The design is simplicity itself: a black figure on a white background, slightly elevated from the page, with crisp lettering for the title above and the author's name in searing red below. But by bringing the shadow of a Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton cleanly and directly to the fore, Chip Kidd's jacket cover for Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park drew millions of eyes to its spot on the shelf. In his 15 years at Knopf Publishing, Kidd has designed more than 1,500 book jackets, leading a minor revolution that has raised the industry standard to new levels of graphic sophistication. In publishing his first novel, Kidd risks feeding himself to the literary wolves, those who insist that the real artistry is found on the page, not on the cover. Part irreverent academic comedy, part autobiographical statement of purpose, The Cheese Monkeys is a triumph of design as substance. It's also a spirited and disarming book that justifies its busy cover (lettered and decorated by Chris Ware) from the inside out. Kidd neatly divides the story into two halves, each covering a semester in the life of the unnamed narrator, a first-year student at "State U.," a sprawling campus every bit as generic and impersonal as its name implies. Figuring that a public institution of this magnitude could only match his disdain for the subject, he chooses to major in art, intending to take full advantage of the liberties it would allow him to screw up without repercussions. In the first semester, the narrator registers in an Art 101 course that lives down to his expectations, but his perspective changes irrevocably when he meets Himillsy Dodd, a hard-drinking, acid-tongued misanthrope who stands out in the conservative late-'50s milieu. While the vapid instructor rubber-stamps every gnarled canvas that passes in front of her face, Dodd has strong opinions on art and isn't afraid to express them, even if it means secretly altering everyone's work after hours. But she gets her comeuppance—and the narrator finds unexpected inspiration—in the second semester, when the two are defaulted into a graphic-design class taught by Winter Sorbeck, a half-crazy Gary Cooper lookalike who reaches students chiefly by terrorizing them. In a typical lesson, Sorbeck buses his pupils out to a roadside in the middle of winter with nothing but a white slate and a black magic marker. Their assignment is to make a sign that will hitch them a ride back to school, with a letter grade dropped for each car that passes. It's no surprise that The Cheese Monkeys comes to life when Sorbeck appears, not just because his smirking sadism is highly entertaining, but because Kidd views it as a necessary means to an end. To Sorbeck, graphic design is serious business, and, in the novel's most exciting passages, the author shows how his vaguely autobiographical hero sees the world in a new way, finding subtle beauty even in something as simple and disposable as a gum wrapper. With The Cheese Monkeys, Kidd playfully toys with readers' expectations, turning a snarky take on academic mores into a backward route to meaningful art, and justifying his profession in the process.