00:00:13
[Paula] I walk outside
and I see typography everywhere.
00:00:20
New York City is a city of signs.
00:00:24
Sometimes things written by hand,
00:00:27
mismatched,
00:00:28
hung up in some peculiar way.
00:00:31
You think, "Oh my God, can I get up there
and please readjust that sign?
00:00:34
That's just absolutely awful!"
00:00:37
The way numbers are on doors.
No two the same down the block.
00:00:42
All messages are different,
and they're everywhere.
00:00:47
Typography is painting with words.
00:00:52
That's my biggest high.
00:00:54
It's my crack.
00:00:55
[funky music playing]
00:01:05
[Lupton] Paula Scher
is the goddess of graphic design.
00:01:10
Her stuff is everywhere!
00:01:17
[Bierut] Paula's been able to come up with
00:01:19
more ways to make type talk
than anyone else,
00:01:23
and to create a distinctive body of work
just with letters.
00:02:20
[Paula] When I go to work every day,
00:02:22
I feel like I'm navigating myself
through a maze.
00:02:27
-Hey.
-[colleague] How are you?
00:02:33
Look at this! A real type book!
00:02:36
-Can you bring this to Courtney?
-[colleague] Yeah.
00:02:38
[Paula] I sit nose to nose
with my partners.
00:02:41
My team is on the fourth floor.
00:02:42
I have to run up and down steps
to see them.
00:02:45
I actually like this.
I think you should move 'em lower.
00:02:48
It's very quick paced.
00:02:49
You're seeing something
that looks like this.
00:02:52
I'm solving things on scraps of paper.
00:02:55
Starting something, getting interrupted...
00:02:57
-[colleague] Paula?
-Yeah?
00:02:58
The interruption is great.
00:03:00
I like the way the icons
also interrelate with the thing.
00:03:04
Pentagram is a design cooperative.
00:03:06
There's the benefit of a large firm,
00:03:08
but everybody gets to act
like they're an individual.
00:03:11
There's no boss. Just friends.
00:03:14
[Bierut] Pentagram's a supergroup
of the most famous designers in the world
00:03:18
doing the best work in the world.
00:03:20
It's like an all-star team, and Paula is
the indispensable player on that team.
00:03:25
That one's my favorite so far.
00:03:27
[Bierut] We all have
our own individual style,
00:03:30
individual way of working.
00:03:33
[Paula] I could never walk into an office
and sit down at my desk to design,
00:03:37
I would accomplish nothing.
00:03:39
I can sit down at my desk
to read my e-mail.
00:03:42
You go through your junk mail...
00:03:43
A lot of crap.
00:03:44
You throw it all out,
you make a little order on your desk,
00:03:47
and then you go, "Oh, my God,
how am I going to solve this problem?"
00:03:52
Then, you walk up the stairs,
00:03:54
go into the ladies' room,
put on your lipstick and figure it out.
00:04:01
[colleague] It's...
00:04:02
I love it like that. It's very slurpy.
00:04:05
-Slurpy, yeah.
-Don't you think?
00:04:07
Yeah, I like that.
00:04:08
[Paula] Ideas can be triggered
by working with my team.
00:04:12
[Paula] ...optical illusion.
00:04:13
I see more than I would see
if I was just doing it all by myself.
00:04:16
It's fantastic.
00:04:18
I think that you have to make
"Girls" and "Boys" the same weight,
00:04:22
with the exception of the pointy things.
00:04:24
And then figure out
how the other type intersects.
00:04:27
And then we gotta figure out color.
00:04:30
We're working on the Summer Festival
posters for the Public Theater.
00:04:34
They put on free Shakespeare
in Central Park every summer.
00:04:38
So, like here it says,
Taming of the Shrew inside the wrap.
00:04:43
You don't have to do that work
with the whole name.
00:04:45
You're putting this
in a kind of lozenge shape.
00:04:47
-I think it'll be cool.
-Yeah, it looks really fun.
00:04:50
So, give it a shot!
00:04:57
I've been designing
for the Public Theater since 1994.
00:05:02
My first project was
creating an identity for the Theater.
00:05:06
When they hired me,
they had a name issue.
