Ellen Lupton, Annual Malloy Visiting Artist Lecture

Location: Palamountain Hall: Gannett Auditorium

Date:
04/22/2010 - 04/22/2010

Time: 6:00 PM - 7:00 PM

Speaker: Ellen Lupton

Description:
Author of more than a dozen books, designer Ellen Lupton is a passionate advocate of a “do-it-yourself” approach to both graphic design and authorship that has an earned her labels like “design zealot” and “communication designer extraordinaire.” Her talk will explore aspects of her own work along with various models of authorship and what they can mean for designers working today. According to Lupton, she will also address “crimes against typography, the D.I.Y. revolution, how to publish your own book, how to make your own bed, and more.” Lupton says, “My big interest right now is the opening up of the design discourse to the broader public. We are seeing this everywhere. The rise of the Internet has given people access to more tools and more information. Over the past four years, blogging and other ‘social media’ have become especially powerful. At the same time, people are becoming more engaged with physical making — craft, knitting, D.I.Y. technologies. I am excited about bringing people — all kinds of people — into design.” Lupton divides her time between New York City, where she is curator of contemporary design at Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, and Baltimore, Md., where she is director of the master of fine arts program in graphic design at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). Her book Thinking with Type (2004) is a basic guide to typography directed at “everyone who works with words.” D.I.Y. Kids (2007), co-authored with twin sister Julia Lupton, is a design book for children illustrated with kids’ art. The twins’ latest book is Design Your Life: The Pleasures and Perils of Everyday Things (2009). Lupton has also produced a series of books with her MICA graduate students, including D.I.Y.: Design It Yourself (2006), Indie Publishing (2008), and Graphic Design: The New Basics. She 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.

Contact:
Mary Kathryn Jablonski
518-580-5049