The canon of graphic design: Paula SCHER, essay written by kassy bull, graphic design, 1st year.
Who are the graphic designers practicing today that will be remembered in 20 years time? Why will they be remembered and canonised? What is the canon of graphic design? Who decides? Well, in this case, you do. The Canon of What is a canon? The meaning of the word canon can be implied as a rule, principle, official, the best and even a Saint. When using the term canonisation in the context of, it can be described as taking a well established er who has a special knowledge and appreciation of design and exulting them to a place of high esteem amongst their peers. I believe canonisation presupposes a hierarchy of design objects and designers and those included become the established canon of design history. A canon can provide a fundamental amount of knowledge, a shared foundation for judgment and a starting point for discussion. It acquaints us to essential material we might usually overlook, and helps set the agenda. It is one more approach in accessing and understanding graphic design history, our past and magnifying the potential of graphic design. However it would seem that Design theorist, Clive Dilnot, argues that too much emphasis is placed on individual designers instead of adopting a more rational and historical approach and examining designs against their place in history and the then current economic and cultural climate (1a).
The Canon of Paula Scher, born in 1948, is a New York based Graphic Designer and was educated at the Tyler School of Art, Philadelphia, where she majored in Illustration. As a student Scher stayed away from as she was short of structuring and ordering her work, and she did not like aligning Helvetica on a framework, The act of organizing the Helvetica typeface on a grid reminded me of cleaning up my room, she admitted. Drawing was her main focus and so implemented illustration work into typography. Scher was inspired by a Polish illustrator named Stanislaw Zagorski as he said to her illustrate with type not try rub down on a corner with press type. This advice served as an inspiration for the rest of her career. One of Scher s first jobs was becoming an art director for numerous records and advertisements at CBS Records and Atlantic records. The music industry provided opportunities of innovation and experimentation for Scher and she drew inspiration from her knowledge of 20th Century art and design history. In particular, Russian Constructivism, Futurism and Dada (1). An example of one her well known and most dynamic piece of work is her CBS records 'Best of Jazz' poster (1979) (Fig1). This poster was handmade by cutting and pasting and re-sizing the type by hand, using American wood-type. I would say her work is influenced by Russian Constructivism, however Scher believes that the influence over her work came from where she lives, New York City. Scher describes this piece as being crowded and compact (Fig1) The Best of Jazz Poster (1979) (Fig2) Bring in da noise, bring in da funk poster (1995) like the buildings of New York, with its grids and skyscrapers. In relation to her design of the poster, I admire the use of dark bold colours and condensed type however its fairly hard to read and comprehend due to the spaced out sentencing of the words, 'The Best of Jazz' and this can not be seen clearly enough therefore I don't believe it communicates well to an audience. Paula Scher is best known for her work with Pentagram and becoming a principal in 1991. Scher's early much acclaimed Pentagram works was New York's Public Theater identity (1994). It was so successful that it won a Beacon Award for integrated corporate identity strategy (2). Scher's work for the Public Theater was so great that she became the voice of the theatre. Her style and work for them came about based on being extremely loud and visible with her typography. The design style for the identity of the theater followed into her poster work for them. A great example is the 'Bring in da noise funk, bring in da funk' poster (Fig2). It was designed for a tap, rap musical and so Scher's large, bold condensed type presented in different horizontal angles, demonstrated the 'noise' that the musical would produce. I believe the large typography and vivid colours really made this poster speak clearly to an audience. The letter pressed type gave a sense of urgency, out spoken opinions and immediacy as in you must go see it now. The simplicity of colour choices added great effect to the underlying message of the poster. The use of bright yellow in the background really catches the audiences eye if they were to walk past it, and the black type seems to represent the actors talking or almost shouting at the public. The poster succeeds in saying something more about the kind of theater and organization the Public Theater is. It
The Canon of makes the 'Public' relevant, vibrant, and opinionated. This poster therefore did become successful and a great influence to other designers however this meant companies were copying it and the Public Theater wasn't being noticed enough so she had to change her design strategies. After Scher's career with the Public Theater, she was approached by architects in the year 2000, to design the inside of theatres taking environmental graphics onto buildings. Scher had never done this type of work before and admitted that she didn't even know how to read an architectural plan (3). One of Paula's main aims with her work was to make it bigger and stand out. By doing super-graphics this really allowed Scher to explore how big and expressive she could go with her typography. A great example I believe demonstrates this, is the use of typography on the Lucent Technologies Center for Arts Education (Fig3). Scher placed words such as 'Music','Dance', 'Poetry' and 'Drama' onto the building using a simple square shaped sansserif, placing them horizontally and vertically around the walls of the theatre and even on the vents. Even though the typeface is fairly plain and simple, the size of it stills helps to communicate the energy and liveliness within the building. I find it interesting that the use of minimal colour thus diminishes the harshness of vibrant colours that she usually portrays such as in her 'Bring on da noise...' poster. By doing so she has managed to capture the essence of simplicity but the importance of expressing a clear message to the public. This is also seen by the stability of the font size Citi bank logo (1998,2012) (Fig3) Lucent Technologies Center for Arts Education (2001) and weight. Recently Paula has written 2 books and starred in an auto-biography film explaining about her life s work. Scher is now 85 and happily re-tired in her home town of Philadelphia. Her last project in 2026 was designing illuminated Typography of all 7 Continents and having them temporary erected from the ground 50ft high for 1 month so the type could be seen from space. This idea stemmed from the maps she used to paint in her own time. They portrayed a complicated narrative about how she felt about the world from her own experiences and memories. The Continent typography didn't prove to be so popular with communities living around the 'monuments' as it did block scenery and created light pollution. However due to advancement in technology it was able to produce electricity as a source for locals. Fortunately this was a first in terms of international typographic Paula Scher Map of the world poster Poster (1998) design and making the largest type in the world. From this she won her last ever design award for it and was also entered into the Guinness book of world records for it. In conclusion I believe Paula Scher is among one of the best designers of her generation. She cut a path for herself creating an approach to design that is articulate yet unpretentious, open to influences yet decisively individualistic. Her formulation to making all her work bigger is an inspiration to others as it shows she likes to push the boundaries and go to the extreme. Scher has been a designer for over 50 years and produced not only astonishing visual work, but her profession led her to become a glorifying lecturer, advocate, agitator. She has therefore helped put an intelligent face on the field of graphic design. She has become the canon.
References (1a) Clive Dilnot, The State of Design History: part 1:Mapping the field, in Margolin, Victor ed., Design Discourse, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1989, pp.213-232 (1) and (2) Dictionary of and Designers page 214 (3) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atn22-bmtpu Paula Scher: Great design is serious (not solemn) (Fig 1) http://d5media.co.uk/graphic-design/most-influential-designers-paula-scher/ (Fig 2) http://d5media.co.uk/graphic-design/most-influential-designers-paula-scher/ (Fig3) https://www.uniteditions.com/blog/supergraphics-paula-scher/ Other Referencial websites: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/paula_scher http://www.csun.edu/~pjd77408/drd/art461/lecturesall/lectures/ UCLA_PaulaScher.html Word count for preface: 184 words Word count for main essay: 1135 words