The Cheese Monkeys Quotes

“Never fall in love with an idea. They're whores: if the one you're with isn't doing the job, there's always, always, always another.”
― Chip Kidd, The Cheese Monkeys

“Commercial Art tries to make you buy things. Graphic Design gives you ideas.”
― Chip Kidd, The Cheese Monkeys

“Kiddies, Graphic Design, if you wield it effectively, is Power. Power to transmit ideas that change everything. Power that can destroy an entire race or save a nation from despair. In this century, Germany chose to do the former with the swastika, and America opted for the latter with Mickey Mouse and Superman.”
― Chip Kidd, The Cheese Monkeys

“Graphic Design for its own sake will never happen, because the concept cancels itself out — a poster about nothing other than itself is not Graphic Design, it's … makin' ART.”
― Chip Kidd, The Cheese Monkeys

“After age twenty-five, you're not a victim anymore — you're a volunteer.”
― Chip Kidd, The Cheese Monkeys

“Nothing worth knowing can ever be taught in a classroom.”
― Chip Kidd, The Cheese Monkeys

“Just who are the cheese monkeys? And what do they want?”
― Chip Kidd, The Cheese Monkeys

“Yes, Garnett Grey was an Architect. Were a psychoanalyst to approach him from behind, tap his shoulder, and say 'Humanity,' Garrett'd spin and respond, without hesitation, 'Solvable'.”
― Chip Kidd, The Cheese Monkeys

“Never let your mouth write a check that your ass can't cash.”
― Chip Kidd, The Cheese Monkeys

“Design is, literally, purposeful planning. Graphic Design, then, is the form those plans will take.”
― Chip Kidd, The Cheese Monkeys

“But at the end of the day, you can't major in Making Stuff, so it was Art by default.”
― Chip Kidd, The Cheese Monkeys

“Never fall in love with an idea. They’re whores: if the one you’re with isn’t doing the job there’s always, always, always another.”
― Chip Kidd, The Cheese Monkeys

“My longing for someone to talk to made Himillsy the lightning bug in my honey jar. I punched holes in the lid so she could breathe.”
― Chip Kidd, The Cheese Monkeys

“Did they want what I wanted?
Did they want to understand, to unlock it? To decode it? To glean, to touch, to learn, to get something, to proceed, to get somewhere, to graduate, to work, to thrive; to someday, sometime, finally earn the luxury, the permission to … stop, to stop all of this, to relax, and forget?”
― Chip Kidd, The Cheese Monkeys

“Penguin Classic, with the orange bands at the top and bottom; and the Gill Sans thirty-sixpoint title, all caps, centered and medium weight, in black on the white band in the middle. One of the designer Tschichold's prouder moments, when he finally woke the hell up and joined the twentieth century.”
― Chip Kidd, The Cheese Monkeys

“On the first day of class, the Visual Arts building reclined before me like an old brick whore, egging me to show her one, last, good time. I doubted I was up to the task, but regardless, I entered from the rear, just to give myself the slightest mental edge.”
― Chip Kidd, The Cheese Monkeys

“It's not Art. And Art is not Design.”
― Chip Kidd, The Cheese Monkeys

“(...) I'm not much of anything, (...) besides bored and boring, punctuated by fits of scant self-amusement. And you are ...?”
― Chip Kidd, The Cheese Monkeys

“Twenty-six letters: Marjorie Morningstar or Ulysses.
The man-made world means exactly that. There isn't an inch of it that doesn't have to be dealt with, figured out, executed. And it's waiting for you to decide what it's going to look like.”
― Chip Kidd, The Cheese Monkeys

“(...) photography opened up quite a little Pandora's box, kiddies. (...) Once we no longer had to depend on drawing and painting to record our existence — once they became an option — they mutated . . . into a form of expression. And Art for its own sake, God help us, was born.”
― Chip Kidd, The Cheese Monkeys