00:05:10
[Wolfe] One of the things
that was very challenging
00:05:12
about the Public Theater,
it had multiple identities:
00:05:14
it was the Public Theater,
00:05:16
and then some people called it
the Joseph Papp Public Theater,
00:05:19
and then there was
Shakespeare in Central Park.
00:05:21
I wanted everything
to feel like it was of one.
00:05:25
That it was breathing fully
as an institution.
00:05:29
[Paula] It had to be populous.
00:05:31
I knew it had to be New Yorkish,
meaning it had to be loud and proud.
00:05:41
I was flipping through one of my books
00:05:45
on American wood type.
00:05:47
I like American wood type because
it's powerful, and it has many forms.
00:05:54
On this particular page were these Rs,
00:05:57
and they go back to the skinniest form
or to the widest form,
00:06:01
and I realized I could make the word
"Public" in the same kind of weights,
00:06:07
and it would symbolize all of New York.
00:06:10
Every type of weight was included.
00:06:14
You can create
an identity for a whole place
00:06:18
based on a recognizability of type.
00:06:24
[Wolfe] Paula's work pulled people in.
You instantly knew, "The Public."
00:06:30
It's a language that could be dissected,
taken apart, put back together.
00:06:35
That's one the things
I think is thrilling about it.
00:06:40
[Paula] Typography can create
immense power.
00:06:43
You're working with things
that create character.
00:06:46
You're working with weight.
00:06:48
You're working with height.
00:06:50
If you take an E,
00:06:53
and the middle bar is the same length
as the ends of the E's,
00:06:57
it feels different than if the little bar
is half the length of the E's.
00:07:02
If you lift the little bar up higher,
00:07:05
it will make the typeface look
like it was drawn in the 1930s.
00:07:10
The same thing as
if you drop the middle bar lower,
00:07:12
it will look moderne.
00:07:14
If a font is heavy and bold,
it may give you a feeling of immediacy.
00:07:19
If a font is thin and has a serif form,
it may feel classical.
00:07:25
So that, before you even read it,
you have sensibility and spirit.
00:07:30
And that, if you combine that
with a meaning,
00:07:34
then that's spectacular.
00:07:40
When I did the High Line logo,
00:07:42
the goal was to make it look more like
a railroad track than an H.
00:07:46
If you take the kind of weight that
might make the line for a railroad track,
00:07:50
and you put two horizontal bars across it,
00:07:54
it begins to look fairly industrial.
00:07:57
It totally changes the spirit
00:07:59
without having to create
any kind of illustrative narrative.
00:08:20
I used to paint my fonts by hand,
when I was a young designer,
00:08:24
and I really miss it.
00:08:28
When we became fully computerized
in the late '90s,
00:08:31
I didn't touch anything
and I didn't use my hands.
00:08:35
In the past, I cut things up,
I ripped things, I pasted things.
00:08:40
I touched art supplies.
00:08:43
That physical loss was huge for me,
and that's why I started painting.
00:08:48
Uh-oh. That's Utah.
00:08:50
I deliberately began painting the maps
00:08:53
because they would take me
a long time to accomplish,
00:08:57
in some very rote way,
00:08:59
and that's actually everything
that went away.
00:09:03
These dotted lines are the distances
between two given points
00:09:08
and the background is the zip codes.
00:09:11
It's not factual, it's emotional.
00:09:14
Like Wyoming doesn't have
very many people in it,
00:09:17
but you feel it instead of know it.
00:09:23
I'm not making
something designed to answer questions,
00:09:27
it's more a design to raise them.
00:09:30
This painting is
counties and zip codes.
00:09:35
Why do some little states
have a million counties,
00:09:38
and some big states have very few?
00:09:43
Now this one is a demographic map:
00:09:46
average age of people,
racial and ethnic breakdowns.
00:09:50
To actually have any sense of it,
you actually have to sit and read it.
00:09:53
But, the information is
equivalently complicated and ridiculous.
00:10:06
I used to make complicated,
nonsensical charts
00:10:10
and diagrams that were satirical.
00:10:15
Silly information. Fractured information.
00:10:17
And I did it to make points.
00:10:21
Then I started charting
things that were not chartable.
00:10:26
Mostly denigrating
my own physical appearance.
