New at Pentagram
New Work: ‘My Wall Street Journal’
Wall Street had a new tabloid this week as My Wall Street Journal appeared—and quickly disappeared—from newsstands all over the country. Paula Scher consulted on the design of the new satire from Tony Hendra, the former editor of National Lampoon. Timed to tax day and the new recession, the single-issue parody of the News Corp-owned Journal has incurred the wrath of Rupert Murdoch (or at least his lookalike) and comes complete with a WSJ-style stippled illustration of a topless Ann Coulter (NSFW). Get your copy here.
Paula Scher at Serious Play
Paula Scher will be a featured speaker at Serious Play, this year’s Art Center Design Conference. Taking place in Pasadena, California, 7-9 May, the conference will explore the role of play in business, the arts, science, storytelling and technology. Other presenters include Elizabeth Diller, John Maeda, Bruce McCall and David Macaulay, and Paula will also lead a studio session with Sean Adams. Registration info here.
Michael Bierut, Michael Gericke and Paula Scher at the Museum of the City of New York
As part of its Spotlight on Design series, the Museum of the City of New York will host a discussion with Michael Bierut, Michael Gericke and Paula Scher about what it takes to design for institutions and corporations in one of the most visually competitive cities in the world. Museum curator Donald Albrecht moderates. Wednesday, 16 April from 6:30 pm at the Museum of the City of New York, 1220 Fifth Avenue at 103rd Street. Tickets and information here.
Design Museum's 'Feedback' Lecture Now Available on Podcast
Harry Pearce, John Rushworth and Paula Scher’s “Feedback” lecture held at the London Design Museum last year is now available as a podcast from the museum’s website.
The talk was organized as an accompaniment to the Design Museum’s retrospective “Alan Fletcher 50 Years of Graphic Work (and Play)” and was hosted by the exhibition’s curator Emily King. In the hour-long discussion, Pearce, Rushworth and Scher frequently refer to the ways in which Fletcher influenced their work and careers.
Paula Scher at UDesign
Paula Scher will speak at UDesign, a graphic design conference to be held at Princeton University on 1 March. The student group Princeton University Student Design Agency has organized the conference on the premise that although the university lacks a graphic design major, exposure to the field is no less important.
Pentagram Honored for Leadership in Pro Bono Service
Pentagram’s New York office was honored last night by the President’s Council on Service and Civic Participation for its work for nonprofit organizations. Paula Scher and Jim Biber were on hand to accept the honor during a ceremony held at the Harvard Club. Pentagram received the first annual “DNA” award for “its exceptional incorporation of pro bono service into its business culture.” Recent Pentagram pro bono projects include work for the Robin Hood Foundation, the Madison Square Park Conservancy, the Public Theater and the One Laptop Per Child initiative.
The award ceremony is part of a two-day Pro Bono Summit that has brought together 150 top corporate, government and nonprofit leaders to launch a multi-year campaign to dramatically increase the amount of skilled volunteering and pro bono service employees give to nonprofits and their communities. The leaders are discussing strategies for making the idea of “pro bono” as common in marketing, finance, technology, HR, logistics and other professions as it is in the legal field.
Speaking about the business advantages of doing pro bono work Scher stated: “A lot of the work we’ve done is outside, public, it’s very visible, and so clients will call us because they’ve seen the design. I can’t tell you how many jobs I’ve gotten through [pro bono work with] the Public Theater. We’re connected to virtually every cultural institution in the city. We are rewarded in recommendations; we’re included in groups where we find out information about things—it’s all very good business.”
Pro bono work has been part of the culture at Pentagram for decades as the partners and their teams donate their talents and time to enhance the design programs of cultural institutions and nonprofit organizations all over the city. “Pentagram Design is setting a powerful example of corporate citizenship that we hope other companies will follow,” said Jean Case, Chair of the Council. “Embracing a pro bono approach is good for employees, the community and the bottom line. America’s businesses have an extraordinary pool of skilled talent, and engaging corporate volunteers on a large scale could make a profound difference in the well-being of our communities and our country.”
The Council’s Pro Bono Award is given annually to six companies who are considered to be setting the standards of excellence in offering pro bono corporate skills to solve social challenges. This year’s other awardees are the Advertising Council; General Electric; Harvard Business School Community Partners; McKinsey & Company; and the Monitor Group.
Mad. Sq. P.
New York’s first public pay toilet opened today in Madison Square Park. The exterior sports a poster designed by Paula Scher, featuring the identity she developed for the park. The toilet is self-cleaning and costs a quarter to use, and is conveniently located just across the park from Pentagram’s office.
