John Updike Society members were fortunate to have heard Knopf graphic designer Chip Kidd speak at the society’s third biennial conference in Shillington-Reading, Pa., which Kidd, like Updike, called home. Since then, he’s been busy. Really busy.

In their introduction to an interview they did with Kidd, Fast Company summarized his productive life:  “Today Kidd is approaching 40 years as Associate Art Director at Alfred A. Knopf (he is perhaps best known for designing the book cover of Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park). He’s written two novels, several nonfiction books on graphic design, and in 2025 released his first Marvel graphic novel, The Avengers in the Veracity Trap!”

Since he was Updike’s fellow Berks Countian and favorite designer, of course Updike came up during the course of the interview:

“I grew up in the town next to Shillington, Pennsylvania, the town my father grew up in. John Updike’s father was his math teacher. Alfred A. Knopf published John Updike, and I ended up working on his book covers. At some point, I would say in the late ’80s, I introduced myself to him and I told him this circumstance. He was absolutely delighted. We became fellow Shillington-ites.

“He was very prolific so I worked with him for 25 years. He just really enjoyed that connection and when I published my first monograph with Rizzoli in 2006, he wrote the introduction to it. That was just a thrill and an honor for me. This idea of something coming full circle. It sounds fictional, but it’s not.”

Read the whole interview.