00:10:30
I find it funny.
00:10:32
Sometimes they're pithy
and more meaningful,
00:10:35
like all my numbers on my credit cards,
00:10:38
just to show how many numbers
were attached to my name
00:10:41
and they're
in some computer somewhere.
00:10:44
Later, they became political.
00:10:46
Or nonsensical.
00:10:49
Ultimately, it turned into my paintings.
00:10:53
That one has a period,
maybe they should have periods.
00:10:57
[director] So Paula, these paintings,
00:10:58
they seem to have
a little obsessional quality to them.
00:11:02
Yeah, I think they're quite obsessive.
00:11:05
It's the act of weaving little bits
of information to make a bigger thing.
00:11:10
That's definitely stronger than that.
This one needs to be stronger over here.
00:11:13
It started when I was very young.
00:11:16
I had this very high IQ score in something
called quantitative reasoning.
00:11:21
My family thought it was going to be Math,
00:11:23
but it wasn't.
00:11:24
It was the ability to synthesize a lot
of information
00:11:27
and come to a conclusion.
00:11:29
A self-portrait.
00:11:31
And I was happiest
when I was making things.
00:11:34
1956, orthopedic shoes,
00:11:36
1959, developed a contempt
for Girl Scouts,
00:11:40
1953, discovered I'm Jewish.
00:11:42
Every hairdo I ever had:
00:11:44
the Blunt Cut, the Sassoon, the Shag,
00:11:46
the Summer Blonde, the Platinum Blonde,
the Streaked Blonde, the Reddish Blonde,
00:11:49
and No Blonde.
00:11:52
I didn't really fit in very well
in high school.
00:11:56
I mean, I was
a person who went to art classes
00:11:58
instead of going to the football games.
00:12:00
There's something wrong with you
if you do that.
00:12:04
Then I was at the Tyler School of Art
studying Illustration,
00:12:09
and I fell in love with typography
in a way I didn't expect to.
00:12:14
I was influenced by contemporary culture.
00:12:17
Zig-Zag rolling papers,
00:12:19
Zap comics,
00:12:20
underground newspapers
and magazines and record covers.
00:12:23
Especially record covers.
00:12:25
Those were the things
that I really wanted to do.
00:12:27
They spoke to me.
00:12:36
I got a job designing record covers
at CBS Records in the '70s.
00:12:43
I'd combine the illustration
00:12:45
with typography that related
to the illustration or contrasted it.
00:12:50
[Bierut] I first became aware of
Paula's name in high school in the '70s.
00:12:55
I'd spend three hours in a record store.
00:12:57
I'd stand at those racks
and look at the covers.
00:13:00
I'd be like, "Wow,
I really like the way that cover looks."
00:13:03
I'd turn it over
and see Paula Scher's name,
00:13:06
over and over again.
00:13:08
[Paula] I was a kid with the best job
in New York City.
00:13:13
I had recording artists
and their managers,
00:13:15
all these people
coming in and out of my office.
00:13:17
And always trying
to keep these balls in the air
00:13:20
to get them to agree to some design
and get it to come to fruition.
00:13:25
And I just became very good at it.
00:13:34
Big recording artists were the things
the company cared about the most.
00:13:39
So I would do pretty much what
the recording artists wanted me to do.
00:13:44
Like for example,
here on this Bruce Springsteen cover.
00:13:46
It was shot by a friend of his
who was a butcher,
00:13:49
and I put
this typewriter typography on it.
00:13:52
Cheap Trick was a little bit different.
00:13:54
They weren't as big as Bruce Springsteen,
so I had a bit more control.
00:13:59
With jazz artists,
they got to be a little artier.
00:14:02
Like, this is a series of covers I did
for Bob James's label,
00:14:06
Tappan Zee Records,
00:14:07
and they were all single objects
that were blown up out of scale.
00:14:12
My favorite was always this matchbook.
00:14:16
And then, of course,
the monster illustration, Boston.
00:14:19
Six million copies, I think,
in the first month of sales.
00:14:23
It was quite something.
00:14:26
They wanted it to be something futuristic,
00:14:30
so we came up with this half-baked idea
that the Earth was blowing up
00:14:35
and all these spaceships were escaping.