Update: Brand Flakes for Breakfast finds its new favorite place to P.
New Work: New York City Ballet
Paula Scher has designed a new identity and promotional campaign for the New York City Ballet, one of the largest and most prominent dance companies in the world. The campaign, developed with Pentagram’s Lisa Kitschenberg and Luis Bravo of the NYCB, launches this week with the opening of the company’s winter season.
Paula Scher in ‘The Huffington Post’
Paula Scher talks to Susan Sawyers about her map paintings in The Huffington Post. "I didn't stop being a graphic designer to become a painter," Scher tells Sawyers. "One informs the other and I am richer for both."Paula Scher at Glasshouse New York
Tomorrow night Glasshouse New York presents “Does Design Really Matter?,” a panel discussion with Paula Scher, David Rockwell of the Rockwell Group and Carl Johnson of Anomaly, moderated by Linda Tischler of Fast Company. Tuesday, 4 December from 6:30 pm at the Rockwell Group, 5 Union Square West in New York City. Tickets are $75. Registration here.
‘Helvetica’ Out Now on DVD
Helvetica, the documentary by Gary Hustwit that includes interviews with Michael Bierut and Paula Scher, amongst others, is released today in a special edition DVD that boasts over 90 minutes of extended interviews with the film’s featured designers. Order from the official Helvetica site and you’ll receive two buttons and save $5 off the list price of $24.99.
‘Paula Scher: Recent Paintings’ Opens This Week
An exhibition of new paintings by Paula Scher opens this Thursday, 8 November at the Maya Stendhal Gallery at 545 West 20th Street in New York City. Featured is work from her ongoing Maps series including the paintings India, Tsunami, Manhattan at Night, NYC Transit, Middle East and Paris. An exhibition catalogue has been published. The show remains on view through 26 January.
A closer look at NYC Transit and images of China and Paris after the jump.
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Paula Scher's Posters Exhibited in Indianapolis
An exhibition of over 40 posters designed by Paula Scher opens today at the Dean Johnson Gallery, 646 Massachusetts Avenue in Indianapolis. The show includes landmark works for The Public Theater, Ballet Tech, and the School of Visual Arts, among others, as well as recent projects like the Number Series. It remains on view through 29 November.
Slovenia: It’s S’lovely!
Condé Nast Traveler asked six designers to each rebrand a country of his or her choice for its September issue, and Paula Scher selected Slovenia for her effort. “I’ve been to Slovenia twice and loved it. But most Americans don’t know what or where it is, which is something I wanted to address” says Scher. By highlighting Slovenia’s proximity to Italy, she made the country appear both physically accessible and “like it has great skiing and great food, which it in fact does.” Although, as she commented in the article, “I don’t think countries should have logos. Logos are for corporations.”
A few taglines after the jump.
‘Helvetica’ Opens in New York
Helvetica, the acclaimed documentary by Gary Hustwit about the ubiquitous typeface that features interviews with Michael Bierut and Paula Scher, amongst others, opens today at the IFC Center in New York. The film is also running at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London through 27 September.
Selected reviews after the jump.
Department of Cultural Affairs
Pentagram’s work for New York cultural institutions is the focus of an article in today’s New York Sun. “When an arts institution in New York wants to reinvent or reinforce its image, very often the artistic or marketing director’s first move is to pick up the phone and call a partner at Pentagram,” writes Kate Taylor.
Paula Scher on ‘Brand America’
In a video interview with Monocle, Paula Scher talks to editor-in-chief Tyler Brûlé about the brand identity of the United States. “We were in a face off with the Soviet Union in the Cold War, and we didn’t change our rhetoric once we didn’t have a big global power confronting us, so we talk to everybody like we’re talking to big global superpowers all the time and we really have to tone down the volume,” says Scher. In the wide-ranging discussion, she touches on the graphic beauty of the Stars and Stripes, the enduring image of the Statue of Liberty (“The nice lady holding up the torch—what could be more welcoming and comforting?”), the future of the media, and why she’d love to redesign the experience of air travel.
The interview complements an essay by Scher that appears in the magazine’s current issue.
Paula Scher Designs Templates for Download from HP
Today Hewlett-Packard launches a new website featuring Paula Scher, Jake Burton and Gwen Stefani as part of its $300 million Print 2.0 campaign designed to inspire and empower customers with free customizable, printable content. For her part, Scher designed five business templates, including letterhead, envelopes, business cards and notecards, that provide users with a complete graphics package. Named Bold, Modern, Edgy, Elegant and Friendly, the templates were designed to appeal to a diverse array of businesses and personality types. Two templates, Friendly and Modern, are available for download today, with the others being added over the next few weeks.
