overtakes the medium, and people assume that they are kind of frivolous. If you have a good, strong story teller, they can be as affecting as any character in literature. Period.

I often get asked, 'Is the book dead?' It hasn't happened yet. It's different than music. Music was always meant to be pure sound - it started out as pure sound and now it's pure sound again. But books started out as things. Words on paper began as words on paper. The paperback book is the best technology to deliver that information to you.

I think too many comic book covers are way too busy, crammed with far too much information, both visual and verbal, that just becomes a dull noise.

I still have a steady stream of book cover work. I'm grateful for it. Viva le book!

Antisappointment. Anticipation colliding head-on with the certainty of its own doom.

Limits are possibilities. ... Formal restrictions, contrary to what you might think, free you up by allowing you to concentrate on purer ideas. ... You can be crippled by too many choices, especially if you don't know what your goals are.

If you intend to die, you can do anything.

Life is a life-long assignment that must be constantly analyzed, clarified, figured out, and responded to appropriately.

Never fall in love with an idea. They're whores...

If you can properly define the problem, then you've already defined the solution as well.

Commercial Art tries to make you buy things. Graphic Design gives you ideas.

What people really want, no matter who they are, is someone to listen to them. ... people have a lot on their minds, however trivial, and if you're simply willing to sit there like a sack of dirt and let them yammer, they will tell it to you.

I had no idea what I was doing, I had no idea where I was going, but at some point I stopped — when to keep going would seem like I was going too far.

Design is, literally, purposeful planning. Graphic Design, then, is the form those plans will take.

Kiddies, Graphic Design, if you wield it effectively, is Power. Power to transmit ideas that change everything. Power that can destroy an entire race or save a nation from despair. In this century, Germany chose to do the former with the swastika, and America opted for the latter with Mickey Mouse and Superman.

A book cover is a distillation. It is a haiku of the story.

Much is to be gained by eBooks: ease, convenience, portability. But something is definitely lost: tradition, a sensual experience, the comfort of thingy-ness - a little bit of humanity.

Design is a response to a specific problem. You are given a problem to solve, and then you let the problem itself tell you what your solution is.

Never fall in love with an idea. They're whores: if the one you're with isn't doing the job, there's always, always, always another.

My hope is that when people first see the cover, they won't understand what they are seeing. Then, only as they read the book or the flap copy will that image change from dishes with dust on them to something else.

I wouldn't buy a book simply because I like the cover. I would pick it up. The jacket can call your attention to it. But in that sense, Oprah Winfrey is worth all the jackets in the world. A jacket is basically trying to do what she does all on her own.

What you must remember about hardcover books is that they are like tattoos. Once you get one, it's never really going to go away.

The thing that I came to realize was that Schulz is the great unifier. Here's the one cartoonist that pretty much everybody can agree on.

I originally thought of that shot of the tea set covered in the ash from 9/11.

I really liked the design of Batman. I liked the concept. There's a lot more you can do with Batman than most other superheroes.

I'd have to say that the things that mean the most to me are the examples of original comic art that I'm able to look at every day, most of them either by notable friends and/or for projects that I've worked on.

The lobby there, ... is the sort of place where you walk in and you feel like you're there to sign a treaty.