VISC302 - Journal 1

"You have now watched videos about Chip Kidd, Paul Rand, and Alvin Lustig. What is the take away from each? Please summarize each person. What resonated about their designs? What can you use for this project?"


Chip Kidd:

He is a very expressive speaker. His is a graphic designer who has been designing book covers for the past 25 years. He says his job is to ask "What do stories look like?" All books need a face, he says. A book designer gives form to content, in a very careful balance. Through out the talk, he describes several of his own book covers and the reasoning behind their cover designs. He also tells about his own experiences. A lot of his books are clever by design, the meaning is not spelled out but the viewer can understand the message though the interaction of image and title. He worked on the Jurassic Park novel and his dinosaur image was used in all sorts of other applications. The book designer's responsibility is 3-fold: to the reader, to the publisher, to the author. He emphasizes the importance of the how the cover tells a story in a 3 dimensional form (the front, spine, back, and interior flaps all must interact). A lot of his advice was helpful. I will strive to make my book cover more meaningful than the literal interpretation of the book. I want to embrace the mood, theme, and essence of the story with my cover design. I also want to think creatively about solutions and experiment (like he did with Dry by making the ink appear run)


Paul Rand:

Known for his logo designs and magazine covers, Paul Rand also did very successful book covers in the late 50s to 60s. I love his use of pattern (like the first cover shown that uses the textile abacus pattern) and I would like to incorporate that into my book cover designs. He does a variety of techniques to create his book covers. In particular, he likes to test boundaries and use dynamic white space. His covers are nontraditional in this way and cause the viewer's eye to move constantly through the composition (like with his The Tables of the Law cover design where the image of Moses is cropped off at the top and white space is left at the top and bottom). Paul Rand, like Chip Kidd, also focuses on creative solutions to give meaning to the book cover. The book cover itself tells a story of its own and draws the reader in to learn more. I particularly liked his cupid with bullet holes cover for Leave Canceled. I want to experiment with expressive paper treatments like these in my own cover designs.


Alvin Lustig:

He died at the age of 45 because of diabetes, after going blind at the age of 40. He is a "designer as author" and wrote books. He came from a Jewish family and didn't go to high school or college. He worked in a type shop. He used type case materials and created decorations to produce book covers. Much of his early covers are symbol and shape based with straight set type. He did technical illustration, which also was incorporated into his covers. IN addition to book covers he also did interior design for a hotel, furniture, lighting, a helicopter, and the title sequence for Mr. Magoo. He was a very charismatic character. I really like his covers that are a collage of photography and hand lettering, I would like to use this concept for my non-computer based cover. I also like his combination of various typefaces to create a type-based poster. That technique is now very popular today. His contemporary color palettes are also visually successful. I would like to try to maintain a limited color palette in my book covers.