How Do Book Covers Tell Their Own Stories? / NPR
2014-05-11 22:24阅读：
Webpage：
http://www.npr.org/2013/09/20/188622390/how-do-book-covers-tell-their-own-stories
GUY RAZ, HOST:
It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Guy Raz and on the show
today, framing the story. Well, what if you had to tell someone's
story, a story that was already written and you had to tell it in
an instant?
CHIP KIDD: I'm endlessly amazed after 26 years, still to this day,
one of the first questions is, do you actually read the book? And I
can't imagine not doing that.
RAZ: Chip Kidd...
KIDD: That would be me.
RAZ: ...designs book covers. Maybe you've read some of them.
KIDD: Michael Crichton's 'Jurassic Park,' Haruki Murakami '1Q84,'
'The Road' by Cormac McCarthy, David Sedaris, 'Dress Your Family in
Corduroy and Denim,' David Rakoff, 'Fraud,' Oliver Sacks, 'The
Mind's E
ye,' and all of his backlist. Elmore Leonard, all of his
backlist.
RAZ: And Chip Kidd's, job with each book, to tell the story even
before you open it up.
RAZ: In his TED Talk, Chip walks out on stage wearing a black
blazer with gold trim and black eyeglasses. And he stands there,
motionless like a statue. And then he does a full body
wriggle [i].
KIDD: Hi.
RAZ: When he says hello.
KIDD: I did that for two reasons. First of all, I wanted to give
you a good visual first impression. But the main reason I did it,
is that that's what happens to me when I'm forced to wear a Lady
Gaga
skanky [ii] mic
[iii]. I'm used to a
stationary mic. It's the sensible shoe of public address.
RAZ: Okay, so for Chip Kidd the idea that a first impression
matters, that it can tell a story, it's not a theory, it's his
life's work.
(SOUNDBITE OF TED TALK)
KIDD: Now, first day of my graphic design training at Penn State
University, the teacher, Lanny Sommese, came into the room, and he
drew a picture of an apple on the blackboard and wrote the word
apple underneath, and he said, okay - lesson one, listen up. And he
covered up the picture and he said, you either say this, and then
he covered up the word, or you show this.
And then he took his hand away and so then you had the picture of
the apple. And you had the word apple, underneath, and he
said...
(SOUNDBITE OF TED TALK)
KIDD: ...but you don't do this. Because this is treating your
audience like a
moron [iv]. And they
deserve better.
RAZ: It seems like you did that for the cover of 'Jurassic Park'
which is a T-Rex skeleton and
silhouette [v]but you can tell
that it's, like, coming alive. How did you come up with that
idea?
KIDD: Well, we had tried many different things. The problem was,
you know, how do we make this look like what it is which is a book
about dinosaurs unlike any other book you've ever read about
them?
(SOUNDBITE OF TED TALK)
KIDD: Someone is reengineering dinosaurs by extracting their DNA
from prehistoric
amber [vi]. Genius.
Now, luckily for me I live and work in New York City, where there
are plenty of dinosaurs. So, I went to the Museum of Natural
History, and I checked out the bones, and I went to the gift shop
and I...
So were going to start with what we know, which is the dinosaur
bones. The teeth and the ribs, and then evolve them, so to speak,
so that now it's something more than the bones but it's not there
yet. It's growing. And it's going to get there and then when it
does, you know, you won't be able to control it.
(SOUNDBITE OF TED TALK)
KIDD: I had no idea what I was doing. I had no idea where I was
going. But at some point I stopped. When to keep going would seem
like I was going too far. And what I ended up with was a graphic
representation of us seeing this animal coming into being. We're in
the middle of the process.
A book cover designer is making a piece of art, a piece of design,
that's very much in service to another piece of art. And that other
piece of art is the more important one. If all the stars
align [vii]as I think they
did with 'Jurassic Park,' you get this great fusion of, like - you
can't think about the book or the movie without envisioning that
image.
RAZ: What's your favorite store you've ever told in a cover?
KIDD: Probably the New Testament.
RAZ: What was the story?
KIDD: What's the story?
RAZ: I mean, we know the story. But, what was the story you told in
your cover?
KIDD: This was 1996, and basically it was trying to make it real.
And I used a photograph of a dead man, 'His Face,' by Andres
Serrano. He was granted access to photograph
corpses
[viii]as they were
coming into a
morgue [ix]in New York City,
and he photographed this tight close-up of this man's face, and he
was laying on his side so you just see one of his eyes and three or
four inches in all directions around it. And it's very bloodied, I
mean, I don't know what happened to this person, but the eye is
half open. And so you get this
distillation [x]of horror but
there's also a
serenity [xi]to it
that's very odd. Because it's completely
juxtaposed [xii]to what you're
actually looking at. The idea that something could be dead and
alive at the same time is sort of suggested.
(SOUNDBITE OF TED TALK)
KIDD: I have devoted the past 25 years of my life to designing
books. What I really wanted was to be a graphic designer at one of
the big design firms in New York City. But upon arrival there, in
the fall of 1986, I found that the only thing I was offered was to
be assistant to the art director at Alfred A. Knopf, a book
publisher. I had absolutely no idea what I was about to become part
of, and I was incredibly lucky. Soon it occurred to me what my job
was. My job was to ask this question.
RAZ: That question? What do stories look like?
(SOUNDBITE OF TED TALK)
KIDD: Because that is what Knopf is. It is the story factory, one
of the very best in the world. We bring stories to the public. The
stories can be anything. And some of them are actually true. But,
they all have one thing in common, they all need to look like
something. They all need a face. Why? To give you a first
impression of what you are about to get into.
RAZ: Do you judge books by their cover?
KIDD: No, I judge covers by their covers.
RAZ: Oh, right.
KIDD: No, seriously I judge the cover by its cover and then, you
know, going back to the apple-apple thing. You know, so you have an
apple but then all of a sudden you write orange underneath it.
Well, that's - I don't understand what that means. But it seems to
mean something. Now you've got my interest.
RAZ: Chip Kidd. He's designed some of the most
iconic
[xiii]book covers of
the past 20 years. You can see them or watch his full talk at
TED.NPR.org
[i]
蠕动
[ii]
不整洁的
[iii]
麦克风
[iv]
傻子
[v]
轮廓
[vi]
琥珀
[vii]
align…with
与……一致
[viii]
尸体
[ix]
太平间
[x]
提取
[xi]
宁静
[xii]
相反
[xiii]
标志性的
