DESIGNING WOMAN
Issue #32
Designing Woman Ellen Lupton brings graphic design back home
By Angie Vo
Published: June 1st, 2007 | 12:00am
Ellen Lupton is certainly no Muhammed Ali, but she’s still a people’s champ. For more than 20 years, she’s made personalized design possible for anyone, through her various publications and work as the graphic design director of Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) and contemporary design curator of New York’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. “I love design because it’s a way of thinking about life,” she says.
Lupton officially started thinking about her life with a focus on design while studying at New York City’s Cooper Union. After graduating, she became interested in design writing, publishing, and curating. She began teaching at MICA in 1997 and is just as much a collaborator with her students as they are with one another. “I often feel like the coach on a basketball team,” Lupton says. “They are the ones with the talent, and I’m cheering them on and helping them strategize.”
She wrote her 2004 book, Thinking With Type: a Critical Guide for Designers, Writers, Editors, & Students when she couldn’t find a suitable textbook for her typography class, and in 2006, she edited her graduate students’ collection of how-to projects in D.I.Y.: Design It Yourself. She’s currently working on another book with her students called Indie Publishing: How to Design and Publish Your Own Content and has worked on the forthcoming book D.I.Y. Kids with her twin sister, Julia, who also runs a blog with Ellen called Design-Your-Life.org.
Publishing numerous books made her familiar with the distribution process. In 2006, she wrote the essay “Book Selling” for AIGA Voice showing how big chain stores are killing the voice of the individual. “Many people don’t realize the influence that the major booksellers have on the publishing industry,” Lupton says. “For example, publishers pay for the privilege to have certain books displayed on tables, and only a book that is considered a sure bet will get that kind of investment from the publisher.
“At the same time, not all is lost,” Lupton says. “Amazon makes it possible to distribute to tiny niche titles and audiences, and that’s a good thing. Stores like Urban Outfitters make independent choices about books, based on what they think their particular customers will want.”
Turning those customers into their own creative agent is what Lupton’s work is about. “I like any tool that puts control in the hands of creative people, whether it’s a designer or author, amateur or professional,” she says. “Right now, I’m really excited about the content management system Textpattern, which allows me to build author-friendly Web sites for me and my friends.”
“I’m interested in people who are creating new tools, such as Casey Reas and Ben Fry, who make the open-source visual software language Processing, or bloggers like Armin Vit, who are building the design community,” Lupton says. “I like designers who have something to say, such as Nicholas Blechman and Dave Eggers, and I love the great typeface designers, including Martin Majoor and Lucas de Groot.”
Despite her many roles as a writer, editor, and teacher, it all goes back to just one: a designer. “I can’t imagine doing anything else,” Lupton says. “It affects everything I do, from crafting my personal life and my household to publishing books. I sometimes ask myself, ‘What if I went blind or what if I couldn’t type anymore?’ But, of course, blind people need design even more than the rest of us, so I would focus on that.”
Looking for some DIY projects for kids? Visit venuszine.com to learn how to make “party animal picnic goods” and popsicle magnets — they’re kid-conceptualized and kid-approved.
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