Pentagram’s Paula Scher and Eddie Opara are among the designers featured in a typography-themed episode of “Off Book,” the new web series from PBS Arts. In the video, Scher and Opara talk about using type to create identity and texture, and share some of their own typographic influences. “Words have meaning and type has spirit,” says Scher. “And the combination is spectacular.”
Supergraphics won big in this year’s SEGD Design Awards, recently announced. Two New York projects by Pentagram’s Paula Scher and team were honored in the awards: Achievement First Endeavor Middle School in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, and the parking garage at 13-17 East 54th St. in Midtown Manhattan. Both projects use large-scale typography to create unique environments that integrate graphics and architecture.
Quick Link: Michael Bierut, Angus Hyland and Paula Scher to Speak at AGI Open
Pentagram’s Paula Scher is the subject of a new volume in the “Hall of Femmes” book series honoring female graphic design legends. Produced by Swedish design duo Hjärta Smärta and published by Oyster Press, the book is constructed as a long interview with Scher covering four decades of her career, from her days as an art director at CBS Records in the 1970s to recent work designing prominent identities for Citibank, The Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Opera and Bausch + Lomb and large-scale environmental graphics for Bloomberg and the Achievement First Endeavor Middle School in Brooklyn.
Scher’s is the fourth book in the series following entries on Ruth Ansel, Lillian Bassman and Carin Goldberg. The book is available for order from Dashwood Books in New York and Amazon.
A peek inside the book after the jump.
Continue reading “Paula Scher Inducted into ‘Hall of Femmes’ in New Book”
New Yorkers are cooling off today as the city’s public pools officially open for the summer season. Our new signage for NYC Parks makes its first splash at nine pools, including Mullaly Pool in the Bronx, where the city celebrated the official opening of the season this morning, and at the Floating Pool Lady, the pool-on-a-barge at Barretto Point Park in the Bronx. The program will be installed at additional locations as park upgrades are made.
Designed by Paula Scher, the signage replaces the existing disparate signs and posted information (as seen in the image at the end of this post) into a cohesive modular system. The signs also feature our new identity for the NYC Parks system, with a modernized version of the Parks leaf.
Dive in! But only in designated areas, of course.
Continue reading “New NYC Parks Signage Makes a Splash at City Pools”
Quick Link: Paula Scher on Supergraphics
Quick Link: Paula Scher in “Benchmarks: Seven Women in Design” at Fordham University
Paula Scher’s identity for Friends of the High Line, designed in 2001.
Eventually it became the symbol of the park itself.
In the year 2000, my partner James Biber and I responded to a branding call from a retail company named Watch World. We were visited by the president of the company and his marketing director, a man named Robert Hammond. We made a Pentagram capabilities presentation which seemed to go well, and they asked to write a proposal for the project. After the meeting, Robert Hammond said he’d like to talk to me about something else.
Robert Hammond was involved in trying to stop New York City from tearing down an old industrial railway called “The High Line.” He had formed a group called “Friends of the High Line” and they wanted a logo, letterhead and some business cards, so they would look official. Their idea was to turn the High Line into a park.
As far as I could tell, Hammond had no urban planning experience and wasn’t involved with the Parks Department. He was working with a friend, Joshua David, who was a magazine writer and had no urban planning or park experience either.
I actually had no idea where the High Line was. Hammond seemed like a reasonable enough person, but I didn’t believe he had any chance moving an entire city to accomplish this dream. On the other hand, I did want the Watch World job. I thought, “High Line,” “H,” “train tracks,” “green.” How long could it take?
It took about an hour, and 11 years. What follows is the work we have done for Friends of the High Line and the High Line Itself, in chronological order. Section 2 of the High Line is opening this week and the park is the most visited tourist destination in New York City. Congratulations, Robert and Josh.
Continue reading “Paula Scher on the High Line”
The streets meet the sheets in Paula Scher’s 2011 campaign for Shakespeare in the Park, set to launch this week.
This year’s productions, to be presented in repertory starting June 6, are All’s Well That Ends Well and Measure for Measure. Both plays contain elements of bedroom farce, and “Shakespeare in bed” is the campaign’s frisky tagline. In the 3-sheet version of the poster, the play titles, set in Knockout, canoodle with the sinuous curves of an outsize ampersand on a photographic image of a bed. (A pair of pillows is pictured on the horizontal-format posters for buses and the subway.) The campaign will also be seen in magazines and newspapers.
For New Yorkers, and visitors to the city, the green leaf of the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation is a welcome symbol of relaxation and enjoyment. The Parks Department manages and maintains one of the world’s largest urban park systems, 29,000 acres of land that include more than 5,000 individual properties—from iconic New York landmarks like Central Park, Coney Island Beach, Prospect Park and Flushing Meadows Corona Park, to neighborhood playgrounds, pools, community gardens, historic houses, monuments, athletic fields and stadiums—that serve millions of New Yorkers. In peak season, the Parks Department has 10,000 employees across the five boroughs.
Pentagram’s Paula Scher has collaborated with the Parks Department on the design of a new identity that creates a unified, accessible and modern image for the agency. The program includes the design of a cohesive program of signage, wayfinding and environmental graphics for the more than 1,700 parks, playgrounds and recreation facilities in the Parks system. The project allows Scher to make a lasting contribution to the city that has inspired so much of her work.
