Paula Scher's D&AD Lecture: a blessay
Last night I went along to Logan Hall to listen to Paula Scher of Pentagram talk about her life and work for D&AD. And it was fantastic: Scher was funny, impassioned and direct, and talked fluently for an hour and a half, which is pretty good going.
The talk will eventually appear on the D&AD site. They've already got video of some of the Q&A session, one of which is especially relevant to this post (below).
Paula took us through her whole life, beginning with a shot of the home she moved to in the 1950s, when she was just seven. Shortly after moving in, she told us, she went for a ride on her bike. When she wanted to go home again, she found that all the houses on the street were so identical that she couldn't find her own (she hadn't learnt her new address yet). It was a disorientating and distressing experience for a seven year-old.
Half-jokingly, she said that this was probably the impetus for a life-long dedication to the 'non-uniform'; trying to create things that were unlike anything around them. It's as good a mantra for design and branding as I can think of, and the work Paula showed, from throughout her career, demonstrated her single-minded pursuit of that deceptively simple ideal.
In fact, she's managed to pull off that trick of the true artist, by making work that is indeed very different, even among itself, but which is also recognisably her own. Her distinctive way with type, especially, is a consistent theme, even though the actual designs might be dramatically different. Something Scherian - Scheresque? Scheric? - seems indelibly ingrained in it all.

A devil's advocate could argue - with some success, I think - that this could be an issue for her clients. A lot of the classic graphic work, especially the identities, is as distinctively Paula Scher as it is The Public Theatre (above) or the Walker Art Centre (below, although since rebranded).

As it is, I love both these identities, even though you could argue they're a bit similar. Scher said she hated it when clients called and said, 'We saw what you did for AB&Co, could you do something like that for us?' But the clarity of her vision is so strong, it's hardly surprising that her work often carries her own brand as much as those of her clients. (Although there are some classic rebuttals to that argument, not least the famous Citi identity below.)

Given that, it's not surprising that she's found a new life latterly as a fine artist, creating increasingly enormous painted maps, bursting with information and opinion, that are 'sort of right'. (The one below of Florida allowed her to vent her spleen about the famously unjust 2000 election results there.)

Her cartographer father apparently provided the seed of this obsession, and told young Paula that no map is ever 'true' - they can't hope to be exactly precise. Indeed, she said, some maps are actively misleading - like the gas station maps that highlight not the major roads, but those on which the company's stations can be found. Here's her talking a bit more about the maps:
Scher linked this 'sort of right' quality of her map paintings to journalism, arguing that the average magazine article was probably about as accurate as her somewhat shaky geographies.
This, for me at least, created a peculiar tangential parallel to one of the more bizarre audience questions. A German fellow sitting near me asked Paula if she liked Talking Heads - a question he apparently asked of all New York-based designers.
Her answer was a simple and bemused, 'Yes I do.' This is the correct answer, given that there has never been another band as great as Talking Heads. Ever.
This set off two trains of thought for me.
One, that Paula suddenly reminded me strongly of that other gifted woman holding her own in a male-dominated group, Tina Weymouth.

(Tina Weymouth of Talking Heads above, Paula Scher of Pentagram below)
And two, that all this talk of 'sort of right' facts put me in mind of the Talking Heads track Crosseyed and Painless, one of their finest moments and as irresistible a juggernaut of smart, funky, brain-fizzing pop as you are likely to find. (I quite like Talking Heads.) In that extraordinary song, David Byrne tells us that:
Facts are simple and facts are straight
Facts are lazy and facts are late
Facts all come with points of view
Facts don't do what I want them to
Facts just twist the truth around
Facts are living turned inside out
(Listen to the song - albeit not the ideal version - on Blip.fm here)
I think he's right. And Paula Scher's right too. It was an inspiring talk, which got the mind going in all sorts of directions, as you can tell.
And it was resolutely non-uniform.
Labels: art, DandAD, design, lecture, lyrics, maps, Paula Scher, Talking Heads







