D.I.Y. Kids

By Ellen Lupton and Julia Lupton

D.I.Y. Kids encourages young readers to use basic design principles and on-hand materials to express their individuality through more than eighty imaginative projects.  

The book is divided into four sections―Graphics, Toys, Home, and Fashion―each packed with ideas for making fun and useful items, including step-by-step instructions and colorful photographs of cool designs and the kids who made them. 

D.I.Y. Kids is designed to trigger imaginative play. It’s for parents, teachers, aunts and uncles, friends and babysitters, neighbors and citizens, anyone who wants to create a better world not only for, but also with, the next generation.  

Reading age: 8 years and up.

Grade level: ‎ 3 and up. 

Princeton Architectural Press, 2007, hardcover, ‎7 x 0.38 x 8.5 inches, 144 pages. 

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.  

Julia Lupton, Ellen Lupton's identical twin sister, is a professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Irvine (UCI). She is also the co-director of the UCI Shakespeare Center at UCI. Additionally, she previously served as the Interim Director of the UC Humanities Research Institute and the founding director of Illuminations: The Chancellor's Arts and Culture Initiative at UCI.