Design is Storytelling

Ellen Lupton was writing a new book titled Design is Storytelling. She brought it to the Advanced Publication class at the Maryland Institute College of Art and tasked each of us with creating concept designs for its layout.

Under the guidance of Jennifer Cole Phillips, I developed a potential layout for the writing. Reading through the manuscript, the voice was immediately relatable. Ellen called on readers' own experiences and painted vivid mental imagery. Most importantly, she wanted the book to be readable, not just aesthetically pleasing.

With that as the guiding principle, I added a channel in the page structure to house the annotations referenced throughout the writing, and created red pop-out pages with large type that surface the most important moments of the text. For the typography, I paired two open typefaces with generous x-heights, Tiempos for copy and Acumin Pro for headings, keeping readability at the center of every decision.