I was so happy to see Jen's post with Chip Kidd. I went to his talk at MICA in the fall of 2013. I got so much out of it and thoroughly enjoyed it, and bought the last copy of his book --
Go: A Kidd's Guide to Graphic Design -- and waited for him to sign it afterwards. Talk about fan-girly!
"When you design book covers, you often have to learn a lot about the subject of the book. If it's a work of fiction, you need to read the book to figure out what themes you could use to best illustrate the story. When it's a work of nonfiction, like this biography about Beckett, you have to become familiar with the writer's work."
There really are no short-cuts. My process seems to take me lots of time. I have to start and stop and do lots of research and go away and think about it. I find myself reading other things that may help or may get me off track. I like what Joe Fioramonte said in my Words & Images class and in my Web Development class, that he doesn't believe in creative block. You have to just keep going. That may mean getting away from it for a bit for me, but I find that when I come back to it, things start coming together. So there you have it, the answer is GO.
