For my Typography project I had to research a Typography practitioner, the Practitioner which I picked out to research was Paula Scher.
Paula Scher is a graphic designer as well as an artist who specializes in Typography. She is part of one of the biggest design agencies in New York, Pentagram. She also and her own design firm aptly named Koppel and Scher.
Scher is well-known for her most recent project, a series of Typographic maps.
What I like about Scher is her attention to detail. In all her recent work she very carefully pieces together her composition. Like in her "maps", the work has been very carefully analysed and must have taken her months to do yet the wording flows in such a way to make you think that it is free and full of expression. The series also has bursting, vibrant colour creating a very positive, warm atmosphere.
Her Typographic maps show the whole world with each city, town and village's name written
down in a very bold, white type. This work is also a perfect example of typographical hierarchy, with the country names the boldest and clearest, the towns and villages names smallest and not as easy to read. Once the type reaches the sea, the forms of the words and sentences become very free-flowing to give the illusion of movement.I also enjoy how she hasn't just created a map, she has also represented where certain important events started like the eye of the Tsunami that formed near Sri-lanka. She has made the form of the words build the form of the eye of the storm and it actually says in the center "eye of tsunami". In a way she has created a documentation of history as well as a map. Its an image that literally represents the world, its landmarks and cities. I love this idea, that combined with the vibrant colour leaves you with a feeling of hope and happiness.
I also notice that each continent had a different pallet of colours and I wasn't sure what that would represent. Whether it represented a divide in the nations or just a representation of the different cultures I couldn't decide but either way it is beautiful and showed me something that I had never seen before. It also gave me a different view on typography as I had previously thought it boring, these images completely changed my perspective.Paula Scher has also done many other things with Pentagram that have been interesting, like her posters.
This is one of my favourite posters of Scher's. This is because I like the subtle colour, the shape of the lettering and the way that she has made the words out of other words and tiny letters. I am seeing a pattern in her work being that she keeps making images out of letter forms and words. I do think that this concept is interesting because it is suggesting that everything is made of words, which in a way it is because humans have words for everything and without that name it would be nothing, you would not be able identify it. So I do think that this is an important point to have in mind when looking at her work. Another reason I like this poster is because of what it repesents, it says "art is.." and doesnt finish the sentence, leaving the viewer to make up his/her mind on what art is. Many people interperate art in different ways and some people would say that typography isnt art. I think that Scher tries to prove these people wrong because all her pieces of typographical work look like art to me.Some of her other posters have had a different styling to them, but they still totally revolve around type.
These are posters that she did with Pentagram which seem cut-out and are clearly focused towards a younger audience. She has used lots of different typefaces and tries to get as much information onto the page as possible on one, yet keeps the information relatively simple on the other, even though they are advertising the same thing.They both have a similar colour scheme, yellow and black, and use similar typefaces.
No comments:
Post a Comment