Free Font Manifesto
A small but growing number of designers and institutions are creating typefaces for the public domain. Gathered here are notes from a controversial 2006 lecture about “free fonts.” Read more →
Graphic Design I Syllabus, Fall 09
GD200.04
Instructor: Ellen Lupton, elupton (at) designwritingresearch.org
Teaching Assistant: Molly Hawthorne
Maryland Institute College of Art
Critical Wayfinding
“Critical Wayfinding,” essay by Ellen Lupton and J. Abbott Miller, published in The Edge of the Millennium,. ed. Susan Yelavich. New York: Whitney Library of Design, 1993. 220-232. Read more →
Writing 101
“Writing 101: Visual or Verbal.” Posted to AIGA Voice, January 2009. Read more →
Book List
Complete bibliography, 1991 to the present; books authored, co-authored, or edited by Ellen Lupton.
Important Artifacts (book review)
Book review for I.D. (International Design) Magazine, 2009. Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion and Jewelry. A novel by Leane Shapton. New York: Sarah Crichton Books, 2009. Read more →
Does That Look Green to You?
Essay, 2009. Read more →
Bathrooms and Kitchens
“The Bathroom, the Kitchen, and the Aesthetics of Waste,” introduction by Ellen Lupton and J. Abbott Miller to the book The Kitchen, the Bathroom, and the Aesthetics of Waste: A Process of Elimination (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1992).
About
Ellen Lupton is a writer, curator, and graphic designer. She is director of the Graphic Design MFA program at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in Baltimore, where she also serves as director of the Center for Design Thinking. As curator of contemporary design at Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum since 1992, she has produced numerous exhibitions and books, including Mechanical Brides: Women and Machines from Home to Office (1993), Mixing Messages: Graphic Design and Contemporary Culture (1996), Letters from the Avant-Garde (1996), and Skin: Surface, Substance + Design (2002).
Her book Thinking with Type (2004) is a basic guide to typography directed at everyone who works with words. D.I.Y.: Design It Yourself (2006), co-authored with her graduate students at MICA, explains design processes to a general audience. D.I.Y. Kids (October 2007), co-authored with Julia Lupton, is a design book for children illustrated with kids’ art. The Lupton twins’ latest book is Design Your Life: The Pleasures and Perils of Everyday Things (St Martin’s Griffin, 2009).
Other books include Graphic Design: The New Basics (with Jennifer Cole Phillips, 2008) and Indie Publishing: How to Design and Produce Your Own Book (2008). She is the co-author with Abbott Miller of several books, including The Bathroom, the Kitchen, and the Aesthetics of Waste (1992), Design Writing Research (1996), and Swarm (2006).
Lupton is a 2007 recipient of the AIGA Gold Medal, one of the highest honors given to a graphic designer or design educator in the U.S.
Ellen Lupton has contributed to various design magazines, including Print, Eye, I.D., and Metropolis. She has a regular column, “The El Word,” in Readymade magazine. Her editorial illustrations have been published in The New York Times. A frequent lecturer around the U.S. and the world, Lupton will speak about design to anyone who will listen.
Other exhibitions she has curated and co-curated include the National Design Triennial series (2000, 2003, 2006), Feeding Desire: Design and the Tools of the Table, 1500–2005 (2006), Solos: New Design from Israel (2006), and Graphic Design in the Mechanical Age (1999), all at Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum.
· Download CV (Word), updated May 13, 2008
· Ellen Lupton, AIGA Medalist Gallery
· Interview, Ellen Lupton with Jon Mueller on Indie Publishing, 2009
· Interview, Ellen Lupton with Jean-Christophe Loubet, Planet Typography, 2007
· Interview, Ellen Lupton with Jean-Christophe Loubet on Planet Typography, 2007 (French)
· Interview, Ellen Lupton with Nicole Bearman and Gabrielle Eade, 2007
· Interview, Ellen Lupton with Lawrie Hunter, 2006
· Interview, Ellen Lupton with Steven Heller, 1998
Ellen Lupton, 2009. Photo by Michelle Qureshi.
Julia, Mary Jane, and Ellen Lupton, 2008. Photo by Ken Baldwin.
The Producers
“The Producers,” essay by Ellen Lupton, published in Ellen Lupton, Susan Yelavich, Donald Albrecht, and Mitch Owen, Inside Design Now: National Design Triennial, 2003. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2003. T-shirt by Geoff McFetridge.
Underground Matriarchy
“Underground Matriarchy in Graphic Design,” essay by Laurie Haycock Makela and Ellen Lupton, published in Eye magazine, 1994. Read more →
Women Graphic Designers
Excerpt from essay by Ellen Lupton from Pat Kirkham, ed. Women Designers in the USA, 1900-2000. London: Yale University Press, 2000. Read more →
Woodward, Fred
Interview, magazine designer Fred Woodward with Ellen Lupton. Conversation, June 6, 1996. Unpublished. Read more →
Zukin, Sharon
Interview, “Shopping with Sharon Zukin,” interviewed by Ellen Lupton for I.D. magazine, 2005. Zukin is author of Point of Purchase: How Shopping Changed American Culture (New York: Routledge: 2004). Read more →