The site also features an interview with Scher in which she speaks about how to build a successful brand identity. “The characteristic that matters for every good brand is that you look like you made your decisions based on who you are for specific reasons, not that they were accidental,” she says. “A small business should ask itself who its customer is, who are they talking to. They should think about how to present themselves and what their tone of voice should be.” Shot in Pentagram’s New York office, the interview is accompanied by commentary about some of her most celebrated designs.
“No template is a substitute for hiring a professional designer,” warns Scher, and indeed at Scher’s suggestion the HP site includes a prominent link to the AIGA designer directory. “But at the very least, I hope we can stop a few innocent people out there from using Comic Sans.”
Rounding out the site’s content, Jake Burton offers advice on how to produce a successful marketing campaign and the importance of a strong visual brand, while Gwen Stefani offers customizable Harajuku-inspired paper dolls, party invites and CD covers.
Views of the templates in action after the jump.
Continue reading "Paula Scher Designs Templates for Download from HP"
Michael Bierut, Paula Scher and ‘Helvetica’ at the Corcoran
Michael Bierut and Paula Scher will participate in a panel discussion at a screening of the documentary Helvetica at the Corcoran Gallery of Art. Thursday, 13 September from 7 pm at the Corcoran, 500 Seventeenth Street NW in Washington, DC. Details here. THIS EVENT HAS SOLD OUT.
Commercial runs of the film open at the ICA in London on 7 September and at the IFC Film Center in New York on 12 September. Updates here.
Paula Scher Creates Pincushion Eames Chair for Charity Auction
Paula Scher has reinterpreted an Eames molded plywood chair as part of a Herman Miller-sponsored charity auction to raise money for the Peace House Foundation. Each of the eleven participating designers and design firms were given an Eames’ classic “potato chip chair” to modify. Paula’s contribution was inspired by a typeface she designed called Pincushion. “We wanted to think of the object as something soft that could be punctured, in this case, with large hatpins, giving it the feeling of a pincushion” she said. “In our expression, the chair becomes a purely visual, rather than a utilitarian object.” Other participants include Ayse Birsel, David Rockwell, Todd Oldham and Maharam. The chairs will be auctioned off at the Herman Miller National Design Center in New York on 22 August.
The Peace House Foundation is a U.S. based non-profit that is committed to educating children affected by the AIDS pandemic in East Africa.
Continue reading "Paula Scher Creates Pincushion Eames Chair for Charity Auction"
Paula Scher’s Sketchbook
Moleskine notebook with illustrations by Paula Scher.
Earlier this summer Paula Scher participated in Detour, an exhibition at the Art Directors Club in New York presented by Moleskine. The exhibition featured 70 Moleskine notebooks filled by various designers, architects, artists and writers. The raison d’être for the exhibition was to introduce the new Moleskine City Notebooks, announce the launch of the accompanying Cityblog and raise money for the non-profit foundation Lettera 27. Now Moleskine has posted video of the participants paging through their books. Paula’s is filled with 14 whimsical fonts she drew while on an airplane and sitting by the sea in Jamaica. Other participants included Dave Eggers, Cynthia Rowley, Lou Reed, Terence Conran, Tom Sachs, Carin Goldberg and Yves Behar. A tour of the notebooks is possibly in the works.
New Work: P.O.V.
Different standardized “O” patterns create flexibility within the identity.
Paula Scher and Julia Hoffmann have designed a new graphic identity for P.O.V., the award-winning documentary film series on PBS. The launch of the new identity is timed to the program’s twentieth anniversary season that begins on June 19.
'A Talent for Approval'
An article in today’s New York Sun goes behind the scenes of the Art Commission of the City of New York, the city’s design review board, of which Paula Scher is a commissioner. The piece credits the city’s current economic boom, and the support of Mayor Bloomberg, for the resurgence of the commission that “may be at its most influential since the early 20th century.”
'Free Love' in the Park
Paula Scher and Lenny Naar spread some love in the posters for the 2007 New York Shakespeare Festival. The campaign promoting this year’s productions, “Romeo and Juliet” and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” to be performed alfresco in Central Park, starts going up this week.
Multiple positions after the jump.
Paula Scher Is 2007 National Design Awards Finalist
Paula Scher has been selected as a finalist in the Communications Design section of this year’s National Design Awards presented by the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. She was previously a finalist in 2005.
