Creative Wisdom from Pentagram’s Paula Scher
Paula Scher, c/o Pentagram.
There is a famous Paula Scher story that has been told and retold so many times in creative circles that it has taken on a mythical quality. As the tale goes, Scher, a longtime partner at Pentagram, and her team were meeting with Citi Bank executives about the bank’s rebrand in 1998 when Scher doodled something on a napkin. Incidentally, that doodle was polished and refined and ultimately became the bank’s logo.
And Scher charged Citi $1.5 million for that logo that started as a sketch on the napkin. For those who think that $1.5 million for a napkin sketch is a lot, the whole point of the story is that Citi – or any client, really – was paying Scher for her 30+ years of expertise that allowed her to know exactly what the company needed. She shouldn’t be penalized for getting to the result quickly.
Scher’s career is almost as mythical as that story. She has developed graphic identities for Tiffany & Co., Shake Shack, and The Public Theater, while also working with clients ranging from the Walt Disney Company to Microsoft to the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation.
Even better than mythsical stories about Scher are her own words. Herewith are 10 pieces of her creative wisdom.
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1. “If I get up every day with the optimism that I have the capacity for growth, then that’s success for me.”
2. “Beige is the color of indecision.”
3. “Less is more and more is more. It's the middle that's not a good place.”
Scher’s Citi napkin noodle (above) and the logo (below).
4. “It’s through mistakes that you actually can grow. You have to get bad in order to get good.”
5. “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.”
6. “For people who make inventions, whether they make scientific inventions or artistic inventions, they're driven by pretty much the same thing. It's some mistrust from somebody saying it couldn't be a certain way, and overthrowing that. But that can happen at any point in history, at any time you come along. It doesn't get better or worse because you're born in this era or that era - I think it's more individualistic. It comes from within, you know, it's an internal thing.”
Shake Shack, where the logo is almost as good as the bugers.
The Public Theater branding is always flat out cool.
7. “Be culturally literate, because if you don't have any understanding of the world you live in and the culture you live in, you're not going to express anything to anybody else.”
8. “What you make is who you become.”
9. “Marketing is a necessary part of the creative process.”
10. “It could be that going to work is better than being home. But you should never think of days as the weekend. It should all be the same, it should all be stuff you want to do. And when it isn't then you have to change it, and you have to think about how you change it.”
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