Paula scher

HER A Unique Approach: logos, branding and design.

PAULA SCHER

Paula’s unique approach, philosophy, and style of graphic design has kept her wok modern and relevant in today’s design word. To this day Paula is still producing famous noteworthy designs and logos. She is now a partner at Pentagram, and she has spent the past four decades at the forefront of graphic design.

Her logos as well as her work with graphic identity have set the precedent for the graphic designers of the future.

1

Paula, born October 6th, 1948, now age 66, still believes in the importance of substance over just simply style, something she finds to be not too common in many of today’s designs. Over the years her work has remained relevant and contemporary. It is because of her approach to branding and design that I believe she has been able to do so.

To this day this is some of Pauala’s most well-known work. Her work with The Public really brought her to the forefront and attention of the graphic design world.

EARLY YEARS

at art school left Paula with a surprising sense of failure. After striking out with several of the fine art disciplines, she was then able to find her way to the field of graphic design, and it was there that she was able to make her home.

She then settled in to spend many years as a well-known and respected designer, who has continued to produce notable and recognizable work throughout her career.

2

It was her time, and to some extent, her failure, at art school that instilled in her the importance of risk, and how risks must often be taken in order to be able to make something that is truly great.

This is an ideal that she has carried with her and incorporated into her work as a designer.

EXPLAIN.

Paula’s initial approach to graphic design was developed in her early years while working as a designer for CBS record company, designing notable album covers.

Her approach then was to mix pop culture with the goal of engaging audiences and making them want to buy.

Keeping that initial philosophy alive, she now works to be able to capture the vitality of the subject matter in her designs, and in doing so, she creates a identity for her work, as is evidenced in her work with logos and branding, and shown here with her design for Ballet Tech and Citibank.

For Paula being able to explain one’s work is a key component in determining its success. With Ballet Tech, her idea was to make the poster look like a logo in motion.

3

This city logo was pitched with the idea of Citbank as the bank of the furutre. The Citibank logo is possibly the most reproduced logo or even design of Paula’s career.

Defending her work was especially necessary after her design of this Swatch ad, which was highly controversial due to the nature of its concept and portrayal of women.

4

DEFEND.

Identities are often referred to as the beginning of everything. They are how something comes to be recognized by the world, how something is understood and perceived as.

Therefore, the graphic identities, as well their design and portrayal are essential in communicating the correct message they wish to be perceived as. Paula has done this successfully with many respected brands, as is clearly evidenced in her not only impressive, but also extensive logo and branding work, displayed here in this Swatch ad.

PROMOTE.

It is Paula’s aim to be able to speak to contemporary audiences while also creating a lasting emotional impact with her designs. Keeping with this desire, Paula has shared her strong feelings of dislike towards the current direction that graphic design is headed which is airing on the front of a heavy dependence on science and technology. She instead focuses on the importance of people, not technology in her work.

She highlights the role of people in her identity creation and design. She claims that although techology changes, people have not, and playing to this audience has kept her work relvevant over time and allowed her to keep producing well-received work.

BRANDING

5

Paula has been renown for her dynamic branding systems. It is through these systems Paula has been able to essentially work with the “liquid identities� shaping the portrayal of the company through her design, and being able to still speak to a contemporary audience while leaving a lasting emotional impact.

and logo design are a vital portion of Paula’s impressive graphic design portfolio. Regarding this work Paula sites the importance of not approaching it as a science. Paula realizes that there is only so much that branding can do if a customer is uninterested in a product.

She believes that brands lead by presidents who have both strong leaderships skill and visionary qualities are often times the best.

Additionally, she finds it difficult to work in brand creation with groups of more than five people due to human nature and the jealousy that it often leads to. Finally, she believes that intuition is everything, it is enssential to the process, but that it also helps to have luck 6 along the way.

7

Paula on the old logo, “Your name is Windows, why are you a flag?”

TECHNOLOGY

Despite what seems like the always changing and evolving technology of the time, Paula holds fast to her initial approach to design. She claims that technology should not effect design. For Paula, people are what matter, and people have been consitently unchanged in what they really want.

Therefore, Paula treats design, logo creation and branding as anything but a science.

8

Consequentially, techonolgy does not play a vital role in Paula’s approach, work, or philosophy, and yet, she is still able to create work that is easily accepted by all, even by a more contemporary audience.

the New School is one of Paula’s most recent projects. Her continued relevance in the field of graphic design and work with logos, is obvious with her work on this innovative, cutting-edge project.

Paula’s approach to this project is obvious through her quotes below.

Her understanding of the importance of the logo and all of the pieces it had to encompass and represent, and the way in which she went about creating it, makes clear the fact that her philosophy on branding from all those years ago in her early career, is still very much relevant. It has really allowed her to keep on working as a contemporary designer.

“We had to create an identity system where, no matter how you listed the schools, they’d always look like they were part of the same organization, even if the departments changed”.

“What I like about the typeface and logo most is you can’t not recognize it, Scher claims this creates a language for the school. It is modern, and yet still specific to this project.

STAYING RELEVANT

9

PAULA’S WORK

has stood the test of time.

She focus on the vitality of her subject matter, the importance of its identity and the people who it appeals to, rather than the science and technology. This is what has kept her current and well known in the graphic design community continuing to design for a contemporary audience. Paula still has the ability to connect with her intended audience through her design work.

Her logos are able to elicit an emotional response and get audience interest in the product.

10

This is a unique and in may ways timeless and successful approach to graphic design, specifically to branding and logo creation. Thus, I conclude that it is this philosophy that has allowed her to adapt and to continue to make well-received work throughout the years.

SCH Written and designed by Natalie Chormann Composed in Avenir, a typeface designed by Adrian Frutiger in 1988 Copyright © 2015 Natalie Chormann, Portland Maine, Maine College of Art Millman, Debbie. How to Think like a Great Graphic Designer. New York: All Worth,

2007. Print.

Scher, Paula. Make It Bigger. New York: Princeton Architectural, 2002. Print.

“Paula Scher.” AIGA. The Professional Association for Design, 2015. Web. 17 Mar

2015

“New at Pentagram.” New at Pentagram. Pentagram, n.d. Web. 20 Mar. 2015. <http://new.pentagram.com/category/partners/paula-scher/>.