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?