This document provides a biography and overview of the career of graphic designer Paula Scher. It describes her as a brilliant and creative designer who graduated from art school in the 1960s but continues to successfully translate her unique visual style into the 21st century. It highlights some of her notable design projects, including posters for the Public Theatre and hand-painted maps. The document praises Scher for valuing humanity over things created and for bringing clarity, honesty, wit, and daring to her work. It portrays her as a talented graphic designer who challenges conventions and inspires others.

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PA U L A
S C H E R
creative
universe
THATIS
A R T I S T I N H E R O W N R I G H T
THE
Above: Capturing the graphic style of the
designer s Public Theatre campaign, por-
trayed here is text of her career highlights.
The Creative Universe that is Paula Scher
“TO BE GOOD
IS NOT ENOUGH
W H E N YOU
DREAM OF BEING
Graphic Designer Extraordinaire,
Maven of the Message, Paula Joan
Scher is the focus of this month s
exposé. She is a brilliant beacon
of all things visual, and one of the
most clever and intelligent graphic
designers of our times. Though she
graduated from art school back in
the 1960 s, she continues to success-
fully translate her unique visual and
vocal message into the 21st century.
Despite our culture s over depen-
dence on the computer to generate
graphic outputs, Paula Scher has es-
caped being consumed by the tools
of her trade. Her ecclectic style
contributes to her continual quest
to challenge herself creatively. Her
obsession over the past ten years
with making hand-painted maps that
portray actual geographic loca-
tions throughout the world at large
are an example of her closeness to
the unbuffered experience of pure
creation.
In the opinion of this author, the
reason for her success stems from
valuing people and humanity—her
own and that of others—over the
actual things she has created. Her
creativity appears to be for the pur-
pose of uplifting the human spirit,
not for simply elevating her own
place in the continuum of life.
The perfection of her message is
acheived through her clarity of pur-
pose, radical yet civilized honesty
with and about herself and what she
observes, and not least important,
clever wit and humor, sealing the
success of her works.
Her work is offered within its soci-
etal and environmental context. This
attunement to the cultural settings in
which the design work is portrayed
distinguishes Paula Scher as both
designer and artist.
Yet she does not take herself so
seriously as to mobilize some over-
stated cause about the political and
corporate dynasties within which she
both operates and serves. Instead,
she challenges the status quo, with a
large dose of well-applied humor.
She is able to deeply focus on
her clients true needs, even if they
themselves are not fully cognizant of
them. Her clear thinking cuts to the
core of any design challenge. And
whether at the onset of a project, or
as a result of post-project evaluation,
our featured graphic designer is bril-
liantly aware of her surroundings.
She consistently creates the best and
highest design solutions, no matter
the circumstances, odds or egos
stacked against the opportunity.
Right: The themes of the five Hewlett Pack-
ard business templates that Scher designed
Paula seems to have that perfect bal-
ance, time and time again, of both
critical judgment and clarity mixed
with the just-the-right-amount of
true daring.
It might be said that Paula Scher
serves as a design s Chief Spark-
stress, overseeing the creative idea
through the treacherous design pro-
cess until the finish line is reached,
and, like the Chair of the Olympic
committee, never allowing that flame
of inspiration to be extinguished
before it gets presented properly to
the world.
From her examples in her 2002
book, her work with the Public
Theatre posters for the Noise Funk
campaign stands out, with the show
being promoted throughout New
York City in a series of billboards,
subway posters, and street paintings.
“Even a water tower was wrapped
with an ad. The design seemed to
weave itself into the fabric of the city
and became, for a time, emblematic
of Broadway.” 1
One example of note to mention
in this article occurred with her
response to the request by Worth
magazine to a variety of designers
to make a visual comment on the fu-
ture of the technology. She thought
her “comment” would look better
bigger, so she made large scale
silkscreen posters.
Paradoxically, her visual gesture was
silently loud, vocal and non-verbal.
The message better captured the
Clockwise: graphic designer, Paula Scher;
above, quote originated by the artist for
the School of Visual Arts poster; the artist s
hand-made Tsunami painting, featured at the
Stendhal Gallery 2007-08.
human experience than any other
“real” words might have. No, it
was not some heady concept to
which an average person could not
relate. She “verbalized” exactly
what came to her, boldly and un-
apologetically so, in her response:
“Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,
blah, blah, blah.” She used dif-
ferent angles and types sizes, to
express nuances within it, but the
ultimate message rather wordlessly
captured the human condition when
we mortals are faced with some-
thing new, in this case, the big “T”,
technology.
I for one appreciate the Master
Message Maker at work/ play here.
For your satisfaction, Paula, I hope
we can all enjoy the perfect mix of
critical thinking and inspired risk-
taking. I can t wait to see what you
come up with next.
1 Make It Bigger, © 2002 Paula Scher,
Princeton Architectural Press, 37 East Seventh
Street, New York, NY 10003.
B Y S U S A N W. H O L L A N D
G R E A T.”
FREE POSTERS: In her book, Make It Bigger, Paula Scher offers free posters
to anyone who will pay for the printing (Page 119, really, look for yourself!). She
loves making posters so much for their form and scale that she even parenthetically
claims that sometimes she will pay for the printing of the posters herself.
About poster design, she claims that [in the design industry] it is considered a dying
or irrelevant form of communication, but she believes the opposite to be true. She
says this form of communication has been abducted by advertising agencies that
produce big ads that dominate city spaces. In her book, Ms. Scher goes on to claim
that the territory of these bus shelters posters, subway posters, posters on barri-
cades and even billboards rightfully belongs to the public, and that graphic design-
ers need to reclaim it [on behalf of the public].