Book designer Chip Kidd's entertaining TED Talk

Chip Kidd is one of my favorite book designers and, as I learned when I saw his talk at TED, he is also a funny and entertaining performer. (I have no idea what is going on with the broken eyeglasses; he was still wearing them that way when I met him later in the evening!)

Chip Kidd: Designing books is no laughing matter. OK, it is.

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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Brainspore

Highly recommend his novels The Cheese Monkeys and The Learners, especially for anyone with an interest in graphic design.
- Mark_Frauenfelder
  
  Cheese Monkeys is wonderful. Haven’t read The Learners yet. Thanks for the reminder.
  - Brainspore
    
    Definitely takes a turn toward the darker stuff but no less entertaining or well-written. I actually used some of the short interludes on “content” for a graphic design course I’m teaching.
  - http://www.facebook.com/people/Jerry-Vandesic/100002525753309 Jerry Vandesic
    
    I’m going to have to disagree. I thought the Cheese Monkeys started out really well, but died a tragic death about 5 pages from the end. Not as bad as Stephenson’s The Diamond Age, but still a real disaster as it got to the final pages.
  - franko
    
    i really liked Cheese Monkeys. so much of it harked back to my time in design classes. when it sucker punched me, i was stunned, and had to re-read that page several times. the ending definitely was bizarre to me. i can’t say i still understand just what happened. but overall, i adore that book.
Rose Queen

Maybe they aren’t glasses, but a convertible lorgnette?
http://twitter.com/digitalArtform Joseph Francis

Skanky Mike? Hello new twitter screen name!
http://2012diaries.blogspot.com/ tristan eldritch

Is that Patrick McGoohan’s suit he’s wearing?
wizardru

This was an astoundingly entertaining talk. I didn’t know Kidd was an author, as well. I’ll have to look up his stuff.

What I most like about his talk is how he makes a case for the physical books while also accepting that the new media is here and the new media is staying. But his love for the printed book is an elegant thing and it compels.
http://www.facebook.com/peter.eller Peter Eller

As a graphic designer he looks like a dinosaur
- jimh
  
  Still, one of my idols.
derek prowse

OMG WHY ARE HIS GLASSES LIKE THAT!! SO JAUNTY!
miasm

I wonder if he designed his ‘cover’ specifically from his experience of watching himself give talks or if he went with his instincts.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_ID3SZDC7FAASJBTYDJ3ZXOIHOE snow

Anyone think his first image of Buddha looks a lot like Aang from “Avatar: The Last Airbender”?
- http://redesigned.com redesigned
  
  it most likely was an inspiration to the creators of avatar. i noticed the similarity when avatar first came out.
http://redesigned.com redesigned

what an eccentric interesting persona, a very entertaining guy to watch, he seems like the type of person who is just as interesting in real life as he is on stage.