What Are You Doing Here?

Chip Kidd

What Are You Doing Here?

Filmed on October 14, 2011, at “Pivot: AIGA Design Conference”

After 25 years working nonstop as a graphic designer and writer, it happens: Chip Kidd gets the commission of a lifetime. That should be a good thing, shouldn't it? Well, shouldn’t it?!

Chip Kidd is a graphic designer and writer in New York City. His book jacket designs for Alfred A. Knopf, where he has worked since 1986, have helped spawn a revolution in the art of American book packaging. He is also an editor of books of comics for Pantheon, a subsidiary of Knopf. Kidd received the International Center of Photography’s award for “Use of Photography in Graphic Design” in 1997, and in 1998 he was made a member of the Alliance Graphique Internationale. In the fall of 2003,  Newsweek included him in its first issue devoted to design. Kidd was awarded the 2007 National Design Award for communications design, and in the fall that year, his work was included in the Cooper-Hewitt’s third National Design Triennial. A comprehensive monograph of Kidd’s work,  Chip Kidd: Book One, was published in 2005, with an introduction by John Updike. The Cheese Monkeys, Kidd’s first novel, was published by Scribner in 2001 and was a national bestseller, as well as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. His second novel,  The Learners, was published in February 2008.