Narrative Design by Kit Hinrichs, More Than a Book About Narrative Design
By Joline Godfrey
Over the summer I went to a Roger McGuin concert in Waldoboro, Maine. McGuinn is a Rock and Roll Half of Famer, leader of the Byrds, and a major collaborator with the likes of Dylan, Baez, Tom Petty and more major artists than I will recount here. I expected to be attending a great night of music—but leaving the theater that night, I realized I’d also been exposed to an expanded form of the memoir.
The memoir is usually assumed to be text that describes a life—or at least a slice of a life. McGuinn used his songs as connectors in the telling of his life story—a remarkable journey of discovery, creation, relationships, and experiences. I was dazzled by his daring to disrupt the very notion of the memoir as he shared the juicy, moving, poignant, sometimes surreal reality of being an actual rockstar, while delivering a great night of music. McGuinn is still on tour. You can search online for his schedule.
Kit Hinrichs’ new book, “Narrative Design,” is yet another engaging disruption of the conventional memoir. The Table of Contents (a delicacy of its own) richly illustrates the ideas produced by his curiosity and imagination as a designer. The introduction, by art director/journalist Steve Heller offers a guide to the memoir and Hinrichs’ own introduction sheds light on the tale that follows: a sumptuous and highly instructive look at the power and potential of design in the mind and hands of a man whose life is and has been devoted to telling visual stories—or as he labels it, Narrative Design. This book is not just an insider’s celebration of graphic arts. It’s a tutorial that should be in every company’s toolkit, a source for anyone wanting to tell a story, and a reference book of culture and history for us all.
Full disclosure, I am biased. I am genuinely moved and honored that the image he created for one of my books made the cut since a 50 year retrospective means a LOT of work was necessarily left out. I continue to view Kit as a beloved and admired creative partner. However, I believe my recognition of McGuinn’s and Hinrichs’ expansion of how a memoir might be constructed to be unbiased. These creative examples are a gift to us all because they offer encouragement to expand (but not abandon) text. Seeing the power of Kit’s visual storytelling—and McGuinn's musical story—gives us each permission to tell our own tale in whatever form emerges from the inner being of our own lives.
“Narrative Design” is a maximally beautiful book. It is a guide to building great brand identities, and it is an extraordinary story of one man’s creative life