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Designing with Type: Ellen Lupton on Typography, Inclusivity, and Innovation
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I’m so excited to welcome Ellen Lupton to the PolicyViz Podcast! Ellen Lupton is a designer, writer, and educator. The all-new edition of her bestselling book Thinking with Type launched in March 2024. Other books include Design Is Storytelling, Graphic Design Thinking, Health Design Thinking, and Extra Bold: A Feminist, Inclusive, Anti-Racist, Nonbinary Field Guide for Graphic Designers. She teaches in the Graphic Design MFA program at Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore (MICA), where she serves as the Betty Cooke and William O. Steinmetz Design Chair. She is Curator Emerita at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York City, where her exhibitions included Herbert Bayer: Bauhaus Master and The Senses: Design Beyond Vision.
Keywords: #EllenLupton, #Typography, #Design, #PolicyVizPodcast, #InclusiveDesign, #TypefaceVsFont, #DataVisualization, #ExtraBoldBook, #GraphicDesign, #Underrepresentation, #FintechDesign, #SocioeconomicImpact, #EducationalApproaches, #QualitativeResearch, #UserEngagement, #HumanCenteredDesign, #MICADesign, #BilingualProjects, #InstagramDesign, #TwitterDiscourse, #AIDesignConcerns, #BiasInAI, #AITypefaces, #UnderservedLanguages, #NewRailAlphabet, #FunctionalTypefaces, #WomenInDesign, #CalibriCritique, #TimesNewRoman, #ThinkingWithType, #DesignConcepts
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Transcript
Introduction to Policy Viz Podcast with Ellen Lupton
00:00:00
Speaker
a
00:00:11
Speaker
Welcome back to the Policy Viz Podcast. I'm your host, John Schwabisch. On this week's episode of the show, I am super excited to have with me Ellen Lubtin, author of the third edition of the book, Thinking with Type, as well as many other books. And we're going to talk about some of them in our conversation.
Ellen Lupton on Inclusivity in Typeface Design
00:00:28
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Ellen's also professor at the Maryland Institute College of Art.
00:00:31
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Micah in Baltimore. We talk about a whole host of things. We talk a lot about typefaces and fonts, as you might expect. We talk about her favorite and least favorite typefaces, whether she likes the word typeface or font. And we also talk about trying to be an inclusive designer, particularly when it comes to typefaces.
00:00:50
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and how to think more broadly and have a, in many cases, an international approach to your design work. And so if you are a data visualization practitioner or specialist and you are creating visualizations, infographics, charts, graphs, and diagrams, this is gonna be the episode for you to learn more about how to be a more discerning consumer and producer and user of fonts and typefaces. And I think you're really gonna love this episode Ellen was great to talk with. We had such a good time as you're going to see. And so I hope you'll enjoy this week's episode of the show. Make sure you rate or review the show wherever you get your podcast, be it if you're watching this on YouTube or if you're listening to it on iTunes or Spotify, wherever you get it. I hope you will rate or review the show. So with all that out of the way, let's get to this week's episode of the show. My interview with Ellen Lupton.
Exploring the Third Edition of Ellen's Book
00:01:43
Speaker
Hi, Ellen. So great to meet you. Thanks for coming on the show. I'm thrilled, John. Thank you. Uh, this is very exciting. I've been a big fan for a long time and now we have a third, third edition of your, uh, thinking with type book, which is as were the other two additions here somewhere buried behind me. Great. This one seems, uh, kind of like I don't want to say started from scratch, but seems like you really kind of started at the bottom and worked your way back up.
00:02:09
Speaker
Yeah, I really rethought the whole thing and rethought some of the premises of the book, the voice of the book, and expanded the content in a in a big way. When you look at people's, ah particularly for folks who listen to this podcast, looking at data visualizations, dashboards, infographics, such sort of thing, do you get the sense that data folks look at fonts last? Maybe they it should.
00:02:37
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you know Most typography isn't supposed to be in your face, like waving and jumping around. I'm a font. I'm a font. You know, it's supposed to support the content. So that's OK. And I think for a database folks to find some fonts that they really like and that work on the platforms that they use.