00:14:38
Guitar-shaped spaceships.
00:14:40
And they left the planet Earth
and went up in the heavens.
00:14:43
[Boston's "More Than A Feeling" playing]
00:14:46
♪ When I hear that old song
They used to play ♪
00:14:50
[song stops abruptly]
00:14:51
The Boston cover is dumb.
00:14:54
I am still mystified by how something
like that really resonates in culture.
00:15:00
I mean, it predated Star Wars.
00:15:02
So we must have hit a zeitgeist
that was about to happen.
00:15:06
But when I die, it will say,
"Designed the Boston cover,"
00:15:10
and I've lived
with this horror ever since,
00:15:13
and I think it may wind up being true.
00:15:16
However, if nobody cared about the album,
that's where I did typography.
00:15:21
And that was what I liked doing most
because I was the artist,
00:15:25
I was the one that controlled
what these things looked like.
00:15:29
So, Charles Mingus, One and Two,
00:15:32
and he didn't care what was on the cover.
00:15:34
This was a reissue of a whole pile
of Yardbird songs,
00:15:38
and these things
I really, really loved making.
00:15:44
Over a period of four or five years,
00:15:47
the typography came forward
and the images moved to the background.
00:15:51
I had made this radical shift
00:15:54
and developed the way I would work
for the next 30 years.
00:15:59
I'd learned so much about typography,
and became known for it.
00:16:11
[Lupton] Paula was always
part of popular culture,
00:16:16
but bringing a unique
graphic design voice to that,
00:16:21
very much embodied
in her use of typography.
00:16:28
[Paula] Ideas come all kinds of ways.
00:16:32
I get my best ideas in taxicabs, you know,
like sitting in traffic, drooling.
00:16:40
I'm allowing my subconscious to take over,
00:16:45
so that I can free associate.
00:16:50
You have to be
in a state of play to design.
00:16:52
If you're not in a state of play,
you can't make anything.
00:17:07
It should really start
like almost with that bar,
00:17:10
like if you drop it down
about a sixteenth of an inch
00:17:13
and then, when you put "Pier"
on the end of it, it's really nice.
00:17:16
Mm-hmm.
00:17:17
This is an identity for Pier 55,
00:17:20
which is the park they're building
in the Hudson River.
00:17:24
It is going to have three theaters on it,
00:17:27
and the theaters are going to be
outdoor festival spaces.
00:17:31
We started working with these fives
00:17:33
and some of the fives are just made up
of geometric shapes
00:17:36
that come from the park itself.
00:17:39
For example, the forms come from
the amphitheater
00:17:43
and then they create the 55s.
00:17:46
This notion actually came from the fact
that the park sits up on these pillars.
00:17:51
So these are the original sketches.
00:17:52
Somewhere I knew
00:17:53
that I wanted this thing to feel
like it was on water or underwater.
00:17:57
Built these platforms
that this island's sitting on.
00:18:00
This is actually a more literal
translation of them here.
00:18:02
And then it started to abstract
and become open.
00:18:07
These are really good sketches.
00:18:08
[director chuckling]
00:18:12
Mostly what I design are identity systems.
00:18:18
They have to exist in lots, and lots,
and lots of ways.
00:18:26
I generally try to want to push something
as far as it can be pushed.
00:18:31
For me, that's the fun.
00:18:41
I've started trying to create
a process in the identities that I make,
00:18:45
where I go back and revisit them
in five or ten years,
00:18:47
'cause sometimes they need tweaking.
00:18:51
It's hard to make that a guess,
00:18:53
and so you want to design something
that can be adapted to its time.
00:18:58
I've redesigned the Public Theater logo
three times, and nobody even knows it.
00:19:02
I've tightened it up, moved it apart,
changed the font.
00:19:07
I've had, like, a love affair
with the Public Theater.
00:19:12
When Paula did
Bring in 'da Noise, Bring in 'da Funk,
00:19:15
it really signaled a paradigm shift,
a new moment for the Public Theater.
00:19:22
[tapping]
00:19:27
And I think what Paula did
00:19:28
was she figured out a way,
how to take what she saw on the stage
00:19:32
and turn it into ink on paper.
