Video: Chip Kidd with Patrick McDonnell – Only What’s Necessary: Charles Schulz and the Art of #Peanuts

On October 2nd, 2020 graphic designer Chip Kidd and comic author/illustrator Patrick McDonnell got together at the Strand Bookstore in NYC to celebrate the release of the 70th anniversary edition of “Only What’s Necessary: Charles M. Schulz and the Art of Peanuts” (Abrams). This event was live-streamed on The Strand’s Facebook Page & we have embedded the video down below so you can check it out!

The Eisner Award–nominated tribute to Charles M. Schulz—newly repackaged for the 70th anniversary of Peanuts. Charles M. Schulz believed that the key to cartooning was to take out the extraneous details and leave in only what’s necessary. For 50 years, he wrote and illustrated Peanuts, the single most popular and influential comic strip in the world. Renowned designer Chip Kidd was granted unprecedented access to the extraordinary archives of the Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Center in Santa Rosa, California. Only What’s Necessary reproduces the best of the Peanuts newspaper strip, all shot from the original art by award-winning photographer Geoff Spear, and features exclusive, rare, and unpublished original art and developmental Chip Kidd is an award-winning graphic designer and writer and editor-at-large for Pantheon Books. He has written and designed more than a dozen books on comics including Bat-Manga!, Only What’s Necessary: Charles M. Schulz and the Art of Peanuts, and Mythology: The DC Comics Art of Alex Ross. His novels, The Cheese Monkeys and The Learners, were national bestsellers, as was True Prep (with Lisa Birnbach). Other books include Go: A Kidd’s Guide to Graphic Design and Marvelocity: The Marvel Comics Art of Alex Ross. Chip Kidd lives in New York City.

Patrick McDonnell is the bestselling author, illustrator, playwright, painter, animal activist, and creator of the comic strip Mutts, which appears in more than 700 newspapers around the world. He has received numerous awards internationally, including the Reuben, the highest honor given by the National Cartoonists Society. He lives in New Jersey.

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