Paula Scher has designed some of the world's most recognisable identities, from the Citi logo to 32 years of posters for New York’s Public Theater. She has been a partner at Pentagram since 1991, and she even has her own episode of Netflix's Abstract.
We visited her at Pentagram’s New York office and talked about luck, power, partners, criticism and why so many designers stop growing.
"Work makes work. If you work for people who control work, meaning that they have access to it, and they work with you and they like you and they trust you, you will get more of it.
If you work with them and they don't like you and they don't trust you, you won't get more of it. It's not that complicated."
"If you want to do something... you just do it. You can't be hurt by somebody's negativity.
Sometimes somebody can make a point that's good. It's not that you can't listen to criticism, but you can tell when there's a kind of negativity that wants to drive you away from the thing you're doing."
"The main thing to make a designer successful is good work, and power to be able to get it through. Those were always the ingredients. And if you're in that position and you're not doing good work, then there's something wrong with you, because that is the ultimate situation."
"If you're working for clients, they have expectations of what you need to do for them, and they're right to have those expectations.
When you're working for free, you don't care what their expectations are, because you actually end up having control of the work, and that's where you can really invent. And if they're not paying you anyway, and you do something you love and they don't want to do it, you can save it and use it some other place, so nothing is wasted."
"I think the hardest thing is to find some success with something that you've done that people come to you for, and then the expectation is that you're going to do that over and over again. That can become frustrating, because you find yourself trapped in some kind of silo.
It might not even be that they're relying on you to do that. They may be relying on you to do something that they're comfortable paying for because they've already had that experience. It's a trap. That is a very big trap, and it usually comes at the period of time you're describing [your 40s and 50s], because you've made some form of reputation that's bringing you that work. Or you're in a job that is repetitive."
"We did a logo that I drew in five minutes. Then they determined which movie theatres were going to be part of this exercise, and that took forever, because nobody could make up their mind about these pieces of information.
It takes nothing to design something. It's really hard getting other people to behave."
"It's luck. I have to say that. Some of it is your... I hate to say the word talent, because what is talent? Talent is some proclivity. Something that you can do and understand how to work with.
But I think success comes from the ability to apply the talent. And to be able to apply the talent, you have to have the thing to apply the talent on. So it means that you have to have access to wonderful things to work on to prove your mettle."
"[My team] is five people. Seven is the biggest. It’s the best [size].
I really control my work. I don't give out projects. I've figured it out to a degree before I do it, and then they collaborate against an idea. It's very good. They've been with me a long time."
“If you just sit around going, ‘I don’t know what to do,’ you’d better talk to somebody, because other people have things that maybe you can do something with. Or there may just be a dumb opportunity that you can take that is going to create memorable work.”
“I think [designers are] too competitive. Everybody’s very protective about their work and what they’ve got and who they know and who they’re working for and what they’ll share about it.
I remember a much more open series of conversations with people who I didn’t even think of as competitors. I just thought of them as friends who were also really good designers. And somewhere that attitude changed.”
“I have a tendency to wipe out things that are not successful. I just don’t think about them, because if you sit around thinking about them... I mean, they can be helpful if you want to improve, I guess, but they’re mostly depressing.”
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