Hospitality Design - June/July 2021 - 123

the rounds with her portfolio, visiting enterprises such as Push Pin
Studios, where Seymour Chwast (her future husband) and Milton
Glaser were among the founders. Once she moved to the city, Scher's
early years there were instrumental and varied: She designed
children's books at Random House, and even wrote one of her
own, The Brownstone, illustrated by cartoonist Stan Mack. At CBS
Records, she dreamt up ads for Billboard magazine and then headed
to Atlantic Records, creating album covers for the likes of Charles
Mingus and John Prine before returning to CBS to do the same as
East Coast art director.
" I didn't realize what a terrifi c job I had. I was always working. I was
The posters for New York's Public Theater
2020-2021 season use stencil typography
very productive. But I didn't know until many years later that my early
existence as a graphic designer was highly unusual and not replicable, "
Scher admits. By the early 1980s, she knew it was time to move on. " The
record industry had gone from being wild and crazy and wealthy to
austere. But the worst thing was CDs. That meant my work shrunk, and
not only did it shrink, but it went behind plastic. "
Forming what would become the studio Koppel & Scher, she
launched a relationship-centered magazine for Time Inc. called Together
with editorial designer Terry Koppel (a fellow Tyler graduate), and
worked with brands like Blue Note Records and Swatch. In the early
1990s, Pentagram came calling, and Scher became the company's fi rst
female partner. (The fi rm now counts six women as partners between
its New York and London offi ces.)
Since then, Scher has developed identity and branding systems,
The Mental Health Coalition's brand identity is centered
on the concept of a square peg in a round hole
promotional materials, environmental graphics, and packaging
designs for myriad clients, including the New York City Ballet,
Shake Shack, Bloomberg, the Sundance Institute, and the New
Jersey Performing Arts Center. One of her most pivotal relationships
is with the Public Theater in New York, which is documented in
her monograph, 25 Years at The Public: A Love Story, published at the
outset of the pandemic.
The book recounts Scher's journey of fi nding the voice for the Public
Theater, from conceiving the widely popular Bring in 'Da Noise, Bring in
'Da Funk poster-designed in a street art style with big typography over
The branding for the National Women's History Museum
in Alexandria, Virginia features a folded " W " symbol
a photo of star and choreographer Savion Glover-that were imitated
aſt er the show ended up on Broadway (and lost their connection to
the Public Theater) to pulling back to focus more on the theater itself
than the individual shows. " The Public Theater is not Broadway. It's a
place that has a membership. They have a million programs. " Despite
winning awards for those pieces, " I realized I was not doing the job I
thought I should be doing for the Public Theater, and it took me about 16
years to understand and correct it. "
Scher has also taught at New York's School of Visual Arts for 37
years, and this fall will introduce the scholarship-based, diversitypromoting,
one-year-long Pentagram Portfolio Program open to
students and recent graduates of City College of New York's electronic
design and multimedia program. Held at Pentagram's offi ce, classes will
be led by Scher along with Emily Oberman and Natasha Jen, fellow
partners at the fi rm.
Still, Scher fi nds time to paint her beloved large-scale, detailed
maps and clamors to work on new kinds of projects, because the " true
breakthrough comes in being a litt le bit ignorant, " she says, " where you
might ask a question that may be an unusual way of seeing something. "
For Scher, who has sometimes felt like a misfi t, it's another way of
rebelling against " some pre-existing belief of what you're supposed to
be. From the beginning, I have tried to defy expectations. "
" How Are You, Really? " is a digital storytelling platform designed
for the Mental Health Coalition that encourages conversations
Listen to more on HD's What I've Learned podcast
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