This is a continuation of my last post about “The Art of Book” at the 92nd Y.

(Photo courtesy of Chaim Jaskoll/Mittelmitte Photography)

After the three presentations, all four superstar designers came back on stage to answer some questions from the audience. Two questions stood out for me. One is about which book cover (current or not) they would like to (re)design. Eggers said he’d love to work on covers by his favorites authors, Saul Bellow (I think most of his books are carried by Penguin, and most got a face lift with the new Penguin Classics design) and Nabokov (I don’t like the current Vintage edition…). Chip Kidd mentioned J.D. Salinger and said this interesting bit, “that’s a classic case where those jackets frankly aren’t very good, but they become so iconic because the stories are so iconic, it’d be a deep mistake to change them”. There’s large age gap between Kidd and I, and I wonder if he’s referring to the original illustration cover or the subsequent red and yellow cover that most people my age grew up with (incidentally, Bierut has written a tribute to that red and yellow - or in his words, ‘PMS 194 and PMS 116′ - cover). But Kidd’s point is clear and is something that most of us designers think about. A ‘great’ design can withstand the tide of time, but how much of that is because of what the design is for, versus the design itself? The Microsoft logo, which in my opinion is weak, will last and become iconic because of the company reputation. For book covers, it’s the same story. As a designer you don’t know which book will take off, and when it does, I guess you just hope that your name’s on the back. And unfortunately, the covers that will be most remembered will not necessarily be the ‘best designed’. I don’t know where I’m going with this, except that design is a funny business.

The second interesting question is one about the demographics of the design community. Bierut wrote extensively about this topic (followed by a lot of comments). I had my recorder that day and have the entire thing “on tape”,

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The question is “Why do you — all three of you — suppose there are so few female graphic designers — or at least so few female ’superstar’ graphic designers? Is there a glass ceiling in graphic design?” Chip Kidd made a reference to Larry Summers, and Milton Glaser pulled a Summers right there on stage by saying that he thinks his female counterparts do not become ’superstars’ because they spend their best years giving birth and taking care of the kids. Glaser is old, and I guess he was really tired that night and his ego clogged his brain vessels. Chip Kidd tried to make the situation better and he started stuttering - not surprising considering that Kidd’s big boss (Carol Carson) is female. I have never noticed such a disparity in the profession, it seems to me that there are plenty of female graphic designers, and there are many of them with high positions. But clearly there are a lot less women ’superstar’ designers than there are men - just go to a bookstore and you’ll find the proof. And not just in design, I think if you look at most fields, and you’ll see that among the celebrities, men outnumber women. I think this is all just temporary and things will change in due time. It wasn’t that long ago that Eleanor Roosevelt got hate mails for being an outspoken woman, and there are still some remnants of sexism left in this country (Miss America Pageant, anyone?). Things are changing though, and the kind of gender almost-equality we see these days has only come about in the past 30, 40 years. It’ll take more time, that’s all. Hillary Clinton running for president would sure help the cause.

The other part of the question that got me thinking is the word superstar. When did these book designers become celebrities? Graphic design is supposed to be a rather invisible profession, and maybe it’s better to stay that way. What do you get when you get celebrity designers? Crazy stuff. You’ll get inhabitable houses, useless self-congratulatory books, and you get book designers making fun of book authors. Here’s my wish - let there be more decent and good men and women, and less celebrities. But here’s the thing, celebrities are celebrities because us common folks feed their egos, and it seems that people like to follow people - and then you get a bunch of people who do not really know the subject but talk about the celebrities like they are Gods and accept everything they do. This is a childish wish, but I hope that we can all try to jump out of the group mentality and have the courage to make our own assessments - it’s fine to not enjoy a Jackson Pollack, to not be able to read through In Search of Lost Time, and to disagree with a famous designer’s latest book cover.

By the way, Dave Eggers had the best response for the question, and I urge you to just listen to the clip above for yourself.