The Cheese Monkeys, by Chip Kidd (2002)

I just finished The Cheese Monkeys, by the brilliant designer, and now seemingly the brilliant writer, Chip Kidd (Ed. This piece was originally published at cityofsound.com on 1 October 2002).

Or, in the words of James Ellroy, “The world’s greatest book-jacket designer finds a second spellbinding artist voice.” And when Ellroy speaks, you listen.

It’s a strange confection: part late-1950s coming-of-age novel; part introduction to graphic design. In the character of Winter Sorbeck, graphic design now has its Howard Roark character, for better or worse. In the narrator’s voice, it has a Holden Caulfield.

It’s a wonderful book, crammed with period detail and timeless smarts. And very funny. It also has numerous insights into the practice of design in general, and, if Sorbeck’s techniques themselves prove at odds with your local education policy (they probably ought to), it should be required ‘tangential reading’ on any design course nonetheless. Actually Sorbeck is a fallen Roark, eventually too principled to be in step with the modern world, his fervent idealism expressed in hilariously cruel, impatient bullying, but always through care for the craft of design.

A couple of gleaming asides from The Cheese Monkeys:

“Yes, Garnett Gray was an architect. Were a psychoanalyst to…