Photo by Bob Moeller > download hi-res photo
ELLEN AND JULIA LUPTON are educators, citizens, mothers and identical twins who write together and separately about matters concerning design and everyday life.
ELLEN LUPTON is curator of contemporary design at Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York City and director of the Graphic Design MFA program at Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore (MICA).
Design is the subject of all her work. She has produced numerous books and exhibitions on obscure topics, including The Kitchen, the Bathroom, and the Aesthetics of Waste (1992), Mechanical Brides: Women and Machines from Home to Office (1993), and Skin: Surface, Substance + Design (2002). She has recently become obsessed with bringing design awareness to broader audiences. 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, shows general readers how to make books, business cards, wedding invitations, and other useful communications. A little Photoshop is a dangerous thing, and this handy guide makes it even more so.
Ellen has contributed to various design magazines, including Print, Eye, I.D., and Metropolis. She is a 2007 recipient of the AIGA Gold Medal. A frequent lecturer around the U.S. and the world, Lupton will speak about design to anyone who will listen.
JULIA LUPTON teaches English and writes books about Shakespeare at the University of California, Irvine. In 2007, she was named a Chancellor’s Fellow in recognition of her contributions to Shakespeare studies. She is currently Director of the Humanities Core Course and the co-founder of the UCI Design Alliance. At night, she blogs about design with her twin sister Ellen Lupton (www.design-your-life.org).
Julia contributed several essays to Ellen’s book DIY: Design It Yourself. Ellen and Julia went on to co-author the sequel, DIY Kids, released in Fall, 2007 by Princeton Architectural Press. DIY Kids shows Generation Tween how to save the world one recycled cereal box and two graffiti bracelets at a time. “It’s never too early,” the twins explain, “to talk to your child about design.” According to a review on Etsy.com, D.I.Y. Kids “breaks down the complex ideas behind design and branding into easy, simple activities for kids to understand.” DIY Kids has been published in Portuguese by the Brazilian press Cosac Naify.
> Interview with Ellen at Design Taxi (Scroll down when you get there!)
> Profile of Ellen at AIGA
> Profile of Julia in UCI News
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THE BOOK