Chip Kidd: Designing Books is No laughing Matter

I enjoyed watching this talk for two reasons. First, Chip Kidd's jokes were very witty therefore it wasn't necessary to try too hard to be funny. Second, it was like watching a book cover in action. The way he dressed and how he moved gave us an idea of what to expect to see and hear. Stories need a face and book covers do just that. It gives the book a face whose expression we can decode. Chip Kidd mentioned that "a book designer gives form to content but manages a very careful balance between the two." This is especially true when we, human beings, naturally make connections to what we see. I personally respond immediately to an image by making interpretations upon seeing it and then I read whatever text comes with it. The way we respond to different stimuli depends on the emotions it arouses. It is then very important for a book cover  to tell us a story or provoke us to discover the story. After all, we do judge a book by its cover!

I love it when he said, "a book cover is a haiku of a story". It definitely is. I believe that a book cover is like a poetry, a collection of a few, carefully selected, intense  and thought provoking words that tell a story. And even if Ipads and Kindles are very convenient to have, there is nothing like the comfort that the familiar sound of flipping pages in a quiet room gives to an avid reader. 

The book cover of the "Survivor" by Chuck Palahniuk presents a challenge to the mind. It provokes the readers to figure out what the page would result to if folded along the crease. It makes me think that the story would require some intellectual challenges to solve a mystery or maybe it can even be how to survive higher level Math!

The book cover of "The Mind's Eye" by oliver sacks uses an image of something very familiar, an eye test chart. It serves its purpose 100% because it fools the mind into thinking that your eyes are actually blurry by staring at it. I think this is a book explaining how our minds based from what we've experienced interprets what we see or it can also be a story about misinterpreting people or situations.

The book cover of "Exit A" by Anthony Swofford makes use of an app calles "Unblock". It is a game where one figures out how to arrange certain blocks for "THE" -usually red- block to exit. The level of difficulty increases as you advance. Considering that there's a picture of what seems to be a teenager in one corner, I think this book is a story about one boy's struggle to get through middle or high school. The blocks represents all the challenges he needed to overcome to get out of unpleasant situations.