Paula Scher Quotes

It's through mistakes that you actually can grow. You have to get bad in order to get good.

My work is play. And I play when I design. I even looked it up in the dictionary, to make sure that I actually do that, and the definition of “play,” number one, was “engaging in a childlike activity or endeavor,” and number two was “gambling.” And I realize I do both when I’m designing.

It took me a few seconds to draw it, but it took me 34 years to learn how to draw it in a few seconds.

The best way to accomplish serious design ... is to be totally and completely unqualified for the job.

Words have meaning, type has spirit.

Find out what the next thing is that you can push, that you can invent, that you can be ignorant about, that you can be arrogant about, that you can fail with, and that you can be a fool with. Because in the end, that's how you grow.

Be culturally literate, because if you don't have any understanding of the world you live in and the culture you live in, you're not going to express anything to anybody else.

The goal of design is to raise the expectation of what design can be

The job of the designer is to make things understandable, usable, accessible, enjoyable... important to a public, that involves the public.

The work needs to get out of your head and on to the table, and it needs to be done from the heart.

If I get up every day with the optimism that I have the capacity for growth, then that’s success for me.

I don't think of design as a job. I think of it as - and I hate to use this term for it - more of a calling. If you're just doing it because it's a nice job and you want to go home and do something else, then don't do it, because nobody needs what you're going to make.

Your name is Windows. Why are you a flag?

Design is the art of planning, and it is the art of making things possible.

Creativity isn't about the advantage or disadvantage of a specific time or culture. Creativity is something that comes internally from a human being having a genuine mistrust of rules. And that may be the constant. It's almost like there's some rebellion in it.

Great design is serious, not solemn

Identities are the beginning of everything. They are how something is recognized and understood. What could be better than that?

Beige is the color of indecision.

Whatever you design[/make/build], use it to raise the expectations of what can be achieved

I love the big scale and immediate impact of posters. They're my favourite things to design.

Having no purpose is the function of art, so somebody else can look at it and ask a question. Design is different - you're supposed to understand what's going on. You can be delighted by it, intrigued by it, but you're supposed to know it's a hot dog stand.

Helvetica is the font of the Vietnam War.

Art has no purpose. It exists for its own sake.

All the little risks I took were sort of like all the apartments I had moved into: I was finding the right spot.

You need to be able to ride past the technology by understanding what it can do, who you are, and where you want to take it. You don't want technology to lead you; you want to lead it, but it's very hard to do that when you're in the middle of it.

I think that the ability of people to accept new things is growing, and that's good for all of us.

Planning is design. As a designer what I tend to do, and what's different from being a painter, is that I interact with other people, and the people have things they need to have happen.

What you do is look at yourself and find your own way to address the fact that the times have changed and that you have to pay attention. You can't be a designer and say, "Oh, this is timeless".

I think design, to a degree, is more generous and more humanistic than art, though great art can move us more.

Identity means "how do I get known? How do I expressmyself?" and that's generally what I'm helping somebody do. It may be three dimensional, it may be a public space, it may involve government,it may involve cultural institutions, it may involve corporations, it may involve editorial publications - it can be anything, really.

All maps are distorted, they are not literal fact.

I think that it's a great time to be a designer.

When I paint I do a different thing than when I design. But both involve aesthetics, both involve thought, both involve planning.

To me what really matters is that it shouldn't matter to you what day of the week it is.

Creativity has to do with what came before you immediately, not what came before you a long time ago.

It could be that going to work is better than being home. But you should never think of days as the weekend. It should all be the same, it should all be stuff you want to do. And when it isn't then you have to change it, and you have to think about how you change it.

Stefan Sagmeister says that nobody innovates past forty-five, but I think he's wrong. I want to keep doing it.

I find that I'm at my least creative point when I am doing something that I've done in repetition and I know all the rules - I never break the rules because I know them.

I wasn't a very good illustrator so I became a designer.

Marketing implies that you want a public to relate to your product - if it's a product - in a way that makes them want to use it. That is only good or evil in relationship to what the product actually does.

New Zealand looks like the future to me

Your work gets destroyed by dumb people and it gets enhanced by smart people and it really doesn't have anything to do with marketing.

What happens is people - especially, I think, audiences in the United States - people confront new things a little bit afraid. It's like when you're a kid and your mother puts something on your plate you never ate before. I think that American audiences are very much like that, and when they can accept something new they can accept the next new thing, it's incredible. And what happens is that their expectation of what things should be is elevated, and that's really terrific for us.

Design exists to serve some purpose.

I don't want being a woman to be a factor, or being short to bea factor, or being Jewish to be a factor, or anything that makes you outside some design "norm"that I don't understand anyway. That makes me nervous.

Design always has a purpose, art has no purpose. That's really the difference between them. Do I think one is better than the other? Absolutely not. I think they both fulfill functions.

Design really can be anything.

What makes me say "wow" is usually something I haven't encountered, in a new way... something I haven't encountered before or something I have encountered that I see in a new way.

I don't want people to think about my age. Notbecause I don't want them to know my age, I just don't want them to think about it, I don't want itto be a factor.

I do different things. I'm a designer. I'm a painter.