Ellen Lupton

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, Mixing Messages: Graphic Design and Contemporary Culture, Letters from the Avant-Garde, and Skin: Surface, Substance + Design. She recently has focused on bringing design awareness to broader audiences. Her book Thinking with Type is a basic guide to typography. D.I.Y.: Design It Yourself, co-authored with her graduate students at MICA, explains design processes to a general audience. Her most recent book is Graphic Design: The New Basics (with Jennifer Cole Phillips). She is the co-author with Abbott Miller, of multiple books including The Bathroom, the Kitchen, and the Aesthetics of Waste. Lupton is a 2007 recipient of the AIGA Gold Medal. She frequently writes and lectures on design, and has curated several exhibitions.