Paula Scher

Paula Scher is  a pioneering American graphic designer. Her career has involved designing various projects for many different companies. Some of her most notable accreditations include her work for CBS Records where she designed around 150 album covers a year, for which she received 4 Grammy nominations. 

Much of her career has focused on the development of typography, helping to produce brand identities. She has worked closely with the Public Theater which lead to the development of graphic design in the theatre industry. Within this project her graphic work stemmed from typography inspired by graffiti and street art. Scher has designed logos for many major brands, ranging from Windows 8 and Citi Bank, before moving on to designing artistic exhibitions.

I am particularly intrigued by Scher's murals created for the Queens Metropolitan Campus in New York. The two murals  cover about 740 square metres and project Scher’s take on a map of New York around the room. This involves the misspelling and misidentification of locations  to represent Scher learning geography along with the students.  The concept behind the murals  was to combine painting with environmental design to produce a feeling of the viewer being   engulfed into the room, and for that instant perspectives are skewed.  In the words of Scher: “The viewer can recognise places and roads and even locate themselves within the map. They are ‘there,’ and then, again, they are not.”

I took inspiration my Scher's murals and 'MAPS' project and designed my own map. The basis of many of her projects involves the drawing of a map from memory and so I started painting a basic map of Manchester from memory. I then added more detail but due to it being my take on a map of Manchester it is not that accurate, much like Scher's misspelling and misidentification of locations. I loosely followed a similar colour scheme to Scher's as well as a similar layout, such as different shades depending on the size of the road and a yellow line to represent the Metrolink. I decided to paint this piece not only because that is the method Scher chose for her original pieces but also because it links to the maps being personal. However if I were to produce another map I would think about planning the map more to make it neater, although I did enjoy the experience of editing the piece as I went along.