Comic novelist combines design with infamous experiments

Chip Kidd
Chipp Kidd's book cover designs for some famous authors like Cormac McCarthy have made him famous in his own right. In his own new novel, "The Learners," he combines his interest in graphic design and the infamous Milgram experiments to comic and startling effect.
MPR Photo/Euan Kerr

Graphic designer Chip Kidd is one of the most sought-after book cover designers in the country.

He's done covers for Cormac McCarthy, Don Delilo, Jay McInerny and Augusten Burroughs amongst many, many others.

He's also designed a lot of comic books. As a result, and much to his embarrassment, he's known as the rock star of graphic design.

Kidd is also a novelist, and his latest book, "The Learners," deals with the infamous Milgram experiments.

At Yale University in the early 1960s, psychologist Stanley Milgram found test subjects would deliver potentially lethal electric shocks to other people simply because a researcher told them they should.

The experiments caused outrage when Milgram published his results.

Chip Kidd told Minnesota Public Radio's Euan Kerr when he first heard about Milgram in a college psychology class, he was fascinated for another reason.

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