Chip Kidd, Associate Art Director at Knopf Books, Peter Mendelsund, Art Director for Pantheon Press, and Stephen Doyle, Creative Director, Doyle Partners; Design Contributor, New York Times and Wired, discuss whether cutting edge visual design can save the print industry. The talk is moderated by Darhil Crooks, Creative Director for the Atlantic, and way down below is the video-taped footage of the event.

Date: Tuesday, May 7th, 2013
Location: New York Historical Society, NYC

The first Speaker is Chip Kidd and he starts out talking a little bit about working with Neil Gaiman on Neil’s new book, MAKE GOOD ART : Neil Gaiman’s Speech Book. Which, by the way, is coming out on Wednesday, May 15th. Yes, that’s tomorrow! Very quickly, Chip Kidd gives a preview of what the book will look like, discusses some of the design ideas and concepts, and then (in a very sneaky way) he shamelessly plugs his own book that is coming out in October of 2013. We’re talking about his “Teaching Graphic Art to Kids” Book which is titled, “GO! A KIDD’S GUIDE TO GRAPHIC DESIGN“.

Then, next-up is Peter Mendelsund who quickly shares an amazing assortment of some of his work. Like Chip, he mainly designs book covers. But his graphic art has an interesting twist. He designs jackets for new books that are expected to be bestsellers AND he creates new covers for old classics, what they call the “back list”, and it’s all really great stuff like: Franz Kafka, Dante, Plato, Simone De Beauyoir, James Joyce, etc…

Peter also makes a shameless plug for his brand-new Design Book coming out in the Spring of 2014 titled, “COVER” by Peter Mendelsund. It looks pretty cool!

Then, the last guest (last, but NOT least) is Stephen Doyle who shares an amazing art-concept movie he created called CIPHER. This was a project he worked on with some Students and the end result is pretty interesting. He also discusses recent trends in publishing & print media.

Design for change. Design for good. Design for a better world.

These are the premises that fuel DESIGN INDABA. Their goal is for a better world through design, creativity and innovation.

Chip Kidd spoke at their 2011 event and while in Barcelona he stumbled across a caf decorated with book covers that he had designed. He found this both strange… and rather great!

Last year, around February, Chip Kidd was in Texas to speak at a special lecture given at the Dallas Museum of Art. So, to promote the event he got the chance to talk with the crazy guys over at FANBOY RADIO. ( We mean “crazy” in a good way, they’re awesome!)

The cool thing is that you can tell that the people doing the interview either, did some amazing research, or they’re just honestly huge fans because their questions were really really clever. I mean, they discuss Graphic Design, Book Covers, Comic Books, Batman, and a few of Chip Kidd’s Books like – The Cheese Monkeys, The Learners, Batman: Death By Design, and much more.

OK, I know this podcast interview is “a year old”, but it’s actually still very timely today and it shares some really good insight into design and other issues. So, please enjoy… oh yeah, and please share it with everybody you know

THANK YOU FANBOY RADIO!

CLICK HERE TO HEAR IT LIVE:

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Just a quick shout out for fans of our friend Chris Ware. His artwork is going to be featured on the cover of the next fresh issue of THE NEW YORKER Magazine. This is Chris Ware’s special “Mother’s Day” cover that will hit newsstands on May 13th, 2013. So, please be sure to keep an eye out for it!

Also, Please be sure to read Chris Ware’s Article about this Cover by clicking RIGHT HERE!

WOW! We’re really excited to report that Chip Kidd designed the main graphic for the cover to today’s New York Times BOOK REVIEW. The image, shown up above, is obviously a parody on the famous British World War Two “Keep Calm and Carry On” Poster, but it also does a very good job of conveying the basic message of the main book review they are featuring on the cover. It’s the latest Triller Novel from John Le Carr titled, A DELICATE TRUTH.

The book will be released by Viking on May 7th (Yes, that’s in 2 days, ha!). As an important side note we should mention that Chip Kidd did not design the cover for the actual book.

So, please be sure to read today’s New York Times BOOK REVIEW by OLEN STEINHAUER, just CLICK HERE!

Over at the DESIGN LAB website ( The Blog for the Mail Chimp Company ), they did a very excellent write-up about their experience with Chip Kidd and his recent visit to the company. Also, a Graphic Artist named Jason Travis created a poster for the event, which you can see up above. For more information about Mail Chimp, please CLICK HERE!

Here’s a video that is a part of the ongoing series created by Random House Books called, “Inside Random House”. These short features give all of us a small glimpse into the workings of the famous publishing house. This particular clip is titled, “Digital Product Innovation”. Here is their quote:

“The way we transform book content into digital experiences is rapidly evolving. Join some of our key in-house digital product experts as they give you an insight into how they approach their work, and highlight a few of our exciting new digital products. Tune in!”

HARPER COLLINS, the Book Publisher responsible for bringing Neil Gaiman and Chip Kidd together to create a wonderful new book all based on Neil Gaiman’s insanely great “MAKE GOOD ART” Speech, has just placed an incredible special PREVIEW of the first few pages to give you an idea on the basic concept of what the book’s interior will look like. Hey, you can view this sneak-peek by clicking RIGHT HERE!

Also, The book is set to not come out until May 18th, but if you CLICK HERE you can pre-order it at a special price. Thanks!

We just discovered a really great website recently called the MONKEY ART AWARDS and it’s main focus is celebrating achievement in the entertainment advertising arts and sciences, whew! Another way to put it, it’s a very clever, funny & informative site where they cover ideas relating to Art Direction & Graphic Design.

Here’s an example. Check out these totally hilarious “Vintage Pulp Paperback Book Covers” that anyone in this field can relate too, funny stuff! To enjoy more of their wacky crazy antics please CLICK HERE!

On April 16th, 2013, Chip Kidd made an appearance at the Bismarck State College. This was a speaking engagement for their Graphic Design & Communications Department. The entire event went really well, whew! Plus, they must have loved having him there because they were really sweet and wrote this wonderful REVIEW of what happened. Thank You Bismarck!! North Dakota ROCKS!!

To read their article, please CLICK HERE!