00:19:34
[tapping becomes faster]
00:19:37
The type in those posters,
from top to bottom, filled with words.
00:19:41
It's crazy, it's in your face,
it's just like New York!
00:19:51
[Wolfe] Noise Funk was everywhere.
00:19:54
It was aggressive, it was urban,
00:19:57
it was elegant, it was evocative.
00:19:59
And the Tony Award for Best Direction
of a Musical goes to....
00:20:03
Bring in 'da Noise, Bring in 'da Funk!
00:20:05
[cheering, applause]
00:20:07
Bring in 'da Noise, Bring in 'da Funk
really, really put her on the map.
00:20:12
It was everywhere, and it was, like,
"Holy Shit! This is really good."
00:20:20
[Paula] It was awful because everybody
began imitating it.
00:20:23
It was like New York City ate
the Public Theater's identity.
00:20:26
Literally, in a matter of three
to five years, it became the standard.
00:20:30
It just made her crazy.
00:20:31
She would be ranting around the office,
saying, "Can you believe they did this?"
00:20:36
[laughs]
00:20:37
I had to change the theater to...
not make it only that kind of typography.
00:20:44
I remember I made these very dark posters
that had serif typography,
00:20:49
just to do something opposite
to what I had done before.
00:20:52
And I showed them to George Wolfe,
and I was turning 50 at the time,
00:20:55
and he said, "Okay, Paula is turning 50.
00:20:58
Let's have a year
of depressing posters." [laughs]
00:21:00
[laughs]
00:21:02
I'm not sure... Did I say that?
00:21:04
She said I said that,
that's just framed bad.
00:21:11
Okay, we're having soup.
00:21:14
Soup with avocado.
00:21:15
[dog whines]
00:21:16
[both] Go away, Mimi!
00:21:17
-Watch it.
-[Paula] This is not for you.
00:21:22
It's bean soup.
00:21:23
[Seymour]
Oh, a different design this time.
00:21:25
Yeah, I put an extra country in.
00:21:27
Things aren't going so well in Spain.
00:21:29
-What, the economy?
-You can tell, look!
00:21:32
Oh! [laughs]
00:21:33
I thought you were telling me
actual real news.
00:21:36
Good doggy!
She's been amazingly well behaved.
00:21:40
Yeah, except for me who she attacks.
00:21:43
[both laughing]
00:21:43
The dog loves Paula and hates me.
00:21:47
That's not true. Mimi really likes
Seymour, but she jumps at him.
00:21:51
-She hugs me.
-Hugs you and she jumps on me.
00:21:53
And she jumps and bites him.
00:21:56
I learned how to pronounce
Seymour's last name in school.
00:21:59
I thought it was funny.
I thought it was a funny-sounding name.
00:22:02
Was it "Schwost," is it "Kwost"?
All of that.
00:22:05
But I thought "Seymour"
was worse than "Kwost."
00:22:09
[Lupton] The whole love story
between Paula and Seymour,
00:22:12
that's our Elizabeth Taylor
and Richard Burton tale.
00:22:16
Graphic designers love that story.
00:22:20
[Paula] Seymour was my design hero
when I was in art school.
00:22:23
He must have been 39, 40? I was 21.
00:22:27
Seymour was an illustrator,
but he's a sensational designer.
00:22:31
I thought his work was very funny.
Some of it was exceedingly political.
00:22:36
In the late '50s,
Seymour founded Push Pin Studios
00:22:40
with Milton Glaser and Ed Sorel.
00:22:43
They developed
a style of design and illustration
00:22:47
that combined pop colors,
wit and intellectual thinking.
00:22:56
It's where I really started to understand
that type had spirit
00:23:00
and did not have to be some clean,
mechanical-like thing
00:23:04
that was simply doing its job.
00:23:07
It could be this marvelous thing
to engage with.
00:23:15
Seymour has the studio above me.
00:23:17
It's a bigger studio,
and he makes more paintings.
00:23:20
He can wake up
and always seem to be able to work.
00:23:23
[director] You guys are kind of historic
as a couple.
00:23:26
Well, that may be,
but we don't really work together.
00:23:29
That was actually my first question.
00:23:31
-Never.
-Never. We can't collaborate.
00:23:38
Washington looks a little pale.
