Chip Kidd is an author, editor, and graphic designer who is best known for his unique book covers. He started as a design student at Penn State. There he was given an assignment to design a book cover for a book by John Updike, which inspired him. He later received more assignments to create book covers for Updike. He now works as an art director for Random House. His books jackets have been described as "creepy, striking, sly, smart, and unpredictable. He designs an average of 75 book jackets a year, and also does freelance work for many different publishing companies. He is a very important artist to be familiar with as we begin our book jacket project. His work can be used as inspiration for our own designs.
John Gall is currently the Vice President and Art Director for Vintage and Anchor Books, which is a publishing group within Random House Inc. This company publishes over 400 books a year. He had little background in and art and design as a child, but he went on to study Art and Design at Rutgers University. He became interested in the world of book cover design, when he was looking for work in NYC. While there he replied to an ad in the times looking for a cover designer. After that job, he went on to work for Landor Associates. Now, at Vintage/Anchor, he does designed packaged looks for authors, and creates book covers. Because of his extreme involvement in the world of book cover design, he is also a great artist to look at, when starting this project, because he has created so many different covers across the book spectrum.

"GOOD" BOOK COVER EXAMPLES:











These book covers use indices in many different ways. They try to show what the book will be about in an abstract way, through the use of powerful symbols, colors, and images. The book cover for the book, "A Worthy Legacy," displays a small plant growing in dirt, which is an index for hope. it leads you to believe that the book will be uplifting and inspiring. The book cover for the book entitled "Ready For Revolution,' shows a man screaming and the colors of fire. This is an index that this book will be very intense and powerful, and about the difficult and painful story of war. The book jacket for "Memoirs of a Geisha" shows the powerful color of red, and it shows the style of make-up that the Japanese Geishas wore. The colors on the cover are an index for the culture of the Japanese.



Definitions:
Series-A series is reference to books is a sequence of books with certain characteristics in common that are identified together as a group. This can describe genres, publishers, or authors.
Sequence-describes an ordered list of objects or events. Book series will often be arranged in a sequence of time or importance.

Sign- a sign is a stimulus pattern that has a meanin, the difference is in how the meaning happens to be attracted to or associated with the pattern. The three kinds of signs include, the icon, the index, and the symbol. For example thunder is a sign of a storm.

When we see police sirens we know to slow down.
Index: Is defined by a sensory feature that correlates with something of interest. For example dark clouds in the west are an index of impending rain.

A black cat is a sign that something bad is about to happen.
Symbol: These are words that are easily removable from their context, and closely associate with large sets of other words. For example, the word kitty also causes one to think of cat, fur, purr, catfood, milk, mouse, saucer, etc.

The image of a dove represents the word hope, peace, and spirituality.