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Alfred A. Knopf was born in New York City on September 12, 1892, and as The Writer's Almanac notes today, "He thought more people would read good books if books were more beautiful to look at. So he used beautiful, easy-to-read type and high-quality paper, and he was the first publisher to cover his books with brightly colored jackets."

Knopf's eponymous publishing house, which he founded in 1915, gave everyone more beautiful books to look at through its devotion to design and typography. Knopf went further, paying attention to how a book's design could reflects its content. Setting up his business in a one-room office on W. 42nd Street with five thousand dollars, Knopf was inspired by the windmill symbol used by William Heinemann & Co., and using an idea of Blanche Wolf's, his fiancée, he adopted the symbol of the borzoi as his alliterative trademark. Since founding, Knopf focused on design and typography, employing notable designers and typographers including William Addison Dwiggins, Harry Ford, our very own Steven Heller, Chip Kidd, Bruce Rogers, Rudolf Ruzicka, and Beatrice Warde. In the late 1980s, the Alfred A. Knopf design group redefined the art of American book packaging. Two decades later, the department continues to set the bar for the trade publishing industry.

For the first time, AIGA/NY will bring together the legendary team of Carol Devine Carson, Barbara de Wilde, Archie Ferguson, and Chip Kidd to give a behind-the-scenes look at the creation of their most daring cover designs, discuss the process of collaboration, and describe the challenges affecting book jacket design today.

Just to set the record straight, when asked how to say his name, Knopf told the Literary Digest: "Sound the k: [k'nupf]."

My personal favorite Knopf author of today is Franz Kafka. Or maybe it's Toni Morrison, or Ezra Pound. No, it's definitely Jack London and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. And what about Julia Child? Oh, and there's also Theodore Dreiser! Knopf's personal favorite was Willa Cather. Knopf published authors such as Joseph Conrad, W. Somerset Maugham, D. H. Lawrence, E. M. Forster, André Gide, James Baldwin, John Updike, Shirley Ann Grau, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, Thomas Mann, Sigmund Freud, among many others.

What's your favorite? What are your thoughts on the Knopf legacy? Share your thoughts with us and 4 lucky readers will be entered to win free ticket to attend the event!


KNOPF: THEN AND NOW

SPEAKERS
Carol Devine Carson has been art director at Alfred A. Knopf since 1987 and division Vice President of the Knopf Publishing Group since 1993. Under Carson’s direction, the Knopf design team has been featured in numerous exhibitions, including AIGA’s 50 Books/50 Covers, the I.D. 40, and the American Center for Design’s Annual 100 show. The Knopf group was also featured in “Mixed Messages,” a 1996 exhibit and publication at the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum, and was the recipient of the Literary Marketplace Design Award for 1992. Prior to Knopf, Carson was an art director at Time Inc.’s magazine development department, Savvy magazine, and Scholastic.

Barbara de Wilde has designed book jackets for the Knopf Publishing Group, as well as for FSG, Scribner, Little Brown, and others. In 2000 she left Knopf to become the design director of Martha Stewart Living magazine, where she launched a successful redesign and worked with the Hoefler Type Foundry to develop two new fonts for the magazine. Her work in magazine publishing has been showcased by the Society of Publication Designers, the Art Directors’ Club and the American Society of Magazine Editors, and in American Photography magazine. She is a past board member of the New York Chapter of the AIGA and a Stanton Chair visiting professor of design at the Cooper Union School of Art. In 2007 she returned to the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

Archie Ferguson got his start in book jacket design at Times Books in 1987, where he worked for four years. From there, he moved to the Alfred A. Knopf imprint, where he was a designer for eight years until he was promoted to art director of Pantheon and Schocken Books. In 2007 he was named art director of Harper, the flagship imprint of HarperCollins, where he is currently employed. Ferguson is also a professor at New York’s School of Visual Arts. Over the years he has won numerous awards and honors, and his work has been included in a number of books and periodicals and on blogs. He lives in New York.

Chip Kidd has worked at Alfred A. Knopf since 1986. He is the recipient of the 2007 National Design Award for Communications, the design industry’s highest honor. A comprehensive monograph of his work, Chip Kidd: Book One, was published in 2005; with an introduction by John Updike, the book features over 800 works spanning two decades. The Cheese Monkeys, Kidd’s first novel, was published by Scribner in 2001 and was a national bestseller as well as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. His second novel, The Learners, was published in 2008 to tremendous acclaim.

MODERATOR
Peter Terzian is a contributing editor for Print magazine. He has written for the New York Times, the Believer, Slate, and Bookforum.

KNOPF: THEN AND NOW
Presented by AIGA/NY
Wednesday 21 October 2009
6:30PM Check-in
7:00-8:30PM Presentation
 
Tishman Auditorium
66 West 12th Street
New York, NY 10016

$20 AIGA member
$10 AIGA student member
$35 General public

Register by clicking here