00:03:04
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That's a really great way to use typography and really focus on using those fonts well and clearly.
Balancing Aesthetics and Function in Design
00:03:12
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so what what is And this this question kind of leads a little bit into your teaching work. And I'm just curious how you how you recommend folks think about using fonts in their work, how you teach ah fonts in class, How do people, but how do you tell your students to go ahead and and either design their own or for probably most people, like go choose a font that they think will work?
00:03:36
Speaker
Well, we really talk about function and context and what you're trying to do. So often our students are creating really cool, hip, experimental projects and they want fonts that are swoopy and pixelated and you know super weird and in your face. And they often design their own fonts or just you know letter forms or use technology and interesting ways to make surprising shapes, but we also need to know how to use typography so that it just works and that it doesn't surprise people when they're
00:04:18
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driving a car or navigating a hospital, reading a book where you want the fonts to be beautiful and and nice, but you don't want them to get in the way of the function and the tasks that people are trying to do.
International Design Considerations
00:04:38
Speaker
Yeah. One of the things that I love about the new book is and my recollection le is the revised or I would probably say expanded section on typography in different languages, different parts of the world. and so like Where did that come from? How do you think about taking a design in different languages, especially you move from and of horizontal languages, left to right, then right to left, and then vertical? like How do you think about these transitions?
00:05:07
Speaker
Well, I mean, this is called um internationalization and you know web design and the idea of designing typographic systems that will work locally wherever um wherever they exist. And so it means choosing typefaces that support that and um understanding you know The fluid quality of content, so for example, Chinese takes up much less space than anything written in the Latin alphabet. It's just very compact. so You need like different amounts of space depending on the language.
00:05:52
Speaker
um Part of my goal in including diverse writing systems in the book was really to celebrate typography as a world phenomenon and that typography belongs to everyone and is practiced all around the world. It's not truly a practical guide to creating type in every writing system. on the plot kind ah you know the The primary language of the book is English and the alphabet is Latin.
00:06:23
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But the book acknowledges this diversity of cultures and right through the history of type to the way type is practiced today. Yeah. Does it, does it bother you, uh, the difference in people using the word type versus font? I know in the book, you're like, ah, it doesn't matter. It's okay. But I'm just curious, like, how do you feel like it's a bother you inside? No. So that's a really interesting question. It's like,
00:06:53
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People on the street are much more likely to be familiar with the word font than the word typeface. People working in the type industry is very important to them, the difference between that. I even had an argument with a friend of mine who's a big shot at monotype, which is one of the biggest type producers and distributors on
The Font Industry and Book Design Process
00:07:21
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the planet. And I'm like,
00:07:23
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I'm like, Charlie, but who cares the difference between fonts? Fonts are software files, essentially, yeah and typefaces, which is the design sort of considered separately from how it is made.
00:07:43
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available to you through software or in olden times through metal or film files. And he like almost blew up. He's like, I'm in this industry and the complexity of like distributing these software files, making sure they work well on everybody's computer that they translate among languages, you know that they conform to all kinds of standards for you know software protocols and licensing. He says, my whole life is fonts and dealing with you know these files, right this digital information. But for people on the street, the word font is very familiar.
00:08:29
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It's cute. It's a cute little four letter word. So I'm just not in the business of correcting people when they say font when really they mean typeface or vice versa. And in my book, I think I'm pretty good at using the words correctly. But if a paragraph worked better saying font, you know, no one just keep repeating this big long, you know, eight letter word when you can just say on.
00:08:56
Speaker
yeah a pi understand again what you know they get yeah yeah yeah yeah I'm curious so ah about the the building of the book. i mean All of your books are amazing in their construction. I mean i you know i was saying to you before we started, like I have all these books behind me, and so I have to start moving to to Kindle books.
00:09:16
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but like or some sort of e-reader, which I don't love, especially your books. So like, they're just amazing to hold. And like, and and we're going to talk about your your other book, Extra Bold, in just a little bit, which is like another one that is just has this great feeling about it. What is your process for doing that? Like, do you, is that a priority for you when you start to, when you work on a book project? Yeah, most of my books are written in InDesign or, you know, page layout software.
