I enjoyed Paula Scher’s interview in the movie Helvetica, so I decided to watch her artist series clip. I don’t know what it is about her, but I just enjoy listening to her talk about her career; I just feel like I have a strong connection to her. She seems to have strong ties with the music industry; she mentions that she has made record covers and she also discusses within the clip her thought process surrounding the Jazz at Lincoln Center signage. She seems to be at ease while working too. She actually discusses this in the clip. She can create a logo in a few seconds, but for her, those few seconds can be attributed to 30 years of training, skill, and knowledge. So in the end, the logo actually took 30 years plus a few seconds to design, which is very true in my opinion. Our knowledge is constantly being built and re-added to old knowledge.
I also enjoyed how she mentioned working with her hands. When the first computers came out, she found it very awkward to type letters because she was trained to draw them. Drawing type was very different as well, but she had trouble scratching letters in her younger days, so her professor suggested that she just draw type. I was pleased to hear that she still paints on the weekends. I really liked her painting of the globe. She uses typography for structure, but the type isn’t very structured or neat at all. It kind of reminds me of folk art.
I’m a big printmaking fan. One of my undergraduate art history classes was on printmaking, so I got to be around it a lot that semester. Her artist series video had a slideshow constantly going of her poster work. It was interesting how I could find her influences in a ton of different periods within her work, from Toulouse-Lautrec to Communist propaganda posters. Anyway, I wouldn’t mind obtaining one of her posters. I hope to have a wide range of prints one day!