Catching up with mediabistro.com’s design blog, UnBeige, I see they spotlighted an interview with Peter Mendelsund, one of Chip Kidd‘s design colleagues at Knopf, that recently appeared in Design Related. “I don’t have any design training (formal or otherwise),” Mendelsund admits, “and the job I’m currently working in at Knopf is the first paying gig I ever had as a designer.” And yet the visual evidence suggested he’s got the hang of things pretty quickly:
“I definitely gravitate towards using illustration, in general, more than photography in book jackets; and the more abstract the better. I think this approach leaves more to the reader’s imagination. It’s easier to be evocative without being literal. Though, upon reflection, those geometric jackets were to some extent influenced by the fact that they were all designed in Quark, which, really because of the limitations of the software, one finds oneself designing with the most accessible tools—boxes, circles, in flat colors or simple blends on top of art. It’s more tempting in that environment to simply place a shape on top of art.”