Chip Kidd & Peter Mendelsund’s Skillshare Lessons

For more advice on the creative process in book jacket design I turned to Skillshare, an online learning site for creative people and professionals. I watched Chipp Kidd’s Introduction to Book Cover Design: Making Stories Visual and Peter Mendelsund’s Read, Think, Design: Create Stunning Book Covers. Both designers’ lessons were very helpful as far as the process of actually coming up with a concept as well the mistakes to avoid as a beginner. One of these tips was to always look at your design and see if there is anything superfluous that isn’t adding to the design and to eliminate it. This will help us as to designers to capture the purest essence of the book rather than mistakenly following through with a muddled design that isn’t clear. Chipp Kidd had a multitude of clever sayings that stuck with me. He made a comment about book cover design and how we are making a piece of art in service to another piece of art. I think this captures a key concept to being a successful graphic designer. Designers must do justice to whatever product, service, or event they are creating for and make other’s see the beauty or value in it through imagery.

Kidd also discussed not falling too in love with an idea because it may not fit a client’s needs and to always keep working and learning because you are “only as good as the next project you are working on.” Peter Mendelsund discussed the importance of actually reading the books and taking great care in capturing their unique themes, mood, and imagery in the cover design. He also shared how it is important for him to sketch out a ton of ideas out on paper to allow the free flow of ideas. These lessons are particularly important because part of the experience of reading a book is not only the story, but the iconic beauty and wit of the imagery used for the cover. I hope to channel these values into my cover designs.

You can sign up for Skillshare here: https://www.skillshare.com/home