TAXI Given that your website says "Good is Dead", what are your thoughts on Mr Milton Glaser's statement that "good is the enemy of great"

Chip Kidd The statements are virtually the same. Mine just sounds more like Nietzsche.

TAXI What do you think of the sentiment that design has become a commodity?

Chip Kidd When wasn't it? Do you think that Michaelangelo didn't get paid for the Sistine Chapel ceiling? The very nature of design is that it is a service one routinely gets paid for. And that, as I understand it, is the basic definition of 'commodity.'

TAXI As a graphic artist, what do you think is the most important factor to consider before accepting a client?

Chip Kidd Whether or not the job sounds interesting, and if it does, do I think I can meet the challenge? And also, does the client seem to be (or not to be) an asshole?

TAXI Your interview with Mr Milton Glaser was really funny and insightful. How was the experience like? The subject of death came up towards the end of that interview. What do you reckon is the best way to die?

Chip Kidd The experience was very much an honor for me, as I could remember very clearly sitting in the very same room twenty years prior, as a snot-nosed kid with portfolio in hand, waiting to see one of his assistants to show him my college work.

Undoubtedly the best way to die is in mind-orgasm. I'll let you know.

TAXI I understand that the Wind-up Bird Chronicle is one of your favourite projects. The author is known for his surreal and sometimes satirical commentary on modern society. Have these qualities attracted you to this project?

Chip Kidd I don't think of Murakami so much as a satirist as he is an extraordinary craftsman who weaves completely compelling tales that cannily blend Japanese and Western sensibilities.

What I like so much about Wind-Up Bird in particular as a design is the way all the components came together. It is one of the few novels for which I designed every aspect of to the best effect.


TAXI I am intrigued by the use of colour and imagery for the design of Wind-up Bird Chronicle. Could you share with us the overall sensibility that was intended for that book?

Chip Kidd I wanted a sense of many layers coming together to make a very complex whole, which I thought was a major theme of the book, or at least one of its prominent qualities. You have to hold the book in just the right light to see everything that's really there.

TAXI You mentioned that to write a book, one has to know a) What you want to say and b) How you want to say it. Is there anything in particular that Chip Kidd wants to say badly?

Chip Kidd I say everything badly. Just read The Cheese Monkeys. With that book I wanted to be the first to write a graphic design-based novel, and as far as I know, I was.


TAXI Are you still watching Law & Order for plot inspirations? Or have you switched to CSI already?

Chip Kidd I can't remember when or why I said that. I don't write crime fiction (yet, anyway), so I don't get plots from Law & Order (which yes, I do still watch), but what I admire about it is not only it's consistently high quality (over close to 20 years now) but how wonderfully unpredictable it is. You can never be sure where it's going or how it will end.

TAXI Which WORD do you think would reside and reverberate in the design world for the next 10 years?

Chip Kidd INVOICE