Chip Kidd

Ripped straight from one of my favorite sites....WIKIPEDIA!

Chip Kidd is an American author, editor, and graphic designer, best known for his innovative book covers.

Kidd is currently associate art director at Knopf, an imprint of Random House. He first joined the Knopf design team in 1986, when he was hired as a junior assistant. Turning out jacket designs at an average of 75 a year, Kidd has freelanced for Doubleday, Farrar Straus & Giroux, Grove Press, HarperCollins, Penguin/Putnam, Scribner and Columbia University Press in addition to his work for Knopf. Kidd also supervises graphic novels at Pantheon, and in 2003 he collaborated with Art Spiegelman on a biography of cartoonist Jack Cole, Jack Cole and Plastic Man: Forms Stretched to Their Limits. His output includes cover concepts for books by Mark Beyer, Bret Easton Ellis, Haruki Murakami, Dean Koontz, Cormac McCarthy, Frank Miller, Michael Ondaatje, Alex Ross, Charles Schulz, Osamu Tezuka, David Sedaris, Donna Tartt, John Updike and others. His design for Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park novel was carried over into marketing for the film adaptation. Oliver Sacks and other authors have contract clauses stating that Kidd design their books.

Parts of the Smithsonian Interview I liked:

Q: What do you say to the axiom "Don't judge a book by its cover"?

A: My reaction is, Oh, go ahead.

Q: Does a typical idea come from the book itself, the author, something on the street, a flea market, a dream, or what?

A: It's totally everywhere. Absolutely. And the nice thing about books is the deadlines aren't as crazy as somewhere like a magazine or, God forbid, a newspaper. So, you have the luxury of time usually, to read a book and let it kind of like simmer and percolate in your head. And waiting for the right solution to come along, whether it's something you come up with on your own or a piece of art they you see in a gallery. I would definitely recommend anybody who wants to be a book jacket designer to move to New York City.

My own actual words (which are open for judgement):

Chip Kidd is important to us because there was once a question about him on Jeopardy. Ok thats not the only reason he is important but you have to admit it is a big deal. Book cover designs have significantly improved in the past couple of decades and Chip Kidd has been on the forefront of this development. His ideas are always fresh and and even as he has created thousands of book covers he is still able to create great ideas.