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A Matter of Scale

In the City that Never Sleeps

As a young designer in New York City, in the early 1970s, I was always inspired by strong urban graphics: complicated graffiti that completely covered subway cars; a painted cigarette advertisement on the side of a building on Eighth Avenue where the giant pack displaying extended cigarettes conformed to the shape of the building; a heroic sign for Pepsi-Cola that still commands attention on the East River when viewed from the FDR Drive in Manhattan.

(Fortunately, the latter has been declared a landmark.) These icons were individually formalistically beautiful, but they also held attention in the world’s most competitive landscape, and I loved their power.

The New 42nd Street Studios, New York. At this rehearsal studio for near Times Square, superscale graphics direct performers through the building. With architect Charles Platt. (Photo: Robert Polidori)

In the early 90s, when I began designing cultural identities for New York City institutions, my first project was for the American Museum of Natural History.

I designed a flagpole banner system with beautiful illustrative icons depicting each division of science, coupled with elegant seriffed typography. The banners would rim the two-square-block street front of the museum. They were seven feet high and looked spectacular when they were hanging on the wall inside Pentagram. But the minute they hit the street (Central Park West between 77th and 79th and Columbus Avenue) they disappeared. The traffic, energy, congestion, complication and bombardment of media and humanity that constitutes New York City simply ate them alive.

When I began my work for the Public Theater, I was determined not to let the city wipe me out again. The graphic work, mainly posters that were pasted on barricades all over Manhattan, became bigger, bolder, louder and completely at home and visible on the streets of New York City. They existed as a part of the vernacular of New York City. They belonged there.

Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh. The signage uses scale and materials in a humorous and direct manner that is appreciated by kids. With Koning Eizenberg Architecture. (Photo: Peter Mauss/Esto)

In the late 90s, when I began creating environmental graphics for theatres or corporate environments in New York City and other places, I started treating the three-dimensional spaces as if they were sculptural posters, enormous packages that contained information, with the human functioning as the navigator through iconic, large-scale typographic spaces.

The combination of the scale, spirit and message creates a visual landscape that can be informative, arresting, witty and engaging. But I confess that a certain school of architects doesn’t approve of this work. Most architects will tell you that ‘the building is the sign,’ and they don’t want some crude, populist graphic designer applying information that marrs their pure formalistic creation. That’s sad, and not very generous to the public.

New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC) Lucent Technologies Center for Arts Education, Newark (opposite above). This old rectory building was converted into a high school for the performing arts. The building was completely covered in typography. (Photo: Peter Mauss/Esto)

Most people who use public spaces view the building as the building, and the sign as the sign. When they are allowed to become integrated, as one seamless entity conveying a specific spirit for a specific purpose, then the whole environment can establish a total identity that resonates with its public. I’ve been fortunate enough, recently, to work with a number of architects who really get it. And these collaborations have become my most exciting and gratifying projects ever. I look forward to many more.

Paula Scher, New York, 2006