How to find inspiration: Chip Kidd on the "Jurassic Park" book cover

Spark & Fire: Fuel Your Creativity

Jan 12 2021 • 32 mins

What do you do when you’re stuck? Something else. Designer Chip Kidd got a dream assignment: Create the book cover for a soon-to-be-blockbuster: Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park. Oh, and make it iconic. When the pressure to perform is that high, it's easy to get creatively paralyzed. Chip recounts exactly how he got started and how he got unstuck — over and over — on the journey to create one of the best-known book covers of the 20th century. He tells the story in his own fast-paced, funny, pointed words, with lots of smart, actionable advice for anyone setting out on their own creative quest.

A longtime book designer for Knopf, where he designed the cover for Jurassic Park and hundreds more books, Chip Kidd is the author of two novels, two nonfiction titles and a study of Batman. Follow him at @ChipKidd

Follow along (transcript and lots of pictures) at sparkandfire.com/chipkidd

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