Chip Kidd Quotes

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

If you intend to die, you can do anything.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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 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.

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.

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'.