Comic Book Cover Design: Unleash Your Super Designer

Charles Kidd, better known as Chip, is a graphic designer and writer from Reading, Pennsylvania. After completing his studies in graphic design at Penn State University in 1986, he moved to New York City, where he found work at Random House as a junior book jacket designer, and where he still works to this day. Today, Chip is currently the Art Director of Knopf, an imprint of Random House.

Chip is best known for his work on the dinosaur skeleton image that he created for the first edition of Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park, which was then used in the movie franchise’s logo. He has also worked with many other authors over the years, including John Updike, Donna Tartt, Cormac McCarthy, James Ellroy, Orhan Pamuk, Neil Gaiman Haruki Murakami, and more. Chip has designed numerous covers for DC and Marvel Comics, notably The Watchmen, Spider-Man, Batman, Marvelocity, as well as covers for magazines like The Rolling Stone. In one of their issues, Time Out New York said about him: “the history of book design can be split into two eras: before graphic designer Chip Kidd and after.”