Ellen Lupton > Quotes

“Readers usually ignore the typographic interface, gliding comfortably along literacy’s habitual groove. Sometimes, however, the interface should be allowed to fail. By making itself evident, typography can illuminate the construction and identity of a page, screen, place, or product.”
― Ellen Lupton, Thinking with Type: A Critical Guide for Designers, Writers, Editors, and Students

“Working within the constraints of a problem is part of the fun and challenge of design.”
― Ellen Lupton, Graphic Design: The New Basics

“Designers provide ways into—and out of—the flood of words by breaking up text into pieces and offering shortcuts and alternate routes through masses of information. (...) Although many books define the purpose of typography as enhancing the readability of the written word, one of design’s most humane functions is, in actuality, to help readers avoid reading.”
― Ellen Lupton, Thinking with Type: A Critical Guide for Designers, Writers, Editors, and Students

“Universal design systems can no longer be dismissed as the irrelevant musings of a small, localized design community. A second modernism has emerged, reinvigorating the utopian search for universal forms that marked the birth of design as a discourse and a discipline nearly a century earlier.”
― Ellen Lupton, Thinking with Type: A Critical Guide for Designers, Writers, Editors, and Students

“Engineers start with technology and look for a use for it; business people start with a business proposition and then look for the technology and the people. Designers start with people, coming towards a solution from the point of view of people.”
― Ellen Lupton, Beautiful Users: Designing for People

“Although many books define the purpose of typography as enhancing the readability of the written word, one of design's most humane functions is in actuality, to help readers avoid reading.”
― Ellen Lupton

“Skin is a multilayered, multipurpose organ that shifts from thick to thin, tight to loose, lubricated to dry, across the landscape of the body. Skin, a knowledge-gathering device, responds to heat and cold, pleasure and pain. It lacks definitive boundaries, flowing continuously from the exposed surfaces of the body to its internal cavities. It is both living and dead, a self-repairing, self-replacing material whose exterior is senseless and inert while its inner layers are flush with nerves, glands, and capillaries”
― Ellen Lupton, Skin: Surface, Substance, and Design