00:09:47
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because I need to be able to see the flow and what's on a spread and what people are gonna, when they're gonna encounter something. And it's not about like artistic expression. It's really about about really shaping the content, delivering the content with a reader in mind.
00:10:13
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And also the writer, me. I love seeing like what shape is the paragraph. Is this paragraph twice as long as yeah the one before it? Maybe it should be two paragraphs. right And writing is very visual. yeah So that's important to me.
00:10:29
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and then the but the And then what about the physical construction of the book? I'm guessing you have a pretty close relationship with your publishers. Were you? Yeah, like they treat me well. Yeah. anyway They let me design my books, which um most publishers do not want to get into that because yeah yeah it causes problems. It's like labor intensive for the editor. Editors want to you know look at Microsoft Word documents and do track changes. and and So it's it's laborious, but um they allow me to to do that and to create books that are beautiful and feel good and have this intense relationship between the form and the content. Yeah, absolutely.
Creation of 'Extra Bold' and Its Collaborative Nature
00:11:16
Speaker
um You mentioned ah earlier about this sort of internationalism, so I want to talk about extra bold. I'm going to crack it open for folks so they can
00:11:23
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they can hear the book open. So um so this, ah well, why don't I ask you to to talk about Extra Bold? Because it is a collection of multiple folks. um And there's a few chapters I want to talk to you about in detail, but maybe tell tell us a little bit about the the history of where this one came from. Sure. So the idea for the book came from an event I attended at the Pratt Institute in New York, where these two young women were graduating from Pratt.
00:11:54
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And they organized an event about the missing women in graphic design. And they felt that as students at Pratt, they were never shown a canon beyond white male designers. And these were two young women of color. And they put together this event and they asked me to speak at the event, which was, I was very honored. But what was really interesting, it was like a huge crowd of young people that attended.
00:12:24
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from all over New York. People had driven from Baltimore to see it. It was amazing. This is a student organized event. And I thought, well, there's really a hunger for this content and it would be fun to collaborate with these two women yeah and have their point of view and their um there are references. And they did a lot of interviews with designers that they admire and really shared their life story in the book. And as the book grew, it became clear that there needed to be more people in it. you know um ah I worked with Kalina Sales, who's a black graphic designer. Joshua Halstead, who's a disabled graphic designer. ah len Leslie Shaw, who's a non-binary graphic designer.
00:13:19
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So it was so important when you're writing about this kind of material to be inclusive and not, you know, be speaking for others and so forth. Yeah. And then many other contributors who contributed essays, interviews, illustrations, dozens of people. It was very collaborative.
00:13:42
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And so very intense, you know, like having a big dinner party and doing all the dishes, you know, like all the clean up and technical stuff, you know, fell to me. I mean, there are several essays in here that have struck with me, but one in particular that I want to bring up and and get your get your perspective on is um ah this chapter by Kalina Sales that she mentioned on ah typeface. She uses the word typeface. So we'll so we'll stick with typeface. ah Typeface and and sort of people's
00:14:19
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not experiences. So I just just quickly want to sort of paraphrase one of the chapters. Kalina writes, consider how experiences with wealth and poverty seep into our design aesthetic. If someone grows up poor in a family that struggles to make ends meet, that person might view wealth as a fantastical idealistic way. If asked to design a logo for a financial institution, they might opt for a representation of money that matches those idealistic feelings such as gold, extravagant, glitzy, and big.
00:14:45
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And so i'm I'm curious about like how you, yeah, what your, what your take is or what your thoughts are, what your perspectives on, on font and, and a little bit curious. It blew me away when Kalina wrote that. Yeah. And it just, it casts such a light on the way the graphic design industry functions. So like designing for FinTech or banks is a huge part of the graphic design industry. Just last week, Pentagram introduced a new identity for PayPal that's like super clean, sans serif typography, really crisp little animations, and it looks the way um mainstream ah privileged people think finance should look.
00:15:38
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like that it's a a service for people. Kalina shone light on the fact that if you grow up in a neighborhood where there aren't banks, there's like pawn shops and Western Union and cash economies. and you know You're not going to immediately think of a big sans serif typeface to represent a bank. And so to think that way is really mind opening. Yeah. And so do you and and and your students as an extension, I guess, how do you think about integrating the lessons from Kalina's essay, but also from others into your into your teaching and then into your work?
