Although the interstory drift ratio is used as a limiting factor for specific performance levels by the structural engineering profession, its distribution among the stories is generally disregarded. Observations and analytical studies have shown that even the structures are designed to conform seismic design codes, interstory drifts tend to concentrate at certain regions of the frame structures. In other words, the seismic demand the earthquake imposes is attempted to be provided from a limited part of the structure. As a result, the damage concentrates, and the stiffness of the corresponding stories decreases significantly. Locally, the story drifts become larger. Soft-story mechanisms and abrupt failures may occur under such conditions. In this study, a seismic design method was developed to control the distribution of interstory drifts in a frame structure during the nonlinear seismic response. This method is based on two observations: (i) in the inelastic range, the drift distribution is highly dependent on the yield strengths of the members; (ii) there is a strong correlation between the interstory drift distribution and the plastic rotation distribution at member-ends. Thus, an iterative design procedure is developed to control the distribution of the interstory drifts by adjusting the member yield strengths. Plastic rotations are used as a tool for estimating the required yield strengths. The efficiency of the proposed method was tested using nonlinear time-history analyses. The results demonstrated that the frames designed using the proposed method had well-distributed interstory drift and story damage patterns compared to those of the conventionally designed frames. Furthermore, the overall damage of frames was reduced remarkably.