I was shocked by Adrian’s scathing review of Cheese Monkeys. I expected a bad review from Adrian, but I expected him to find some more missed fi ligatures or maybe even a widow or an extra space somewhere. I have heard plenty of bad reviews, but it usually goes like this… “I loved the book, but I hated the weird parts and the vague ending” I have never heard anybody go beyond the story and into the philosophy behind the book. This book isn’t coming from a dangerous view of design, and here are a few thoughts I have. Having said that I liked Adrian’s review and I commend him for his unique perspective.

“It is through Winter’s character that we hear the only voice on graphic design in this book. It is only fair to assume that his voice gives us Chip Kidd’s philosophy on graphic design.” 1. Just because Winter is the only character that presents his view on design, doesn’t mean that this is Chip Kidd’s view on design. This is of course fiction and something Chip Kidd is very well accustomed to (he estimates he has designed over 1500 covers in which he reads most of what he designs). Since he is in the business of fiction he probably wanted to make a good impression in the publishing industry with this book, part of which would be to not make a nice autobiographical graphic design book. Winter is hardly portrayed in a good light. Only one person in the book likes him (Happy), he gets fired and practically destroys more than one of his students (literally). I think Winter is more a symbol of every sadistic professor in art school. I have talked to several people that say that Winter reminds them to some degree of a Professor they had in college. I think part of the reason Chip placed this book in the 50’s was so people wouldn’t read it as autobiographical.

“That should make it pretty clear what Kidd thinks are important to design: work that promotes political ideas, work that contributes to socially causes, or work that gives a shocking commentary on something you believe in.” 2. Again this maybe Winter’s idea of design, but I don’t see how it could be Chip’s. He is obsessed with comics, he designs books covers, and does some writing. I would say most of what he does doesn’t fit within these catagories. Some of what he does is shocking, but most of it is not. I would guess that some of the books that he designs he doesn’t believe in or even care for. Of course I know he does somethings for political reasons, but it has not been a major force in his career.

Another thought on this point is that “maybe” Chip’s idea on design is a little more representative of the little introductions to some of the chapters. Although most of what is discussed here are more formal aspects on design and less controversial.

“Saying that “good is dead” is a suggestion that there should be another goal for design” The only reference to this phrase in the book is the part that you mentioned. He makes the point that you should not be good, you should be great. You should take risks and not just settle for good. Go beyond what you are comfortable with and it is better if it is horrible than if is was just good.

Here are my thoughts on your points about his views on design. “It doesn’t matter what something looks like as long as it gets the job done.” Everything that Winter critiques was based on how the design was integrated into the design. MayBelle’s calligraphy was horrible, Bestine’s matches didn’t really portray heat, and the list goes on. I think his point was that you can’t think about the style and not think about what the concept is. If what you design shouldn’t look pretty, AKA a hitch hiking sign, than you shouldn’t make it pretty.

“Shock value is more important than substance.” Winter’s view on design might be that shock value is more important, but again that is just Winter’s view.

“Graphic Designers are better than their audience. Since we are so much better, it is appropriate to use and manipulate our audience to attain our goal.” I’m not sure where you get that he thinks designer’s are better than our audience. He has a cynical view on the audience, but don’t we all at times. I think his point about the audience being the enemy is that they have the power to notice our design or ignore it. Since they have this power we need to know how they approach the design. Wether it be from the top left or with a preconceived notion about our subject. I think calling the audience our enemy is too extreme, even thought at times they may be our opponent. There is so much in the world that our audience has to ignore and it is our job to make them take notice.

There are parts of this book that I don’t really like, but overall I like the book and the conversations that it has started within the design community. I would go into more detail about the book, but I will save that for another time.

Your right. I was really offended by those statements in the beginning. Controversy was obviously what he was going for with this part of the book.

Just because I’m too much of an editor to let my own ideas slip out in inaccurate writing, here’s an addendum to one of these lines that allows it to actually create some sense:

let’s try “where you just feel like all of these debates and discussions are just so much AIR surrounding a pretty basic activity.”

How about that, then…

I’m going to come into this very late in the game. In fact, even though I am listed as an author of this site, I have contributed very little. I find that now I have an angle and something so say about it, as opposed to before, when I had neither.

