Nearby: Graphic Artist Chip Kidd To Speak at Farmingdale State College

Multi-award-winning graphic artist Chip Kidd will speak at Farmingdale State College on Tuesday, March 10. The lecture is being held in Gleeson Hall, Room 104, from 3:05 – 4:20 p.m. Admission is free and the public is invited.

A reception for the artist will be held from 5-7 p.m. in Hale Hall.

A vast cross-section of Kidd’s work will be on display from Feb. 20-April 17, in the Memorial Gallery in Hale Hall. Admission is free. Gallery hours are 9 a.m. - 4 p.m., weekdays.

Kidd is the associate art director at Knopf, where he designs book jackets. He is prolific, producing about 75 covers a year. “USA Today” called him “the closest thing to a rock star in graphic design today,” while “Publishers Weekly” said that his “creepy, striking, sly, smart, unpredictable covers make readers appreciate books as objects of art as well as literature.”

• Sign up for your local Patch newsletter and breaking news alerts here.

Kidd, on the other hand, dismisses the idea that book jackets sell books. “I’m very much against the idea that the cover will sell the book. It’s about whether the book itself really connects with the public, and the cover is only a small part of that.”

Either way, Kidd has had tremendous influence on modern graphic design. He supervises graphic novels at Pantheon books, and has freelanced for Amazon, Doubleday, HarperCollins, Penguin/Putnam, and Farrar Straus & Giroux. He has also written and designed book covers for DC Comics. In 2001 he published his first novel – “The Cheese Monkeys” – about his experiences as a design student at Penn State. “The Learners” was the follow-up book.

Not content with just graphic design, he also writes and records rock music under the name Artbreak. He sings and plays percussion too.

The Kidd lecture is sponsored by Farmingdale’s Department of Visual Communications, and is part of the School of Business. The department offers a baccalaureate degree in Art and Graphic Design, which develops skills that transcend traditional delivery platforms and focuses on emerging technologies essential to web, mobile, and social media. Students become familiar with emerging technologies which prepare them for employment in a field that is both expressive and innovative. Graduates will have the ability to generate solutions and effectively communicate ideas to collaborators, clients and audiences.

The department invites top artists throughout the visual communications community to lecture and exhibit in the Memorial Gallery, which is free and open to the public.

More on Patch:

• Man Pleads Guilty in New Hyde Park Cop Shooting
• Cops: Search Warrant Nets Drugs, Cash in Glen Cove, Glen Head
• DA: Freeport Man Gets 20 Years for Stabbing Wife, Setting Fire to Hide Evidence
• West Hempstead Man Wants to Live on Mars
• Police Hunting Valley Stream Bank Robber
• Brentwood Man Pleads Guilty to Gas Station Heists
• Police: Man Robbed Bank in East Setauket
• Rocky Point Students Jump for Heart Health
• Three Village Kindergarten Students Go on Arctic Adventure
• DA: Freeport Man Gets 20 Years for Stabbing Wife, Setting Fire to Hide Evidence
• Massapequa Soccer Players Commit to College Teams
• GoFundMe Campaign Launched to Help Family of Paramedic Who Died in Line of Dutyr