“It took me a few seconds to draw it, but it took me 34 years to learn how to draw it in a few seconds.”

PAULASCHER

Paula Scher is one of the world’s most famous graphic designers, known for creating Citibank’s umbrella logo as well as for design work for The Public The-ater, The New York Times Magazine, the American Museum of Natural History, The New York City Ballet, and Herman Miller. She believes failure is the secret to artistic success.

“You have to fail in order to make the next discovery.”

“It’s through mistakes that you actually can grow.”

As a fine artist, Scher has also become increasingly well known for her microscopi-cally detailed map paintings, densely latticed with hand-lettered text, that evoke not only place but the varied political, historical and cultural meanings (and preconceptions) brought to the world by the viewer.

As a rock star designer, she’s cooked up everything from Boston album cov-ers to Elvis Costello post-ers, pausing somewhere in between to trash the ubiquitous visual authori-tarianism of Helvetica.

For more than three decades Pau-la Scher has been at the forefront of graphic de-sign. Iconic, smart and unabashedly populist, her images have entered into the American vernacular.

to knock down

the barriers that

pigeonhole peo-

ple as designer,

illustrator, fine

artist, art director

…

One amazing thing about Paula was her long-running determination

She is determined to do it all.

And make it bigger.

"I've always been what you would call a 'pop' designer. I wanted to make things that the public could relate to and understand, while raising expectations about what the 'main-stream' can be. My goal is not to be so above my audience that they can't reach it. If I'm do-ing a cover for a record, I want to sell the re-cord. I would rather be the Beatles than Philip Glass."

PAULA SCHER