Adrian is off-base. He assumes too much about the author and the process of writing fiction, which I admittedly also know little about. He also delves much deeper into Kidd’s writing than I find entirely necessary. Cold hard truth: Kidd is not that good of an author. Style over substance. A fun read but ultimately shallow. And that’s fine. The reason CHEESE attracts so many off-the-charts negative reviews, especially from designers, is that it is all we have as a work of designer fiction. There is a lot in there we can all relate to, but not enough. And the anti-climatic ending does rub the reader the wrong way.

Why? Because we’re looking for the grand catharsis. In the same way the students are looking to Winter, we the readers are looking to Kidd for the ‘meaning of life’ before the end of this thing. He doesn’t have it. It’s a clever book set in the world of design and we as designers can relate to bits and pieces. It is not more than that. It is not ‘1984’ nor is it ‘The Grapes of Wrath,’ ‘To Kill a Mockingbird,’ or ‘Lord of the Rings.’ Hell, it’s not even ‘Harry Potter.’ But it is fun to read, and that’s okay.

I recently used this book for an extra-credit assignment one of my design classes. ‘Compare the experiences of Happy to your experiences as a design student.’ It was successful in so far as it was able to allow my students gain some perspective on their own educations. It should not be celebrated as the end-all-be-all of designer fiction and any professor who treats it as such should rethink it.

Brian, I would urge you to tread slightly more carefully when speaking about design professors. Yes yes, “Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach.” True in some cases. Untrue in many, many more. I am an adjunct professor at a small community college teaching 200-level design. I am also an art-director/designer at the most prominent advertising agency in my humble, centrally-located state. I do not teach to ‘retreat into academia’ but instead to give back to the education system that raised me (although I attended a different school than I now teach at). For all their bravado, students, even grad students, have comparatively little professional experience and can afford themselves the time and energy to think about design on a solely existential level. “My teachers don’t know shit” is common enough even in the undergrad programs. The retort is that no student would know shit without their professors, be they the ‘Dotties’ or the ‘Sorbecks’ of the world. My students, bless their hearts, would be slobbering monkeys of designers without me and a few of the other professors I work with. So would you, and so, most certainly, would I.

All I can reference for negative Cheese Monkeys reviews is word of mouth. People either sing about it or they condemn it. I disagree with both.

As for my class, and I’ll take that as a polite dig at the end there, the simple answer is Winter Sorbeck doesn’t teach my class. I do. Sorbeck, as a character, is of the ‘concept is king’ school of design. That’s all well and good and certainly boils things down to a base level — but I’ve developed a M.O. consisting of Concept + Execution. Careful, because most people at this point confuse ‘execution’ with ‘style.’ What I aim for, and encourage/demand my students strive for, is the execution that the concept demands and that it be done excellently, even if the solution is a crayon sketch.

I described the book as ‘a grown-up book about a kid who doesn’t know anything about design going to school to be a designer.’ I wanted them to discover the book for themselves and take what they would from it. It was extra credit, above and beyond the requirements of class, so I didn’t get to deep into debating a fictional character on the pros and cons of his design philosophy.

Fun stuff from their papers:

“Winter really made the kids think of why they designed what they did which brought them to self-realization. The concept of Why is is one of the most important things to consider when making a piece to represent something.”

“Lastly, and most importantly there is the comparison of Winter Sorbeck to my most recent experiences. Currently I have a teacher who reminds me a great deal of the teaching styles of Mr. Sorbeck, with the exception of the mental abuse Ö My current teacher is harsh, but equally harsh to all the students Ö He also is equally critical, un-godly precise with details, and exudes an almost frightening amount of confidence, and in these ways I identify him with Winter Sorbeck.”

“Somehow [Sorbeck’s] brutal honesty spurred them on to toil over their assignments, and strive to earn even a speck of his approval (hmmm that reminds me of one of my instructors. I’m not about to mention names, but it starts with Mr. and ends with Voss).”

Wasn’t expecting that.

Nate, you paint a remarkably similar portrait of teaching philosophy to the one I’m trying to hammer out in my own classroom at the moment, and what seems to be the saving grace of design’s directions beyond the space of the next few years…Robust idea realized with rigorous craft and skill will hopefully bring us to the edges of the movements that historians will revere after they’ve been lived.

