Paula Scher - A Modern Arts Visionary
Paula Scher is a painter and artist from the United States. She was born in Washington in October 1948 and attended the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia, where she graduated with a degree in Fine Arts in 1970. (Arntson 2011, p.103). She is regarded as a modern arts visionary because of the sketches she created while working at the Public Theater in New York and Columbia Records, all of which concentrated on typographic expressions (Bosier 2012, p.25).
She made use of various interfaces while making such illustrations, which set her works apart from those of other traditional graphic designers. According to Lupton, Scher's interest in typographical illustrations was founded on the need to come up with an object the societal members would comprehend and relate with while at the same time inspiring them to formulate other appropriate methods through which the same idea would be put across (Lupton 1996, p.172). Lupton also argues that Scher's main achievements were the formulation of the logo and billboards in 1994 after she joined the New York Public Theatre (Lupton 2017, p.1).
An in-depth analysis of Paila Scher's works - more so on The Public Theatre - reveals that she was guided by some crucial modernist principles - such as the need to illustrate the future through a respective art and the essence of using universal relevance as a means of enhancing the brand identity of a given object. Nevertheless, there have been arguments from some community members that her works do not depict any creativity, but rather it is just a form of the usual aboriginal arts.
Analysis of the 'Modernist' Principles Used by Paula Scher
There exist some design principles that enable artists to come up with products that have some significance among the audiences. Since the main messages in artworks are passed across through visualization, it is paramount for an artist to make a drawing that captures the attention of the prospective audiences and also makes it possible to figure out the intended message with ease (Dabner, Stewart and Vickress 2017, p.8). According to Bennett, graphic design involves the creation of art that has to be visually re-examined by the people to determine whether it has any value or impact on them (Bennett 2006, p.17).
One of the key guiding principles among the artists is the ability to come up with an illustration of the future. Lawson argues that a designer has to be guided by a vision for the future whereby he/she is capable of demonstrating the preferred vision in a respective artwork (Lawson 2006, p.165). Scher strived to make the public members aware of the various aspects of arts. To do so, she opted to redesign the Public Theatre as a way of wooing more people to visit it by coming up with a graphical language that depicted the graffiti-like juxtaposition and the street typography. Additionally, she came up with a new approach of modernizing the Museum of Modern Arts' (MoMA) image to boost its image among the people. Through a print advertisement in a newspaper, she designed a strong grid where various images and were placed. Through her artistic works, she has also made various drawings of societal maps that depict divisions among the people. While making the drawings, she made some lines on the maps to denote how the community members are always split along ethnic and political affiliations. For instance, in 1999 she drew the American map on a white block and listed all facts about the nation's cities. By doing so, she might have pointed out the United States of America as a civilized nation. Besides, Scher drew the African map on a white and a black plate, which might be seen as an illustration of the inhumane conditions the Africans lived in during the colonial period.
Figure 1: Scher's logo illustrating The Public Theatre. Image location: Alderson, R., 2014. Paula Scher returns to NYC's Public Theatre graphics with new campaign. It's Nice That. [Online] Available at https://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/Paulaa-scher-public-theater [Accessed Dec. 24, 2017].
Another factor that has made Scher's illustrations to be quite famous is their universal relevance. As a result, her graphic artworks are relevant to all people, which denotes that her illustrations are not anchored on any culture or historical reference that would limit them to a given sect of the society. By embracing constructivism, Scher came up with the 'practical construction' notion, which is a concept that enables an artist to overcome any prejudice and instead come up with a product that has a unique message (Hillner 2009, p.24). The element of universal relevance also played a key role in enhancing the brand identity of Scher's artistic works. For example, to increase the brand identity of The Public Theatre, she created a logo and big billboards to capture the attention of the community members. By doing so, she made the theatre more appealing to the people. However, she was not impressed by the fact that The Public Theatre was associated with the late Joseph Papp, which might have implied that the institution was also inactive. Therefore, she designed the logos that depicted that the theatre was a public institution, hence, the community members should not fear going there.
Figure 2: Paula Scher's Illustration of The Public Theatre's Logo. Image Location: Eagleson, J., n.d. Paula Scher: Designer, artist & educator. [Online] Available at https://jemmaeagleson.github.io/PAULA-SCHER/Essay.html [Accessed Dec. 24, 2017].
Criticisms
Nevertheless, despite Scher's immense contributions in the graphic design industry, which eventually revolutionized it, she has faced some criticisms from several members of society. Heller claims that there are people who were not thrilled by her creativity. Instead, they were of the opinion that her paintings and the patterns she used constantly reminded them of aboriginal arts (Heller 2017, p.1). Besides, some societal members were convinced that she did not demonstrate any new ideas through her paintings since their major ideas were founded on the occurrences within the society.
Therefore, people had started seeing what they initially thought to be immense innovations in arts turn out to be old-fashioned, thus, denoting that the artists did not illustrate any new ideas. To some community members, graphic designers abused history by using some key occurrences as a means of legitimizing their works, which would be deemed as an outright way of denoting the artist's lack of new ideas. As Resnick suggests, a designer should come up with a unique idea, which he/she clarifies through the visualization phase but not relying on what the societal members might be already aware of (Resnick 2003, p.17). Novosedlik also claims that artists should strive to advance their professionalism by formulating new artistic modes since the reflection of culture and historical occurrences in crafts is so obvious and has lost essence among some members of the public (Novosedlik 2013, p.1). Besides, quite a number of her paintings were deemed to be relatively political, hence, drawing a lot of criticisms from the community members. Scher argues that community members should realize that designers may use arts as an avenue for promoting the political and social issues affecting society, which justifies that some of her artworks have a political significance (Landa 2020, p.11). Since politics is a sensitive issue, she might have failed to gain favor in the eyes of some community members as they were convinced that she should not demonstrate how the community was divided along political lines.
Conclusion
To sum it all, Paula Scher is a renowned graphic designer more so due to her works in The Public Theatre. As illustrated above, she played a crucial role in reviving the theatre by enhancing its brand image among community members. To do so, she used two main modernist principles: the essence of passing across a respective message about one's vision through arts and the ability to create universal relevance through a given artwork. By redesigning The Public Theatre, she was successful in wooing the community members to visit it now and then since it is a public entity. Additionally, she created a logo for the theatre, which played a critical role in reminding the people that it (the theatre) belonged to them. By designing a logo for the theatre, she also managed to revive it by making the people aware that there was no connection between it and the late Joseph Papp, hence, implying that the institution was still active. Nevertheless, Scher has faced some criticisms from a sect of community members. According to the critics, her artworks do not depict any new ideas but rather the usual aboriginal arts.
References
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Eagleson, J., n.d. Paula Scher: Designer, artist & educator. [Online] Available at
Heller, S., 2011. Paula Scher makes enormous maps that are only sought of right. The Atlantic. [Online] Available at < https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2011/10/Paulaa-scher-makes-enormous-maps-that-are-only-sort-of-right/246880/> [Accessed Dec. 24, 2017].
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Scher, P., 2002. Make it bigger. Hudson, NY: Princeton Architectural Press.
