Noted writer, curator and graphic designer Ellen Lupton will speak on “Design and Branding: Logo, System, Experience”, on Wednesday (February 20) as part of the Crossing Boundaries Lecture Series hosted by Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar (VCUQ).The event, taking place at VCUQatar atrium at 6pm, is open to the public. The background for the lecture is that the contemporary practice of design for branding has evolved over the past 15 years from a fixation on the singular graphic mark to a broader practice encompassing experiences, services, environments, and systems. Illustrated with examples ranging from the critical experiments of Metahaven to popular product packaging by innovation and design firm IDEO, Lupton will reveal the diverse roles that designers are playing in today’s global society as policy makers, thinkers, and planners.Lupton is senior curator of Contemporary Design at the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York City.As curator since 1992, she has produced numerous exhibitions and books.Lupton has to her credit the museum project “Graphic Design – Now in Production”, an exhibition on national tour through 2014, co-organised by Cooper-Hewitt and the Walker Art Centre, “Mechanical Brides: Women and Machines from Home to Office” (1993), “Mixing Messages: Graphic Design and Contemporary Culture” (1996), “Letters from the Avant-Garde” (1996), and “Skin: Surface, Substance + Design” (2002).Lupton is director of the Graphic Design MFA programme at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in Baltimore, where she also serves as director of the Centre for Design Thinking.Her book Thinking with Type (2004) is used by students, designers, and educators worldwide. D.I.Y.: Design It Yourself (2006), co-authored with her graduate students at MICA, explains design processes to a general audience. D.I.Y. Kids (October 2007), co-authored with Julia Lupton, is a design book for children illustrated with kids’ art. The Lupton twins’ latest book is Design Your Life: The Pleasures and Perils of Everyday Things (St Martin’s Griffin, 2009). Other books include Graphic Design: The New Basics (with Jennifer Cole Phillips, 2008) and Indie Publishing: How to Design and Produce Your Own Book (2008).She is the co-author with Abbott Miller of several books, including The Bathroom, the Kitchen, and the Aesthetics of Waste (1992), Design Writing Research (1996), and Swarm (2006).Lupton is a 2007 recipient of the AIGA Gold Medal, one of the highest honours given to a graphic designer or design educator in the US. She has contributed to various publications, including Print, Eye, i-D, and Metropolis, and published essays and illustrations in the New York Times. VCUQatar’s Crossing Boundaries Lecture Series reflects the cross-disciplinary nature of the featured speakers who are representatives of excellence in creative and innovative thinking.