Designer / Author Ellen Lupton’s visit to Kansas City Art Institute

April 14, 2007

The crowd had gathered in what they called an auditorium, but really was just a medium size room with a small stage, barely enough to fit the projector screen inside of it, and some light cans. I don’t mean to belittle the campus, but it was more like half a basketball court than auditorium. It even had the parquay floor. I guess I was hoping to not have rows obstructing my view of the speaker. Oh well, you make due. It was a free talk.

I had never been to the Kansas City Art institute and I was excited to listen to Ellen Lupton. She has created some books that I consider favorites of mine. In the area of design, Ellen is popular. Her book ‘Thinking with Type’ I had bought some time last year. I loved it then, and I love it every time I pick it up for a little inspiration.

As the room filled up, I heard a few rows in front of me someone say “Was this thing mandatory?” presumably referring to a surprisingly big turnout. “Yesssss!” a couple people droned out close by. That made me chuckle. It was the reminder that no matter how expensive a school is, it’s always dull to have to study and do bookish things. Those moments come back to me that I wish could do college over. I note how lucky they are to get to go to an art institute and do what they love. I note how lucky they are to be in a great school in a cool city. I’d like to tell them that the working world they are anxious to get to isn’t nearly as fun as this lifestyle. But I’ll let them find that out for themselves.

I wasn’t sure if there was a topic for the talk. I was worried it might be the kind of self-promoting lecture, where the speaker keeps referencing their book for purchase on the back wall. Actually it was quite a mellow tone. Ellen presented her talk starting with crimes against typography. Many attention grabbing slides and comments. She talked about impressions of her book. She said that some people tell her her book was funny. She than said, it wasn’t funny and that typography is never funny. That was really the only part of the talk that I didn’t agree with. Actually I think most of her work that I’ve read was quite fun. Not funny necessarily, but light and of quality. A mix that keeps me motivated to pick it up all the time. Humor and fun examples makes a book and typography a good study. Laughing about mistakes can be a good thing. Typography is about choice and it IS fun and even funny.  If you think about it, it’s kind of funny that that humans respond psychologically to typography.  Strange too! What is with us?  It can be a lot of fun because we can use this to advance our information to new levels.  We can control the exact same words to create different outcomes.

I gathered from Ellen’s talk a few things.

1. Society needs designers that care about typography. Examples of $50,000 building signage that doesn’t use proper punctuation is one of the main reasons. Aesthetically it improves our lives to use good typography. Refinement is always good. I have never been to picky about typography myself. I do care about it, but I overlook a lot of things that typographers would probably see as punishable transgressions. Keep getting better and direct some focus on typography because doing it right matters.

2. Opening the culture up to design, bringing it to the mainstream like through the D.I.Y book is not giving away our secrets. It promotes more creativity and is going to show some people how much trained designers are actually needed. It will increase the need for designers. It will improve design overall.

3. The government should no longer have any say over the creation a food pyramid. They have become absolutely useless in this regard. Design can be evil.

Ellen used some very good photographs in her slides, many she must have taken herself. I could see her personality in them. I can tell she enjoys documenting family projects and honors them by telling the stories in sequences of pictures. I appreciate that personality type. You like to share interesting things. You like to look under the surface and make humor out of small cultural and family nuances.

Ellen is a curator of a museum, a design teacher and a designer and writer. She’s one who I thought for sure could answer the question I’ve had burning in me for a while. I’ve found from reading about design that some designers are really on another level than me with their communication. They have a refined skill of talking about their design in terms that give their choices a real flavor. They really convince you that their design decisions are boiled down, the best decisions possible, using a poetic authoritative vocabulary that I simply don’t posess in my usage banks. My question posed during Ellen’s QA was, “How can I improve my ability to talk about my designs, to explain why I made a certain choice, to describe designs in ways that an skilled architect might be able to explain how part of their building feels.”

She responded, “Become a teacher.” That made sense. Because you can’t teach without being able to give reasons why one choice beats another. She also said, never BS when you talk about your work. If a certain part of the design came from your gut, or from out of nowhere, it’s ok to say that. You’ll eventually know where things come from.

I thought it was a good answer. But not a great one. I was looking for more. The next day on the ride home from work, I did a little exercise and came up with my own answer. I’ll write that in an upcoming entry.

Ellen signed my book and we got to chat for a moment. She’s a sweet lady. If she ever reads this, Thanks Ellen for the learning experience.

Links to Ellen Lupton’s works:

Design Your Life
Design Writing Research
Free Font Manifesto
Thinking With Type (Book at Powells.com)
D.I.Y Design it Yourself (Book at Powells.com)

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