I was just reading Nomi Altabef’s report on the How conference was was struck by this sentence—
The first session we attended was a witty walk through the work process of famed book designer Chip Kidd, who is known for churning out almost one book cover a week in his post at Knopf publishing house.
Um, I don’t do covers, but is that volume unusual? Or is it just unusual for a designer of Chip Kidd’s seniority? Because I would have thought that a full-time book jacket designer would be required to do rather more than one book a week.
And anyway, I don’t think “churning out almost one book cover a week” is what Chip Kidd is known for. What he’s known for is the quality of many of those covers.
Photo: New Advent Calendar by crouchingbadger / Ben; some rights reserved.
Hmmm, I thought the opposite – that one book a week from Kidd was too many. I’d say 1 cover every 2.5 weeks would be ideal.
Then again, I am very lazy.
“Too many” for Chip Kidd, or too many in general?
I’m honestly curious and hope others will chime in. Does it depend on the kind of books you’re working on? For instance, are nonfiction books quicker to design than fiction, or something like that? Surely it depends on the publisher.
India– it’s a good point, quantity alone certainly won’t get you known for anything. But I mention the quantity he produces because a focus of Chip’s presentation was how to keep approaching each project in a completely new way even while working at a high production rate in one focused area of design. Production rates vary per house and per type of book, but it really comes down to the individual designer (certainly at Chip’s level it does!) and the speed at which he generates and carries out his best ideas.
I wonder if Mr. Kidd’s speed is greater than that of many designers because, being so widely cherished, he spends less time having his designs nitpicked over.
I’ve seen him give one of these “process” talks, and I do know that some of his comps get rejected, like anybody’s, but I wonder if, on average, he gets more accepted on the first round than would someone who’s not known to be Chip Kidd, Famous Designer. Of course, you’d have to do a blind taste test to determine whether those comps are getting accepted because they come with his name on them, or because they’re actually awesome.
Meanwhile, from a practical perspective: a friend who’s a freelance book cover designer tells me that you can’t make a living (in New York) doing fewer than two a week.
I work as an in-house designer at a self publisher, and my work load is often 7 book jackets a day. Ouch. I think one-a-week sounds about right, especially from someone who has really focused himself in that area (and can charge what he likes). It’s probably something akin to meditation for him, now. And he reads every book he designs, which would leave (probably) only 5 or 6 days to come up with something great, like he always does.
From my experience, the perfect amount for balancing quality with quantity, can’t really be more than 3 in a week. That’s assuming 3 days to read the books and just a day a piece to do the designs (with one day off for a much needed break).
As for the time it takes for non-fiction vs fiction, it’s practically impossible to say. I’d say, on average, non-fiction is quicker. Quite often, a non-fiction book needs just a photo of the topic (a person, or a volcano, or a specific building, or something), and so that can take out much of the guess work, which is a huge time-eater. Books that assume objectivity are, for the most part, easier to design because they aren’t asking for a strong emotional response from the cover–and those kinds of books are almost always non-fiction. Fiction, however, requires the jacket designer to take into account mood, place, purpose, and content and find not only the right kind of images/illustrations, but also a design style that’s appropriate.
And, of course, you’re right when say it’s up to the publisher. Some houses are determined to have their covers practically glow on the front displays in bookstores, while other houses are just wanting something that works. In the later case, more than 3 a week is probably doable and acceptable.
Maybe this is all obvious stuff. I can’t tell anymore. I designed around 1,000 covers last year, which isn’t healthy. :) I may have completely lost my mind.
Thank you for your detailed response, Brian. I hope your workload represents the opposite end of the spectrum from Mr. Kidd, and not some place in the middle.
You learn a lot, though, doing that kind of volume, right? And the friend of mine whom I paraphrased earlier did once mention that when you’re doing a lot of covers at once, at least you can gang together your image research. And an idea that got rejected for one client also is sometimes exactly what another is looking for.
You have to work efficiently when the workload is that heavy. Does greater efficiency produce better or worse covers, or is it totally unrelated?
I think the heavy workload has taught me efficiency to the highest degree I can handle. There isn’t much time for second guessing, so you learn to trust your instincts. Efficiency doesn’t necessarily produce better covers, unless it’s providing you enough extra time to critique yourself, or to pass it around for review. I’ve also learned to design for pretty much any genre you can imagine, and I know what I do well and what I don’t. You learn to accept your weaknesses pretty quickly and to find ways around them.
I very much agree with your friend about image research. Because I use one stock site exclusively and am constantly browsing it, I have a very good idea of what’s available. I’ve also created a pretty large lightbox with images I really liked but couldn’t use at the time I found them. That has come in handy numerous times.
And I’m about as far away from Kidd on the spectrum as I can get, unfortunately. :) I also wonder how much Kidd’s work flow is hampered by critiques, and requests for redesigns. He has such a high profile it seems most people wouldn’t question him. But this is publishing, everyone has an opinion.
What about galley design? What’s the normal work load like when you’re working for quality? Is it more than one a week?
By “galley design” do you mean interiors?
If so, I don’t know what’s normal, but at my last job I had to do maybe 1.5 new designs per week and two or three pickups. Some of the latter were very straightforward—photocopy the paperwork for the previous book, write up a new cover memo—while others required more extensive fiddling to get the new manuscript to fit into the previous design. Especially since none of the pickup designs were ones I’d done in the first place. It’s always tricky to figure out someone else’s files.
I was not very busy, though I was apparently an oddball in that I didn’t farm any designs out to freelancers. Why would I hire someone else to do the fun part of my job? Checking proofs is the task I would have liked to hand off to someone else; that’s the tedious part of the job, and it represented about half my workload.