The Story of How a Book Finds Its Cover

Chip Kidd. Book cover designer. Amazing thinker. And also the same guy who actually designed the cover for Jurassic Park which went on to be the official logo for the movies and all other related media and souvenirs.

When I say amazing thinker, I kid you not. This man challenged my thinking in several ways in that one speech. From typography, to embodying a story within a picture his creativity pushes the limits in all directions. And one of the best things I love is the amount of Passion with which he seeks to satisfy the author’s imagination.

But one of the more interesting underlying themes within this entire talk is the question of what is possible with a book that is not possible with the convenience of a kindle or an iBook. And that really gets you thinking. At what point will ebooks be able to compete with the versatility that this man shows is possible only with physical books at this point in time.

One of the most fascinating covers is for the story ‘Naked’, a tale of a man who travels to a nudist colony. The cover comes in two parts: A jacket that shows a pair of shorts printed on it; and beneath the jacket is a printing of the lower body bones. As Kidd says, try that with a kindle.

The question ebook creators and ebook device makers should be asking themselves now is, can a medium truly be ubiquitous when it ends up stifling the creativity of the so called legacy media?

What do you think? Is a form factor that makes you pay for convenience by limiting the creativity in design worth it? Will ebooks truly supplant physical books with this handicap?

  1. 15th April 2012
  2. Notes: 2
    3. #Ted talks #chipp kidd #books #ebooks #design #creativity #art
thisistheverge: Paper is like Instagram for drawing Instagram and Paper’s minimal functionality isn’t just for the sake of “simplicity” out of moral adherence to “simplicity” in design; it’s a form of editorializing. It’s telling me what looks good, and tries as hard as it can to keep me from making something look bad. Even the limited options of iPhoto let me make something look truly terrible if I slip up on the sliders, but Instagram firmly puts its foot down and tells me “no.” When I’m drawing with real-life tools, I can easily go off the rails and either spend too much time attempting to “finish a piece,” or get lazy and limit myself to a single tool like a pencil that never really expresses a final vision. Read on! Love this article. Thoughtful right down to the point of the effect of this category of minimalist apps creating a certain kind of laziness.

thisistheverge:

Paper is like Instagram for drawing

Instagram and Paper’s minimal functionality isn’t just for the sake of “simplicity” out of moral adherence to “simplicity” in design; it’s a form of editorializing. It’s telling me what looks good, and tries as hard as it can to keep me from making something look bad. Even the limited options of iPhoto let me make something look truly terrible if I slip up on the sliders, but Instagram firmly puts its foot down and tells me “no.” When I’m drawing with real-life tools, I can easily go off the rails and either spend too much time attempting to “finish a piece,” or get lazy and limit myself to a single tool like a pencil that never really expresses a final vision.

Read on!

Love this article. Thoughtful right down to the point of the effect of this category of minimalist apps creating a certain kind of laziness.

  1. Camera: Nikon D7000
  2. Aperture: f/5
  3. Exposure: 1/100th
  4. Focal Length: 40mm
  1. 14th April 2012
  2. Reblogged Icon Reblogged From thisistheverge
  3. Notes: 59
    4. #tech #paper #instagram #iOS #artists #art #the verge