00:16:33
Speaker
Well, I have many international students, including students from India, China, Korea. um Those are the main places. And these are these are these are countries that are very different from the US. So last week in my design theory class,
00:16:55
Speaker
We read a ah piece about sort of revolutionary ways to think about design education, to de-center it, to make it less Western-focused, to challenge the status quo. And we had a discussion in class where my students from India were like, this is so far from the way we have ever viewed education, which in their country is very authoritarian, very top-down, often punitive, like corporal punishment in elementary school. Like, stuff is illegal in the U.S. It's still practiced there. And that was an eye-opener for me that, like, we walk into a classroom in the U.S. and presume a kind of liberal consensus and that
00:17:50
Speaker
people are coming from a kind of similar view of how the world works and what democracy is, what freedom is, what religious tolerance is, what social hierarchy or equality is. And so it's just it's really important for educators to understand that not the whole, not everybody comes from that background, even in the
Teaching Design to International Students
00:18:15
Speaker
US. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. look Alone in a country like India. Yeah. I mean, one of the things that I've been focusing on a lot in the last few years in my work at Urban is, and I come from a quantitative economics background, but doing more qualitative work, right? Getting, you know, talking to people, which is very,
00:18:35
Speaker
I mean, many economists are are are will disagree with this, but most economists are very comfortable behind a computer with digital data, never talk to a human being and just and just move on.
00:18:46
Speaker
and I don't, that is clearly not the same I would think in in design where there's more discussion and and kind ah conversation with the end user. And I'm curious how you go about teaching students about that process and especially in this perspective of how do you sort of gather a wide array of of perspectives of possible clients, possible customers, possible possible users?
00:19:17
Speaker
Well, we have we have UX and user experience courses at MICA. My classes, you know, I teach a design theory class where we read and discuss a lot of these principles of human centered design and critiques of human centered design. And, you know, it's more of a academic, you know, a thinky talky class, I call it. And then in the makey doy class, we are more focused on like their voice and them developing their content and visual language and skills as designers because they're they're graduate students. But many of our students do bilingual projects. They look at um the need for typefaces and Indic languages, for example, or ah projects that kind of merge Chinese and English. So there's a lot of interest in
00:20:16
Speaker
cross-cultural graphic design. We don't do a lot of user research. It's like we're not um doing business-oriented projects. So it's not really feasible you know to sort of do research on human subjects has all kinds of limitations. So if you're not really doing it, yeah it' ah it's a tough thing. Yeah, it's a tall task for sure, sure.
00:20:44
Speaker
um I'm curious about your work outside of the classroom and outside of of writing books. like What are the sorts of things these days that like get you get you excited about you know designing, creating? Well, i've been really I've gotten really active on Instagram and I have a sort of persona on Instagram that does these little design lessons working on one just a few minutes ago. I really enjoy that. It's a merging of my teaching in a classroom with writing with public speaking. And it's fun because it's like this really big audience that people you don't know. and that it's i So I really enjoy that. And I'm not working on a book right now. I'm a little bit between books. That's the same, based on how many books you have out. like that's That's probably rare. I hope to do another one, but I'm kind of waiting for the muse to strike me. And I'm enjoying alternatives to books.
00:21:44
Speaker
Yeah. So, yeah so more hands-on stuff. Right. Yeah. And what about the Instagram? Like what is, do I'm guessing, and I've, I've seen, uh, I mean, I've seen a lot of the videos, but I'm curious about your interaction with people. I mean, that's the one thing that makes it social. Right. So like, what do you comment? Then I end up following people and I'm especially interested in,
00:22:13
Speaker
the baking community on Instagram. So like I aspire to that. yeah yeah The people that follow me are graphic designers, but yeah the people that I follow are like these bakers that do incredible um tour de force, you know, cookies and cakes and stuff. So I think there's like a whole instructive layer of the internet. You know, we talk about being inshittified and commercial and it's all sales. There's so many people from the beginning that have been on the internet in order to teach. And podcasting is part of that. People want to share knowledge. And this goes back to the earliest days of the internet and of course precedes it.
