Storytelling builds connections through action, point of view, and movement through time and space. Stories drive novels, plays, and Netflix—but what about visual design?
Ellen Lupton is a main stage speaker for the upcoming UCDA Design Conference. She is a writer, curator, educator, and designer. Lupton is the Betty Cooke and William O. Steinmetz Design Chair at MICA (Maryland Institute College of Art) in Baltimore. She is curator emeritus at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York City.
Recently Lupton took time to answer some questions for UCDA about her book Design is Storytelling.
It has been about five years since Design Is Storytelling was released. The world has changed due to the Covid-19 pandemic, affecting how designers and storytellers are required to communicate complex information. Are there particular chapters of the book that you feel are most relevant to the design challenges we are faced with?
Storytelling can help people make sense of complex information. “Choice architecture” is a concept from behavioral economics that shows how people get overwhelmed when they have too many choices. Clustering a wide range of options into three or four buckets can be helpful. So can the act of breaking down a process into a few steps—even when each of those steps actually has multiple phases.
Color can help people connect with an issue emotionally. Many data visualizations of the pandemic—from New York Times maps to the famous CDC illustration of the spiky virus—use the color red to convey urgency.
One of the many ways that storytelling has been used during the pandemic is to highlight the stories of real people affected by the virus. The pandemic has shown us that emotional appeals are more persuasive to many people than fact-based directives. During the pandemic, we saw stunning scientific advances in the development of new vaccines, treatments, masks, and more. Yet we also saw failures of communication and the inability to establish widespread trust in pandemic interventions.
What gap in the design profession were you hoping to fill with this book?
Currently, there are many excellent books available that focus on problem-solving and design thinking. These books are about analyzing a system or situation and thinking about human needs and wants. They focus on process more than on implementation or form. Storytelling adds a tool to the design process by focusing on how content is structured and presented. How do we create experiences that are rich and satisfying? How do we engage sensory experience? How can we create layouts that emphasize action and agency?
How can Design is Storytelling help us meet the challenges of lower enrollments, competitive recruiting, and higher marketing costs?
Colleges and universities need to keep demonstrating the value of education, learning, and knowledge. Many people have turned against education and educators. "Controlling the narrative" is key to the survival of our institutions and entire fields of study (such as history and science). Design alone has a small part to play, but storytelling in the broadest sense can have an enormous impact.
What is your favorite part of the book? Is there a section you return to over and over in your own work to inspire you? What story do you come back to?
I learned so much writing this book. I loved studying narrative structures and seeing how they recur in unexpected contexts. One section of the book is about the Hero's Journey. This is an ancient pattern found in many stories around the world, from Odysseus to Star Wars and the Wizard of Oz. In the Hero's Journey, the protagonist receives a call to action, a plea to pursue a quest or mission. The hero eventually accepts the call to action and begins a journey to an unknown place, aided by mentors and comrades. In my book, I relate the Hero's Journey to a trip to an IKEA store. When you enter IKEA, you cross the threshold into a fully branded experience with a controlled route that carries you through an unfolding pageant to scenes and vignettes, leading you ultimately to the checkout area. As designers, we must always create a special world for people to enter—a world with its own internal logic, magical properties, and promise of emotional rewards.
Traditionally, we’ve considered storytelling to belong to writers and you have clearly laid out the case that designers are part of the process. Short of putting the book in the hands of leadership, what ways can we as designers advocate for our role in telling our institutional stories?
Every story has to be given shape. It's not enough to write a 500-word text about a student victory or an exciting breakthrough in the bioscience lab. These stories have to be delivered in a visual way, especially through social media. Designers can help turn stories into more compact, iconographic messages that people can digest and remember. I'm a big follower of @NYTGender on Instagram. They do a beautiful job turning journalistic stories into vivid, compact experiences.
We are all excited to have you as a main stage speaker for the upcoming UCDA Design conference. Storytelling is the theme. Is there anything in particular you are looking forward to experiencing or connecting with in New Mexico while at the conference?
I hope to eat some interesting food and meet new people!
Join us this October for the UCDA Design Conference to hear insights from Ellen Lupton and the entire conference speaker lineup.