Graphic Design Theory : Readings From the Field

Building on Success | 87

for More than thIrty years paula scher has created powerful graphIc desIgn.
she Is known for her expressIve use of typography, an approach that she Began
to develop In the 1970s, early In her career. During this period Scher designed covers for
cbs and Atlantic Records. In 1991 she became the first female partner at Pentagram, New York. Despite this
milestone, Scher emphatically does not consider herself a feminist. In fact, Scher’s pragmatic streak tends to
veer away from the more theoretical and political side of the profession. The essay below was written in
1989, a period in which clashes between form and content, modernism and postmodernism, began to heat
up. Appropriately, her essay is not a complex intellectual exploration but states her own personal theory of
creativity and maturation. Scher reminds us of the core of all of our work: the creative act itself.

One morning, my snotty twenty-two-year-old assistant danced into the

studio and informed me that he went to the opening of some graphic design

competition and I only had one piece in the show.

“Was it a good show?” I asked. “Yeah, it was okay,” he said. “There was a

lot of work from a guy in Iowa who sort of looks like Duffy Design.”

I harrumphed and muttered, “Too much style and no substance.”

I’ve been muttering “too much style and no substance” frequently for the

past several years. I love muttering it and I hear all kinds of people I respect

and admire mutter it. Our great designer “institutions” mutter it a lot. I’ve

noticed that it’s usually muttered in relation to designers who are younger

than the mutterer. “Too much style and no substance” is often coupled with

“a flash in the pan” as a way of describing hot young designers who get more

than one piece in a design show.

What a wonderful way to demean youth! “Too much style” helps us

conceal that nagging inkling we have that our own work may be out of style,

and “no substance” convinces us that our potentially dated work is somehow

more meaningful, rendering style irrelevant. Sometimes, it is even true.

But what all this muttering denies is the great excitement in finding and

creating style, that thrill in putting the pieces together in a way that looks new

and fresh, if not to the design community at large, then at least to ourselves.

the dark In the

MIddle of the staIrs

paula scher | 1989