Quotes from Chip Kidd

Nothing worth knowing can ever be taught in a classroom.

But at the end of the day, you can't major in Making Stuff, so it was Art by default.

Design is, literally, purposeful planning. Graphic Design, then, is the form those plans will take.

Never let your mouth write a check that your ass can't cash.

My longing for someone to talk to made Himillsy the lightning bug in my honey jar. I punched holes in the lid so she could breathe.

Even if I wasn't a Japanophile, I would still use chopsticks all the time, for all kinds of cuisine. Especially salads, which can be unwieldy on a fork. The cultural difference between selecting your food and stabbing it is symbolic of the quiet simplicity of the East versus the blunt directness of the West.

On the first day of class, the Visual Arts building reclined before me like an old brick whore, egging me to show her one, last, good time. I doubted I was up to the task, but regardless, I entered from the rear, just to give myself the slightest mental edge.

It's not Art. And Art is not Design.

Penguin Classic, with the orange bands at the top and bottom; and the Gill Sans thirty-sixpoint title, all caps, centered and medium weight, in black on the white band in the middle. One of the designer Tschichold's prouder moments, when he finally woke the hell up and joined the twentieth century.

Did they want what I wanted? Did they want to understand, to unlock it? To decode it? To glean, to touch, to learn, to get something, to proceed, to get somewhere, to graduate, to work, to thrive; to someday, sometime, finally earn the luxury, the permission to … stop, to stop all of this, to relax, and forget?

I've been drawing shoes,' said Sketch, evoking a fireman who's been searching the smoking hulks of scorched buildings for burn victims, 'and it's been going feetingly.

I find that the older I get, the clearer I want things to be. I think this is a natural symptom of maturation — as we age, mysteries pile up, and they're usually not the fun ones: Just how long do I have? Why do some people get what they deserve, and others don't? Why are certain problems so easy to solve, while others are totally impossible? Will they ever, ever bring working jetpacks to the marketplace?

photography opened up quite a little Pandora's box, kiddies. (...) Once we no longer had to depend on drawing and painting to record our existence — once they became an option — they mutated . . . into a form of expression. And Art for its own sake, God help us, was born.

The cultural difference between selecting your food and stabbing it is symbolic of the quiet simplicity of the East versus the blunt directness of the West. Chopsticks are a little tricky to master at first, but once you do, it can eventually seem a bit crude that you used to poke and prod at your meal with forks and knives.

I wouldn't buy a book simply because I like the cover. I would pick it up. The jacket can call your attention to it. But in that sense, Oprah Winfrey is worth all the jackets in the world. A jacket is basically trying to do what she does all on her own.

Design is a response to a specific problem. You are given a problem to solve, and then you let the problem itself tell you what your solution is.

Commercial Art tries to make you buy things. Graphic Design gives you ideas.