00:23:40
Well, it'll look more vibrant
when it gets a WA on it.
00:23:46
I don't think so.
00:23:48
[Paula] We can't collaborate.
00:23:49
He can't work on my stuff
and I can't work on his stuff.
00:23:52
I don't want to. [laughs]
00:23:54
That's why we're not apart.
00:23:56
[laughs] There you are.
00:23:59
-[Seymour] Throw a good one this time.
-[Paula] Okay.
00:24:03
[sighs]
00:24:04
I love leaving New York City.
00:24:06
You jinxed it.
00:24:08
Okay, here we go.
00:24:10
But I couldn't stay out of town that long,
I have to come back to town.
00:24:15
[both] Yay!
00:24:16
Otherwise, I won't have any ideas.
00:24:19
[traffic]
00:24:26
When I started designing
environmental graphics,
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it let me design in the physical world
00:24:31
and that was at a time when the most
interesting design had become digital.
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I was making large-scale lettering
on buildings to create a sense of place,
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as well as to get somebody
to navigate their way through it.
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Design exists beyond screens.
It has an impact in real life.
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[indistinct shouting]
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After Hurricane Sandy,
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the whole economy of Rockaway Beach
was devastated.
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The boardwalk was destroyed
and the beach was fenced off.
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So I was hired to create what I'd call
an emotional sign system.
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Beaches like the Rockaways invoke
a memory of a bygone era
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of wooden boardwalks and rollercoasters.
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It had to be
brought into the 21st century.
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While the boardwalks were destroyed,
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what the neighborhood still had
were the beaches.
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And that the beach looked unique
from every place that you entered it.
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If you entered it at 96th Street,
it looked different from 101st Street,
00:25:46
because the view is different.
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We created these large standing posters
with photographs
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that would help orient people
once they reached the beach.
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They helped emotionally connect
the community,
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while functioning as directional signage.
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There was so much pride from the signs
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that the city government made
this series of postcards
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so every town could have
their own picture of their own beach.
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You're getting your own icon,
your own logo,
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and it would give them identity.
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There's an emotional aspect to it.
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Design needs to take human behavior
into account.
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[people chanting]
Re-vote! Re-vote! Re-vote!
00:26:30
[Paula] An example of terrible design
would be the Palm Beach Ballot of 2001.
00:26:39
I actually did an article
on the Op-Ed page of the New York Times
00:26:42
where I made a little diagram that showed
why the ballot design was wrong.
00:26:49
[man on TV] For the woman who designed
Palm Beach County, Florida's ballot,
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life has changed.
00:26:53
I keep thinking it's a nightmare
00:26:55
and I'm going to wake up one day,
and it's gonna be gone.
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[Paula] It was a butterfly ballot.
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The list of the names broken
into two columns.
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The designer could not make
one long vertical list
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because the names would be too small,
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and in the area of Palm Beach County,
there are a lot of elderly people,
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and they wouldn't be able
to read small text.
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So she thought she was doing a service.
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In the first column, George Bush was first
and Al Gore was second.
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And then on the other side
was Pat Buchanan.
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She had the holes that you punched
in the center,
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except for the holes weren't
where you thought they were going to be.
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You assume that if the first hole
belonged to George Bush,
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that the second hole, right below it,
would belong to Al Gore.
00:27:46
But in fact, it belonged to Pat Buchanan,
because the holes were staggered.
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So in Palm Beach County,
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one of the biggest
Jewish residences in the world,
00:27:55
a big part of the population
voted for an anti-Semite.
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I can't go back and say,
00:28:01
"Well, you know, if I would have done
something else differently,
00:28:04
maybe the election
would have been different,"
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because you don't know.
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Absolutely.
Graphic Design threw an election.
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Right now, because I'm trying
to make an exhibit opening,
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I'm working really intensely.
00:28:26
Like, I'll typically start
around nine in the morning,
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and I can work till midnight
or one or two in the morning.
00:28:38
I used to paint to jazz
and I got sick of all my records.
00:28:41
So then I started playing
old movies on television.
00:28:45
I can do the dialogue right along with it.
It's sort of like singing while you work.
00:28:49
[TV and Paula]
"When a man's partner's killed,
00:28:51
he's supposed to do something about it."