Scenes From a Blog
Op-Art from The New York Times, 5 April 2007.
Paula Scher diagrams the verbal jousting in the life cycle of a blog thread in the Op-Ed page of today’s New York Times.
Paula Scher at FUSE Conference
Paula Scher will be a keynote speaker at the 11th annual FUSE: Brand Identity and Package Design conference, presented by the Institute for International Research. Paula will deliver the closing speech, “Branding Without Blanding.” The conference runs Monday to Wednesday, 16 to 18 April at Pier 60 at Chelsea Piers, New York. Registration info here.
Biber, Bierut and Scher Talk for IIDA/NY
If all politics is local, then all design is identity: As part of the IIDA/NY’s Pioneering Design Series, three Pentagram partners—James Biber, Michael Bierut and Paula Scher—will talk about how they create identities for buildings, build identities for clients and generally cope with their individual identity crises. Thursday, 22 March from 6:30 to 7:30 pm at the New School, 66 West 12 Street in New York. More info here. THIS EVENT HAS SOLD OUT.
Scherbia
Paula Scher and her team visited Belgrade late last month for the launch of the Publikum calendar, with events at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade City Hall and the Belgrade Cultural Center. This montage demonstrates: Serbia knows how to welcome a designer!
Moving to the Big Citi
Original sketch of Citi logo, 1998
Citigroup has announced that it will be uniting its businesses under one name, “Citi,” adopting the now-familiar red arc design recommended by Pentagram nearly nine years ago. “Our unified brand represents the promise to serve our clients as one company, as one Citi,” Citi Chairman and CEO Charles Prince said in a statement endorsing the change. “Our extensive global research and analysis also confirmed Citi is a highly effective brand across many languages, markets and technology platforms. It is how most of our clients think about us already.”
The story of how Pentagram designed the Citi logo follows after the jump.
Bad Taste
Paula Scher comments on packaging design for organic foods, in the Dining section of today’s Times. “It’s the bottom of the barrel,” says Paula.
Paula Scher, TDC Medalist
Last night Paula Scher received the Type Directors Club Medal in an intimate ceremony at the TDC. The medal is awarded in recognition of achievements in and contributions to the art and craft of type and typography. One of the distinctions of the award is its relative infrequency: Since its inception in 1967, there have been only 22 recipients, the last being Martin Solomon in 2003. Paula is the first Pentagram partner to receive the honor.
New Work: Publikum Calendar
The month of January in the Publikum Calendar
Paula Scher and her team have designed the 2007 edition of the Publikum Calendar, the celebrated art calendar published by the Publikum printing company based in Belgrade. (The calendar’s history is recounted in an article in the current issue of STEP.) The theme of the new calendar is “Gobbledygook,” and the design makes visual and phonetic comparisions between the Roman and Cyrillic alphabets.
Design by Paula Scher, Julia Hoffmann, Drew Freeman, Brian Crooks, Lenny Naar, Emma Goldsmith and Jennifer Rittner.
Join us for the launch party at the Art Directors Club on Tuesday, 28 November from 6 to 9 pm. RSVP to res(at)adcglobal.org.
Update: The calendar is noted on Unbeige.
More spreads after the jump.
New Work: The Metropolitan Opera
Paula Scher and Julia Hoffmann have designed the new identity for The Metropolitan Opera, the venerable New York institution. The rebranding is an initiative of the Met’s new general manager, Peter Gelb. The identity is set in Baskerville and Avenir and the new campaign features performance photography of Anthony Minghella’s production of “Madama Butterfly,” the show that kicks off the season on 25 September.
The print ad campaign launched 20 August, and according to Thomas Michel, the Met’s marketing director, resulted in the largest sales day in the history of the organization. The street campaign—the first for the Met in 30 years—goes up next week. (Official release here.)
The campaign is noted in The New York Times and The New York Sun.
More applications after the jump.
New Work: The Criterion Collection
Paula Scher and Julia Hoffmann have designed a new identity for The Criterion Collection, the top publisher of premium editions of classic and contemporary films on DVD. The program includes a monogram and a signature logotype and will appear on Criterion’s packaging starting with a new Eric Rohmer box set this August. Criterion logo animation here.
The new identity will be complemented by a sub-brand named Eclipse, a line of B-movies by important directors, which launches this fall. Eclipse logo animation here.
Faking the Funk
An homage to Paula Scher’s classic “Noise/Funk” poster is spotted in Venice.
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