Design is Storytelling

By Ellen Lupton

Good design, like good storytelling, brings ideas to life. The latest book from award-winning writer Ellen Lupton is a playbook for creative thinking, showing designers how to use storytelling techniques to create satisfying graphics, products, services, and experiences. Whether crafting a digital app or a data-rich publication, designers invite people to enter a scene and explore what’s there. An intriguing logo, page layout, or retail space uses line, shape, and form to lead users on dynamic journeys.

Design Is Storytelling explores the psychology of visual perception from a narrative point of view. Presenting dozens of tools and concepts in a lively, visual manner, this book will help any designer, writer, artist, or creative individual amplify the narrative power of their work. Use this book to stir emotions, build empathy, articulate values, and convey action; construct narrative arcs and create paths through space; integrate form and language; evaluate a project’s storytelling power; and to write and deliver strong narratives.

Ellen Lupton is a curator of contemporary design at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum and the director of the graphic design MFA program at the Maryland Institute College of Art. She is the author of numerous books, including D.I.Y. Design It Yourself and Thinking with Type. She received a Gold Medal for Lifetime Achievement from the AIGA in 2007.

Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, 2017, softcover, ‎ 6.4 x 8.4 inches, 159 pages.