00:28:54
All About Eve. Fantastic!
00:28:57
[TV and Paula] "Fasten your seat belts,
it's going to be a bumpy night."
00:29:03
The Women, that's really good,
it's really good.
00:29:05
Really good dialogue.
00:29:07
When anything I wear
doesn't please Steven...
00:29:09
[TV and Paula] "... I take it off!"
00:29:14
There were no artist models in my family.
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The family was very well educated.
00:29:20
All the women were schoolteachers.
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And my father was actually a mapmaker.
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He invented a measuring device
so that maps would be more accurate.
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When I was a little girl,
he taught me that maps were distorted,
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that they never accurately depict a place.
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My father actually thought art was stupid
and serious people became engineers.
00:30:02
[upbeat piano music playing]
00:30:25
[Lupton] Paula has created
a typographic language
00:30:29
that is popular, it's American,
it's New York,
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that makes sense to people.
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And it's part of everyday life.
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It's not an art form that is
in some other place.
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It's in the street,
it's on the shelf at the supermarket.
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Paula is the most influential
woman graphic designer on the planet.
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[Paula] I never thought about myself
as a feminist.
00:31:03
Yet, when I was working
at CBS Records in the '70s,
00:31:06
women in the design business
at that time were agents, they were reps.
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You'd sit there and think, "Oh, my God,
what are they going to do with me?
00:31:14
What am I going to do with them?"
00:31:18
It's quite wild when you see it firsthand.
00:31:20
All of a sudden, you turn around
and you go, "Oh, my God, that was sexism!"
00:31:24
You know, there it is.
00:31:25
And it's like any other -ism.
00:31:32
If I'm sitting with a new client,
I can see in the first glance
00:31:36
that he's wondering
why he's got this old lady.
00:31:41
I mean, I just thought,
"I'm a designer. Look at it."
00:31:47
Hi! Nice to meet you on the phone.
00:31:52
I got your materials
that I've been looking at.
00:31:55
What are you looking to do now?
00:31:59
I have an overall plan
about how I'd approach work.
00:32:04
Some of it is strategic
and some of it is intuitive.
00:32:07
Are you promoting the institution
or are you promoting the show?
00:32:11
The strategic part
is absorbing information from the client.
00:32:15
How many plays do you put on in a season?
00:32:19
And do you have other kinds of festivals,
or smaller programs,
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or things like under the radar, or...?
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I want to understand
why they look the way they look.
00:32:30
What's interesting is you seem,
from what I see here,
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to be a little bit all over the map.
00:32:36
I think you should develop
a visual language.
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That's what we did
with The Public and Atlantic.
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You don't need
to see the logo to know what it is.
00:32:45
You should be as powerful,
visible, understandable,
00:32:49
recognizable as anything in town.
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You're not changing somebody.
00:32:56
You're making them a more perfect vision
of where they started.
00:33:00
So the job is to traverse
these different roads
00:33:04
and try to get either an individual,
a group of people,
00:33:06
or a whole corporation to be able to see.
00:33:09
[applause]
00:33:14
[Paula] In 1998, Citibank was merging
with Travelers Insurance Company.
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They wanted a logo
that reflected the merger
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and they wanted to launch it
in the newspaper
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three weeks after hiring us to do it.
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Travelers Insurance Company
had a red umbrella.
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Citibank had type
that was in italic form.
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It took only a moment of time
to design the logo.
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There's a T.
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The bottom of a lowercase T
has a little hook on the bottom.
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It's a straight line.
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If you put an arc on the top,
that's an umbrella.
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There are two Is in Citi.
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It means the edge of the arc
can line up with the two Is.
00:33:55
There were a million meetings
trying to get by 'em.
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"What if you do it this way, or that way?
00:34:00
Show it to me on stationery,
show it to me on a card.
00:34:02
It's got to be red on top
and blue on the bottom.
00:34:05
What do you do with the blue wave?
Is it something you use in retail?
00:34:07
What if you put that
back on the credit card?"
00:34:09
Those were all the things
that were being worked out
00:34:12
for nearly, I think, two years
before the thing launched.
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The design of the logo is never really
the hard part of the job.