00:23:05
Speaker
And I've just always loved that part of what we do. It's this kind of teaching and sharing and learning. There's so much to learn. Yeah. do you Do you find in the, in the, in your sort of Instagram community and the design Instagram community that you're able to have sort of conversations about design techniques? Cause I, it's the one thing I struggle with a little bit about Instagram that I thought,
00:23:31
Speaker
old Twitter really was good at facilitating, is the conversation and the debate. and In the database world, at least it was healthy debate, but but I don't get that. The debate is hard. I feel that people um really love to say nice things, um but they also like to say mean things. and So having a ah debate about a topic, it so quickly devolves into trolling and negativity. I mean, this PayPal logo by Pentagram, you wouldn't believe how negative the comments are. e And something might get thousands and thousands of likes.
00:24:16
Speaker
Right. but And the people that bother to write something are like so pissed off. Yeah. oh I mean, you know what you so angry about? I mean, the distribution of people who rate things on online is not the true ah distribution, right? It's very bimodal. It's the ones and the fives and nobody in between. um Most people don't bother. Yeah.
00:24:39
Speaker
Um, so yeah, I don't really think it's a conversation exactly, right but there's a lot of people you can hear and listen to and you can have your own voice too. Yeah.
AI in Design: Benefits and Drawbacks
00:24:53
Speaker
Uh, I want to ask about, um, this may be a little far field, but because it's on everybody's lips these days, I'm curious about technology and AI as it applies to design. Um, how do you see things evolving?
00:25:08
Speaker
Oh dear, the AI question. Yeah, I know. I hate asking it, but ah keep it keeps coming up everywhere. And in in the date of this world, I think it comes up a lot in, okay, I could use you know chat GPT type thing to help me solve a coding problem. Cause it is sort of like a Google search on steroids, which which I think is really useful for. But then on the creative side,
00:25:35
Speaker
You know, where where does, how does it come into play? Is it useful? Is it dangerous? I think that one of the problems is that it makes so many mistakes, yeah including encoding. So like you really have to know what you're doing to find the mistakes. And yeah I had a student, um, had a chat chat GPT image and a presentation last week, and we allow them to do that as long as they credit.
00:26:04
Speaker
what they're doing. Anyway, you can tell, but she wasn't hiding what it was, but it was um an anatomy of a leaf. And it was kind of cool looking and, you know, labeling the different parts of the leaf, but a lot of the words were made up and she didn't know that, you know, she was a Chinese chinese student and she didn't know that some of these were like not spelled correctly and they were like,
00:26:31
Speaker
mushed together, fake Latin words. So like, before it can take over the world, it has to get more accurate, you know, and and it just feeds on what humans already created, which is often untrue. yeah Well, I also wonder as it applies back to our conversation about the extra bold work,
00:26:55
Speaker
how it feeds, how it reflects stereotypes and biases that already exist. And as the tools get used more, it kind of is in this, it's a vicious, it's not a virtuous feedback loop, it's a vicious feedback loop where we sort of amplify these sorts of, these negative components or perspectives. Or positive. Like a a friend of mine likes, she's a musician and she likes doing like AI portraits of herself. and Okay. Yeah. And it's like, she's my age. Yeah. And then AI makes her look like a maiden from a, you know, art nouveau, cigarette ad, you know, we are not maidens. So to me, it's like,
00:27:42
Speaker
It's kind of so icky. You know, it's like, can't we just look the way we look? like like um It's okay. It's okay to age. Yeah, that's okay. Right. Kamala Harris is my age. She looks great. Yeah, that's right. yeah Whatever. i So this kind of the sexualizing and the the little wasp waist anime, everybody becomes this like perfect little doll.
00:28:08
Speaker
I just, I find that disturbing. Yeah. Do you think, aside from the disturbing visual components of it, do you think, and maybe this is a question for your friend at Monotype, like do you think it can be used well to create new typefaces? I do. There's a designer at MIT who I know, Vera van de Saipu,
00:28:33
Speaker
is, is experimenting with things you could do with AI. So if a, if a graphic designer, type designer, font designer, six letters and get all the details the way they want them, could AI do the rest of the letter? yeah right And that could be potentially valuable in creating more international typefaces, for example, for underserved language communities, where the the labor and expertise required to create these fonts is huge. And what if you could have AI do a lot of the work and then the native speakers are critiquing and shaping it and making it better?