I’d also hazard, Brian, that there are innumerable designers and illustrators who have receded into commerical practice because they simply couldn’t hack it as instructors - schools hire working professionals to come in and guide their students progress to the absolute exclusion of any sense of curriculum or assessment abilities, let alone any sense of how to convey the processes that they regularly use to anyone but themselves.

Too often, the public acknowledgement of what excellent, inspirational education has provided is overshadowed by the loudly voiced complaints of former students with underdeveloped memories - having moved back into the classroom and just beginning my pursuit of the craft and art that my own professors executed in providing me with the design/illustration foundations that I’ve reaped innumerable professional and personal successes from, I am only too clearly coming up against the realization that I’ve forgotten a lot of the way I was “created” in the first place - I know what many of the projects seemed to look like from a student perspective, but I may have lost the sense of the pedagogy or curricular design that those puzzle pieces fit into.

Another little insight from the other side of the desk that many students simply can’t deal with: the “worst” students are routinely the ones who complain about the inadequacies of the programs they study in and the people who teach them (in worst, I name those students who put little to no effort and industry into what they do, expect to simply have their education handed to them rather than reaching for it, and who ultimately demonstrate little to no proficience due to spending no time to cultivate it) - I found it amazing to recognize even in my initial classroom experiences that the really proficient, hard-working, “good” students routinely painted a better picture of the class and the teacher than may have even been the fact (I often felt like they’d taken a better class than I’d really taught)…It was also clear that if these students started to really downgrade or complain about a class, something was really, really rotten in Denmark…

There are certainly those who are hiding from something / hiding an inadequacy in both realms, Brian, but you’re just peddling a bitter fallacy that’s been generated by pompous commercial designers / illustrators who think they’re infinitely better than their instructors if you term Academia the land of failed commercial artists…

Something else that has definitely blown my brain on several occasions - some of the teachers who taught me the very best and the very most about what I do weren’t always the ones that seemed to produce the most incredible work out there…I realize now it has more to do with where their true gifts and truly exceptional qualities lie than with anything else. I actually think it’s a bit of a hinderance to rely entirely on visual product to determine educational merit, but that’s the primary reason I’m not a publisher or a design program administrator…

Ack. You should be able to edit these things when you catch typos too late. “You you notÖ” ought to be “do you notÖ”

Yes, an interesting discussion! I’m an avid reader of both fiction and non-fiction which has thought-provoking ideas, interesting perspectives and fresh points of view. (I’m not a ‘designer’ btw).

Interesting perspectives on Winter and design aside, I disliked the Cheese Monkeys. Where it tried to be provocative and inventive it succeeded in being distasteful and dull. The story was partly developed and the ending was flat and desperate. Writing ploys are no substitute for plot. For a complex project, Chip should understand the importance of having a solid design plan before implementing the idea. A handful of ideas does not make a novel.

My daughter, aged 19 and a sophomore in college, recommended this book to me yesterday. I finished it in almost one sitting.

Everything about this book is about the oft repeated notion of “thinking outside the box.” The graphic design on of the book itself…the “plot”… in other words, both style AND substance, the book breaks new ground based on a now old theme.

Parts of it were fascinating…the assignments in Spring Semester 1958, for example.

The book ultimately goes haywire—- plotwise… as so many books do. But ultimately what I love about the book, is that it’s not about the coming of age of young starving graphic artists.

I’m an old retired business exec; former actor; now poet. And I found it refreshing and viable.

Of course I could relate to a lot of it having just published my own book of poetry wherein, I try to bring graphic elements to bear on a genre notoriously about the words….just the words. Poets almost consider any attempt at graphic art accompanyment to be sacriligeous.

If you’re curious…have a look www.domenicapress.com

OK, so it is now November, 2006. I realize this is over an entire year after the last post, so I don’t know if this will even be read by anyone. I am doing a research project on Chip Kidd and came across this site. Anyway, all of these posts were very interesting to read (I have also read The Cheese Monkeys). I went to Penn State. I was in their design program. I met Lanny and his wife Kristin. I have also heard Chip Kidd speak at PSU. In fear of certain people reading this, I hesitate to spill my guts here. (Although Lanny uses a computer very infrequently last I checked.) However, I thought I would put it out there that if anyone has any questions about the real Penn State design program you can contact me! I will say this: I left Penn State’s design program for another.

www.oneherocreative.com