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It's persuading
a million people to use it.
00:34:33
So this is a diagram of a meeting.
00:34:36
You are giving a presentation.
00:34:39
This line is the line of the reasonable
level of expectation that everyone has
00:34:45
when you walk into the room.
00:34:47
I got to say that, to my surprise,
I very much like the black and white.
00:34:52
[Paula] You begin to present,
00:34:54
and you come above
the reasonable level of expectation.
00:34:57
Everybody gets enthusiastic,
people begin to start asking questions.
00:35:01
...a whole extra outline, right?
The others only have three.
00:35:07
And about right here,
00:35:09
you've reached the height
of the appreciation
00:35:12
that you're gonna get
for this presentation.
00:35:15
You will be putting them
on top of images where they create labels.
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So it's like a label
smacked over a photograph.
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That's the... And we have...
The buses are behind you.
00:35:27
And at this point,
00:35:29
somebody's going to make
a rebuttal to your presentation.
00:35:32
The contrast between the two
is more fun for me here than it is here,
00:35:39
because it's just...
I feel the separation more.
00:35:42
This, I kind of don't notice the contrast.
00:35:46
[Paula] You're going to sink a little bit
below that line of expectation.
00:35:50
You grab it back
and you make some concessions.
00:35:53
You know,
I may have to pull this down a bit.
00:35:56
Maybe it just has to touch it.
00:35:58
The thing is that the horizontal read
is always better.
00:36:02
Yes, see these are great,
the horizontal pops. I love that.
00:36:06
[Paula] And you get up to about here.
00:36:08
And at this point, this is as high
as you're ever gonna get.
00:36:13
It's not as high as here, but it's good.
00:36:16
Will this actually play in this color?
00:36:19
-[Paula] What, you don't think--
-I mean, I love it.
00:36:22
But I'm worried
you're going to change it
00:36:23
when you actually do it.
00:36:25
No, I wanted that.
00:36:26
Just to say, that's the thing
I'm most concerned about.
00:36:29
I just think it needs to be larger.
00:36:32
The meeting must end here,
00:36:33
because what will happen
is a counter-rebuttal to your offer,
00:36:36
it will go down
below the reasonable level of expectation,
00:36:40
and then come back only nearly above it
00:36:43
and will continue on,
until you reach sudden death.
00:36:47
They want proof that this is really,
really gonna work.
00:36:51
The problem is there isn't proof.
00:36:54
It's how do people see and perceive
and accept things.
00:36:58
I feel like, as usual,
once I sit with them for a while,
00:37:01
they really start to shout
in a very specific way
00:37:05
and it just feels like, of course,
this is The Public.
00:37:07
Of course, it's grabbing the attention
that Shakespeare in the Park always does.
00:37:10
-I think they're awesome.
-Fantastic.
00:37:12
It's going to be a black summer.
00:37:14
[laughter]
00:37:16
-All right. Bye.
-Good to see you.
00:37:18
-Terrific. Good work. Thank you.
-Thanks.
00:37:21
-[Patrick] Perfect.
-Thank you.
00:37:33
[Paula] I notice it more and more
as I get older.
00:37:36
How important
the act of making stuff is to me.
00:37:45
My father saw two of the paintings I did
before he died.
00:37:51
I was sort of embarrassed to show him,
00:37:52
because, of course,
it's totally inaccurate.
00:37:56
And I brought him in
and showed him the map
00:37:58
and I said, "I guess you think I'm crazy,"
00:38:00
and he said,
"No, I never did anything that creative."
00:38:08
[funky music playing]
00:38:24
There's a moment, and it's in every job.
00:38:27
It's like this incredible elation
and high.
00:38:35
It's like we made magic for a moment.
00:38:55
-How you doing, sweetheart?
-I'm standing! My feet don't hurt yet.
00:39:01
[Bierut] Paula's inexhaustible.
00:39:04
Forty-plus years of continuous effort.
00:39:08
There's a virtuosity to that.
00:39:22
[Paula] I'm driven by the hope
that I haven't made my best work yet.
00:39:29
Making stuff is the heart of everything.
00:39:36
That drive never goes away.
00:39:39
What can I make next?
00:39:42
[upbeat music playing]
