It's OK. Judge a book by its cover. It keeps Chip Kidd in business.

I had a pleasant surprise today when someone at work told me that Chip Kidd would be speaking at the Herron School of Design tonight. Kidd is the name in book cover design, and as close as it gets to a professional "hero" for me. He has worked for Alfred A. Knopf Publishing for 20 years, and after designing for such diverse authors as David Sedaris, James Ellroy, Augusten Burroghs and Cormac McCarthy, you probably have at least one of his covers on your bookshelf. Being a bit of a superhero/comic freak, Kidd has also designed hardcover collections of Charles Schultz's Peanuts and DC Comics's icons, and as I learned tonight, revamped the Superman and Batman logos for DC's new line of All-Star comics. And finally, Kidd is also the author of a novel, The Cheese Monkeys, a vaguely autobiographical account of his experience in design classes at Penn State and one of the only books I've ever read where the design takes an active role in how you read the book.

Kidd's talk tonight was pretty enjoyable, especially since Indy is pretty starved for appearances by designers (or important artists of any sort). My friend Michael (who's also my boss) and I grabbed this rare chance to get our collective design nerd on, and it gave me my first chance to see the inside of Herron's new digs on IUPUI's campus. Pretty sweet, and a far cry from the old Army barracks where I began my collegiate art classes. As a speaker, Kidd was everything I expected from a well-known art director: he was witty, self-deprecating, a little nerdy, and an arrogant bastard who managed to offend most of the audience at one point or another, but still had us all laughing most of the time. He was alternately instructive and dishy about subjects like the diva-ness of certain authors (I won't name names, but she recently switched topics from vampires to Jesus), and I was happy to hear that book publishing is not all that different from magazine publishing in terms of the cause of their headaches. Despite his rock star status, Kidd is the #2 art director at Knopf and has no desire to be #1 and take on all the administrative duties and direct flak involved. It's nice to know that I'm not the only one who feels that way. But most of all, I enjoyed seeing some of his current work, and I came away feeling refreshed and wanting to try new things at work. Not a bad evening.

If you'd like to learn more about Chip Kidd, Jason Santa Maria has a similar post. Only with less rambling and more information. And nicer design.