Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Many desperate acts of design (including gradients, drop shadows, and the gratuitous use of transparency) are perpetuated in the absence of a strong concept. A good idea provides a framework for design decisions, guiding the work. Ellen Lupton





Recognized for her invaluable role as an educator, author and curator in the field of design and for her intellect and mastery of words.
it wasn’t until she began as a fine art student at Cooper Union in 1981 that she discovered the expressive potential of typography.
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).
Together with J. Abbott Miller she founded Design Writing Research in 1985 as an after-hours studio where we could collaborate on experimental projects that merge theory and practice, writing and designing.
She recently has focused on bringing design awareness to broader audiences. 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. “It’s never too early,” they explain, “to talk to your child about design.”
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.
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 is married to J. Abbott Miller, a partner in the New York office of the international design firm Pentagram.
In addition to inspiring others to become contributors to the design world, Lupton challenges them to be intellectuals, too.

http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/medalist-ellenlupton
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellen_Lupton
http://www.typotheque.com/authors/ellen_lupton
http://www.papress.com/thinkingwithtype/
http://www.designwritingresearch.org/

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