Paula Scher

Paula Scher was an American graphic designer, born on October 6, 1948 in Virginia, and grew up in Philadelphia and Washington DC. She attended the Tyler School of Art and completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1970. Later on, she moved to New York, beginning her professional career as a layout artist. She worked to revolutionize the graphic designing industry with her overzealous determination and creative work for over the period of four decades. In 1991, she became the first female to be offered the principal position at Pentagram.

Paula Scher worked at CBS Records within the advertisement and promotion department. Two years later, she left and joined another label, Atlantic Records, and worked there as an art director. She later went back to CBS Records to work, and during that time, she was able to design several album covers, until she decided to venture off to do her own work independently. She is known for her illustrative use of type, Scher has picked up an armful of design industry awards.

After Paula left CBS she became less focused on illustrative imagery and more so on just pure type. Scher says she feels much more in control if the project she’s working on is just type. Over the years, Scher has developed an identity and branding systems, promotional materials and public designs for a broad range of clients that include Microsoft, Coca – Cola, and Bloomberg. Scher designed wayfinding for Bloomberg’s New York headquarters, developing new font Bloomberg which merged Avenir’s letters with the numbers of Avant Garde. Floors were marked with colour-coded numbers, and giant scrolling news and data screens showcased information from the company’s own live feeds.

She developed a typographic solution based on Art Deco and Russian constructivism, which incorporated outmoded typefaces into her work. The Russian constructivism had provided Scher inspiration for her typography. She did not copy the early constructivist style; however, she used its vocabulary of form on her works. During her time as Art Director at CBS Scher learned how to work in every style and became fascinated by period typography.

At lot of Paula’s work done in the late 70’s is now referred to as being part of the postmodern movement and her experimentation with early modernist type and image shows this. She approached her work by designing things that were contemporary and well liked at the time with the aim of appealing to people in the cover design itself to make them interested in buying the record. A lot of the inspiration for her typographic album covers came from things like a Buckingham Pipe Tobacco tin. Scher would also make a hobby of buying old sheet music and copying the typography.

Having lectured and exhibited all over the world, Paula Scher still works at Pentagram where she continues to design new things and create new concepts.

Here are some of Paula Scher’s famous works: