Some call free gigs “pro-bono,” especially when they benefit some cause. As a freshly-minted sole-proprietor trying to get things off the ground, I call them “free gigs” and have a pretty sharp love/hate relationship with them. Thankfully this project engages my interest on several levels and I find myself unable to resist it’s sensuous pull. Chip is coming to Omaha in February, pimping his new book and generally being fabulous, I imagine, and I happen to be in close contact with the coordinator of the event for the local AIGA: Be A Design Cast co-host Donovan Beery.

So I say to Donovan, “The poster you and your spirited team are working on looks great and should attract a bevy of local designers. But this man, this Chip Kidd fellow, he represents an appeal to markets beyond simply graphic designers. A market that, for the event to be successful, you must tap into: Book lovers and comic geeks.” Believe me when I tell you my spoken words are somewhat less eloquent than my written ones.

Much of this line of thought comes from watching the very same AIGA chapter butcher a speaking engagement for the now-legendary Deborah Adler, who, despite changing the world a scant few years ago, only garnered about 20 guests because her appearance was promoted only to designers, and not additionally to the medical or pharmaceutical communities nor to local Target stores (of which Omaha has seven, with another on the way).

So I decided to take one for the team (my team) and design a poster that should be irresistible to bookstore and comic shop walls. It would have to be easy to reproduce, easy to distribute, engage the viewer amidst a great deal of clutter, and totally introduce the viewer to Chip’s work. The good news is that, anecdotally at least, most people actually are familiar with Chip’s work, they just don’t recognize it as his. However, my new-businessman mind can only allow so much: I have decided to limit my involvement with this poster to a slim four hours. Given the look and feel of most poster boards in the local market, this time limit’s impact on overall quality should not hamper the result’s appropriateness.

I am letting some ideas bake in my mind and will begin promptly at 2:00 p.m. Central Standard Time today, January 21. My progress will be posted live on the half-hour.

Annnnd Go.

2:00 - 2:30: Beginning with sketches, as any good designer should. It occurs to me on my third that Chip would hate a poster designed for his event with a photo of himself on it. Why? Because if the book is about a horse, you never just put a horse on the cover. Nonetheless, the man has created quite the iconic look for himself, which at least one option I have is going to chase down for the time being.

I have found the basic outline. 11” x 17”, four-color, with a .375” white border (to eliminate trimming needs) encasing a larger border featuring works designed by the man himself. I’ll have to cull those from the internet later. Quotes from famous authors regarding Chip (and those certainly aren’t hard to find) will populate the negative areas surrounding the main information. These quotes, combined with the image of his more commercially successful or recognizable works (read: Jurassic Park) will sell the scope of the engagement, while the inner illustration will carry some of the whimsy of the evening’s events.

I am, however, currently torn between two of the thumbnails in my short set.

2:30 - 3:00: They say patience is a virtue, and I know that it is one I do not have. Having made my selection, I spent the past 25 minutes rocking out the inked illustration. There were errors, to be sure, in both physical process and thought process, and it will require digital cleanup. Also, drying time. I hope to have a scan by the next half hour. Why I wait for it to dry (with the fan on in my bathroom), I’ll take this time to cull together the remain pieces of the puzzle.

3:00 - 3:30: The hot, hot eyes of Natalie Portman now watch over my project for some reason (actually, there’s a good reason. It’s a comp image representative of photography style for another project I’m working on) Sadly the illustration has not yet dried, and it currently sits, moist like day-old pizza, daring me to ruin my scanner by dropping it on prematurely. So I forged ahead into the murky waters of low-res jpegs searching for images of Chip’s covers. I began with the ones I know off-hand, since I’d rather save this task for the very end, when I will grab my copy of Chip Kidd: Book One and reference titles to search. The goal with this part is to play equally to book and comic fans, satisfying the needs of both. I have just a scant few to drop in at this moment, and as soon as I finish this update I am off to check on that illustration.

3:30 - 4:00: Reaching the halfway point feels terrible. Right now my details are a complete mess, and nothing is working. BLEUGH! Normally, this wouldn’t be a problem, but when you decide to put your entire process in front of the world, even if only a few people are actually watching, you have to show work in stages that you would never, ever show it. And I tell you now, I would never, ever show this. Except here.

4:25 The pressure of half-hour updates is getting in the way of the creative process. It is, in fact, damaging to the project. See you at 6:00!

6:00 Challenge failed! While I have a working comp, I came up short on content. The problem with Chip is that, when you pour over his monolithic book, you find yourself having a great deal of trouble choosing which great pieces of design to include. There’s quite a few. Add to that the internet’s failure to have high-resolution files of ever cover he’s ever designed in his entire career and this kind of thing can start to suck. The search took much longer than expected, so almost no attention has been paid to placement, and I was only able to turn up one quote before the bell rang. The rest are placeholder texts. Alas, here is the comp, unfinished.

And I have a few things to assess. Namely the “anti-clutter clutter” that has developed. This thing is busy. And a busy poster on a busy wall is not going to stand out. Unfortunately for my new business mind, this poster is going to take a little more time tomorrow morning. However, fans of poorly designed posters rejoice: I promise you every one of those book covers is a low-res jpeg stolen directly from the web. I may not even convert them to CMYK for printing, just to keep it authentic…

I should address that illustration before I sign off. The whole Chip-Kidd-Rock-Star thing, that’s sticking around so far as applied titles go. But as these would be posted in environments that celebrated the classics in literature, I felt that making Chip a classical rock star, based on Beethoven or Mozart, would be a nice turn. Kept simple in the interest of eliminating clutter. Somewhat successful for a 20-minute endeavor?

Thanks for tuning in…