Clarksville, TN – The Austin Peay State University Department of Art + Design, with support from the APSU Center of Excellence for the Creative Arts, is pleased to host world-renowned graphic designer Paula Scher to continue an incredible 2020-21 CECA Visiting Artist Speaker Series season.
“Paula Scher is one of the most influential graphic designers in the world,” said Michael Dickins, chair of the CECA Visiting Artist Speaker Committee. “I cannot express the breadth of influence that Scher has on not just the graphic design community, but on American popular culture. Iconic, smart, and accessible, her images have entered into the American vernacular.
Scher’s lecture will be at 6:00pm Tuesday, March 2nd, 2021 via Zoom. Registration is required and is available at http://bit.ly/PaulaScherAPSU.
The lecture is free and open to the public.
‘Master conjurer of the instantly familiar’
Described as the “master conjurer of the instantly familiar,” Scher straddles the line between pop culture and fine art in her work.
She has been a partner in the New York office of Pentagram since 1991. She began her career as an art director in the 1970s and early ’80s when her eclectic approach to typography became highly influential.
In the mid-1990s her landmark identity for The Public Theater fused high and low into a wholly new symbology for cultural institutions, and her recent architectural collaborations have reimagined the urban landscape as a dynamic environment of dimensional graphic design. Her graphic identities for Citibank and Tiffany & Co. have become case studies for the contemporary regeneration of American brands.
Scher has developed identity and branding systems, promotional materials, environmental graphics, packaging, and publication designs for a broad range of clients that includes, among others, Bloomberg, Microsoft, Bausch + Lomb, Coca-Cola, Shake Shack, Perry Ellis, the Museum of Modern Art, the Sundance Institute, the High Line, Jazz at Lincoln Center, the Metropolitan Opera, the New York City Ballet, the New York Philharmonic, the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, the New 42nd Street, the New York Botanical Garden, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Robin Hood Foundation and the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation.
In 1996 Scher’s widely imitated identity for The Public Theater won the coveted Beacon Award for integrated corporate design strategy. She has served on the board of directors of The Public Theater and is a frequent design contributor to The New York Times, GQ, and other publications. She served on the Public Design Commission of the City of New York from 2006 to 2015.
During her career, Scher has been the recipient of hundreds of industry honors and awards. In 1998 she was named to the Art Directors Club Hall of Fame, and in 2000 she received the Chrysler Award for Innovation in Design. She has served on the national board of the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) and was president of its New York Chapter from 1998 to 2000.
In 2001 she was awarded the profession’s highest honor, the AIGA Medal, in recognition of her distinguished achievements and contributions to the field, and in 2006 she was awarded the Type Directors Club Medal, the first woman to receive the prize.
In 2012 she was honored with the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s Design Collab Award, in 2013 she received the National Design Award for Communication Design, presented by the Cooper-Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, and in 2019 she was named an SEGD Fellow. Scher has been a member of the Alliance Graphique Internationale (AGI) since 1993 and served as its president from 2009 to 2012.
For more on Scher and her work, visit https://www.pentagram.com/about/paula-scher.
CECA’s Visiting Speaker Series draws world-class talent
“APSU’s CECA Visiting Speaker Series brings world-renowned artists and designers to Clarksville every year,” Dickins said. “This year, of course, has been different as all of our talks have moved to Zoom. Though this is not our typical format for our guest lectures, it has allowed us to reach a much wider audience. Having an artist like Scher as part of this year’s lineup brings people from all over the country to join us at APSU. We’re extremely excited for APSU to host Scher as part of our renowned speaker series.”
For more on this lecture, contact Dickins at dickinsm@apsu.edu.
For future CECA Visiting Artist Speaker Series events, visit https://www.apsu.edu/art-design/exhibitions-speakers/visiting-artists.php.
All events are free and open to the public.
