Ellen Lupton A’85 is a designer, writer, and educator. Her books include Thinking with Type, 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 inaugural 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. Her popular Type Mom persona on Instagram (@EllenLupton) shares design education with everyone.
She is an AIGA Gold Medalist and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. She graduated from The Cooper Union School of Art in 1985. She was curator of Cooper’s Herb Lubalin Study Center, 1985–1992. She helps organize Cooper Union’s Annual Typographics conference, in collaboration with Type@Cooper and the Lubalin Center. Ellen Lupton is the1998 recipient of the Cooper Union President’s Citation Award and the 2026 recipient of the CUAA Augustus Saint-Gaudens Award. She is a member of The Cooper Union Hall of Fame.