Photo by Michelle Qureshi
This is the ninth post in our interview series with ten influential I.D. curators, retailers and creative directors. Yesterday, we talked to The Future Perfect’s owner, David Alhadeff.
An accomplished writer, critic, educator and graphic designer, Ellen Lupton has been a curator of contemporary design at the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, since 1992. With an interest in design across media, and a diverse, public-minded approach to her work, Lupton is busy curating an upcoming exhibition of product design slated to open in fall 2014, after the museum completes its three-year renovation and expansion. She also directs the graphic design M.F.A. program at Maryland Institute College of Art.
How do you find out about new designers?
From magazines. I’m a big fan of Metropolis. The New York Times, of course. Eye for graphic design is very good. Print. Wired. And then websites like Designboom, Core77, Design Observer, manystuff, and Fast Company. I look at [Adobe’s] Behance—I like that you can see lots of people in an almost democratic way, and it’s very nice for looking at work by younger people. Pinterest is very important to me; I look at that a lot and post a lot to it. Also, press releases from designers—those are actually very useful.
From going to museums and shops. From word of mouth and talking to colleagues and students. I’m a teacher so I’m around young people and I hear what they’re talking about; that’s really important. From conferences. That’s a place where you hear somebody talk that you wouldn’t have encountered otherwise. That’s really valuable. People should get out there and present and participate. It’s another way to show your work and share your work.
Another source for me is competitions. I really encourage people to participate in competitions; they’re an important source for curators.
And, finally, books. They still provide a depth of analysis and visual richness that you don’t find on the web. A few that I purchased in the last year to learn about new developments in design are Lidewji Edelkoort’s The Pop-Up Generation: Design Between Dimensions; the graduation book of the Design Academy Eindhoven; Michael Haverkamp’s Synesthetic Design; and a fascinating book about poster design called Poster No. 524: The Deconstruction of the Contemporary Poster.
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