By Its Cover / Chipp Kidd Poetry Month Poster
randomly:
Chipp Kidd usually designs book covers. He also, of course, writes and edits books. And here he's designed a poster for national poetry month.
I should start by mentioning that I like Chipp Kidd's work. A lot. I think he very often chooses just the right image (All the Pretty Horses, Magical Thinking, The Secret History, and gives just enough negative space (usually a lot) to the image to make it stunning. What almost always bothers me, however, his his typographic treatment. Most notably, here, his typographic treatment of the Dickenson quote. Why on earth is it letterspaced? And furthermore, why is Emily Dickinson's name letterspaced, given that it's italicized?
Too often this happens because a designer is just trying to do something different. But Chipp Kidd doesn't have that excuse. At least not anymore he doesn't. My guess is that it's letterpaced to fit into the space he wanted it to fit into. He wanted some black air between the letters. He treats each letter as object, to be moved at will, push and shove. But the trouble with that is that they are more than objects. They have meaning. They have a designed letterspace. They are more powerful grouped than separate.
There's no denying Chipp Kidd's success. But his success relies so heavily on image that the actual design suffers. This is still a gorgeous poster, and I wish I had one in my house. I wish there was one on every public building in my town. But maybe I wish it was just the spooky hanging dress. The web address for poets.org. Some very simple words, without letterspacing.
It's national poetry month, after all. What better time to be reminded that words are overstuffed with meaning. Letterspacing lowercase letters does nothing but distract from that meaning, which I see as a mistake.
Full Size National Poetry Month Poster.
Books about Chip Kidd:
· Chip Kidd
· Chip Kidd / Book One / Work / 1986-2006
Technorati Tags: chip, kidd, chipkidd, design, poster, poetrymonth, nationalpoetrymonth, poetry, april, letterspace, review, byitscover
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Terry, at
May 10, 2005 2:29 AM
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