Good design, like good storytelling, brings ideas to life. The latest book from award-winning writer and graphic designer Ellen Lupton is a playbook for creative thinking, showing designers how to use storytelling techniques to create satisfying graphics, products, services and experiences. Whether crafting a digital app or a data-rich publication, designers invite people to enter a scene and explore what’s there. An intriguing logo, page layout or retail space uses line, shape and form to lead users on dynamic journeys.

Design Is Storytelling explores the psychology of visual perception from a narrative point of view. Presenting dozens of tools and concepts in a lively, visual manner, this book will help designers amplify the narrative power of their work. Use this book to stir emotions, build empathy, articulate values and convey action; to construct narrative arcs and create paths through space; integrate form and language; evaluate a project’s storytelling power; and to write and deliver strong narratives.

Author Ellen Lupton is Senior Curator of Contemporary Design at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York City, and director of the Graphic Design MFA program at MICA (Maryland Institute College of Art) in Baltimore. She received the AIGA Gold Medal for Lifetime Achievement in 2007.

Designed by Ellen Lupton and Brooke Thyng

Published by Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, 2017

Softcover, 160 pages, 250 color images, 6.25 × 8.5 inches

ISBN: 978-1-942303-19-0