Melville House Books

He’s probably “he only designer that many book buyers can actually name,” notes Guy Dixon, which is part of what gives Knopf book designer Chip Kidd “a celebrity status, at least in publishing houses and graphic-arts departments, of rock-star proportions.” Then there’s the fact that “he has created some of the most recognizable covers of the 1990s, from the dinosaur-bone image for Jurassic Park to the black-and-white photograph of a horse’s mane below a white header on the cover of Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses.” Or is it the parties he’s famous for throwing in the Upper Eastside apartment he shares with partner, poet J.D. McClatchy? In a profile for The Globe & Mail, Dixon notes that while Kidd struggles to avoid repeating himself, for his colleagues, there’s the resentment “that they now have to act more like Kidd.” For his part, Kidd says his fame is akin to being “the world’s most famous plumber.”

Dennis Johnson is the founder of MobyLives, and the co-founder and co-publisher of Melville House.