The Learners: A Novel
Chip Kidd's novel is set in 1961 in a small Connecticut advertising agency, where a young designer named Happy lands a job and soon finds himself pulled into Stanley Milgram's obedience experiments at Yale. The premise is almost too good to be true: a book about typography and authority, about the fonts used to sell products and the voltage used to punish strangers who have done nothing wrong.Scribner's edition displays Kidd's own design instincts on the page, but the story is less interested in visual tricks than in ethical discomfort. Happy wants to be good at his job and a good person; the novel makes clear how often those ambitions are in conflict, and how easily a nice young man can convince himself he was only following instructions. The book is for designers, advertisers, and anyone else who has to decide whether good typography can excuse bad faith.