00:29:19
Speaker
You know, so there, there are potential uses for it. The fact is in the Latin world, you know, English, European languages, we already have too many fonts. Why do we need AI to make more fonts? I was going to ask, like, does it get a, does it exhaust, does the, does it exhaust itself at some point? Well, there's always so much of a market, you know? Yeah.
00:29:43
Speaker
And every day I get emails, more beautiful fonts, I look at them all, I want them all, but I can't even keep track of the fonts that I've already downloaded to my computer or activated on Adobe fonts. It's a lot, it's a lot to have, keep in your mind which fonts you like and have and what they do, what they look like.
Ellen's Favorite Typefaces and Software Changes
00:30:10
Speaker
All right. So with that, uh, I guess the, the key question that, that probably, um, maybe nobody wants to know, but I'll ask it anyways, which is like, what are your, what are your, so two-part question, what are your favorite fonts? And since the world is Microsoft driven, what do you think about the move from Calibri to Aptos? Very nice. Well, the book you mentioned, Extra Bold.
00:30:35
Speaker
is written in a beautiful typeface called New Rail Alphabet, which was originally designed in the 1960s by Margaret Calvert, who's a British graphic designer, and she developed this alphabet for use in railway signage in the UK. And a typeface company, you know, 10 years ago, worked with her to create really a modern digital typeface that all of us can use for a price. And it's really beautiful. It's like very clean and simple. It does not have a lot of weight.
00:31:21
Speaker
But it's a good functional typeface, and I used it for extra bold because I wanted to have a typeface designed by a woman, and I wanted a typeface that had that kind of clarity you know that could be strong for headlines and light for text. So I love that font. Yeah. um And I like Aptos.
00:31:50
Speaker
It's um Calibri I never was into, so I don't know why people are ah shedding tears for Calibri. I don't know, it has like a goofy, handmade quality to it that I don't like. it Aptos feels more like...
00:32:10
Speaker
modern and crisp and neutral. Right. Which is a default typeface should be neutral. Right, right. now So I like it. Do you find that there are type, are there typefaces you see used a lot that you wish would be um eliminated from our, from our Well, I'm not a big fan of Times New Roman, but one of my former students is actually writing a whole book ah times i wrong yeah about how it it's history and how it came to be everywhere, and I'll be fascinated to read it. yeah yeah Just for the heritage. like I wouldn't want to get rid of it because
00:32:53
Speaker
It has such a long arm as well. Um, well, I appreciate you, uh, you comment on the show. Um, yeah, this was, this was really fun. Um, but so thanks again. So, um, okay. So where.
Where to Find More from Ellen Lupton
00:33:11
Speaker
should folks find you ah for more Ellen Lupton content and to make sure they see the next book because there will be one. I have a web website, ellenlupton.com and you can follow me on Instagram at Ellen Lupton. Terrific. Okay. We'll make sure everybody does that and make sure everybody checks out these books. So again, thanks a lot for coming on. I appreciate it. I loved it. Thank you.
00:33:40
Speaker
Thanks everyone for tuning into this week's episode. I hope you enjoyed that. I hope you'll check out Ellen's work at ellenlupton.com. You should definitely follow her on Instagram. Her videos and her reels are really fun to watch. Even if you're not a designer, they are really fun to watch. I hope you'll check out her book, Thinking with Type, also Extra Bold, that we talked about. Extra Bold, I really loved, especially the first two thirds of that book, I really got into the last third is really on jobs and occupations in design, which is not me as I'm not a designer, but the first two thirds of that book are incredible. So I hope you'll check it out. I hope you will subscribe to the YouTube channel. If you're watching it there, I hope you're ready to review the show. If you're listening to wherever you are. And of course, as always, check out policyvis.com to learn more about all your data communication needs. So until next time, this has been the policy this podcast. Thanks so much for listening.