The Conceptual Artist

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This is part one of a three-part post about Paula Scher’s Citigroup Logo Story

Everybody who’s into graphic design knows about Paula Scher’s famous Citigroup sketch story. Or, at least, should.

In any case, for those of you who have been living under a rock, the story is about how Paula Scher, the undisputed goddess of graphic design, sketched a logo for Citigroup on a napkin and got paid 1.5 million US dollars for it.

It’s also about how she did all that in just a few seconds. Or, as she brilliantly (and truthfully) put it: “a few seconds and 34 years” (cue the mic drop sound here, please).

Here’s the thing, though: has anyone ever heard this story coming from her? Not the “few seconds and 34 years” part.

That part can be seen in the video below, in case you want to check it out. She did say it (starts at 3’40”).

 
 

I mean, the “1.5 million-dollars-for-a-sketch” part. Has anyone ever heard that part coming from Paula herself?

Or from the folks at Pentagram, the design studio Mrs. Scher is a partner in? Or even from Citibank execs? I know I haven’t. So, I did what most people would. I did my due diligence. I did my homework. I went after that piece of information. And in the end, came out defeated. I couldn’t find it for the life of me.

Here are some of the words I typed during my research, and the number of results I found.

“Paula + Scher + Citi + Sketch”: About 927,000 results
“Paula + Scher + Citibank + Sketch”: About 112,000 results
“Paula + Scher + Citigroup + Sketch”: About 175,000 results
“Paula + Scher + Citi + Logo”: About 21,700 results
“Paula + Scher + Citibank”: About 97,600 results

Obviously, I didn’t go deeper than three pages in on each search (that’s my rule of thumb. It’s like stalking someone on Instagram: three scrolls is the max. ;o)).
So, in actuality, I really only went over a total of 15 pages of Google results. That’s good enough for me.

To be clear: I’m not saying that part of the story is not true. Or that it never happened. I hope it did happen.
In fact, I hope it was more than 1.5 million USD!

But since I couldn’t find a single article or video coming from the parties involved that could corroborate that narrative, for all intents and purposes, from this point forward, every time I bring that part of the story up, I’ll do so while deliberately assigning an urban legend quality to it (plus, let’s face it: urban legends are awesome!).

Ok, moving on.

During my quest to see if the whole “1.5 million USD for a sketch” anecdote checked out, I ended up discovering a bunch of far more interesting things about Mrs. Scher’s career and opinions.

For example, I got to learn about her (super refreshing and incredibly interesting) view on the dangers of success and the importance of staving off complacency.

“I don’t think that success leads you anywhere, because when you’re successful, you tend to repeat those things that you already know how to do and they become terrible crutches. Designers, as they’re producing and making things, cannot rely on past successes, because that is the path to mediocrity. If you make what is ALREADY PERCEIVED AS GOOD, by definition you’re mediocre”, she told ‘OnCreativity’, an ongoing series of short, informal interviews, run by Oregon-based creative studio / magazine Plazm5.

Another thing I learned was that in 1998, she was inducted to The Art Directors Club Hall of Fame, joining other design giants such as:

·       Milton Glaser (who invented the “I Heart NY” logo)
·       Bill Bernbach (the “B” in DDB Worldwide, the advertising behemoth)
·       Lee Clow (the genius behind Apple’s game changing “1984” commercial)
·       Dan Wieden (the father of Nike’s “Just Do It” slogan)
·       Jim Henson (creator of “The Muppets”)

Also keeping her company in the Hall are other somewhat obscure names you might have heard of, like Walt Disney, Andy Warhol, Annie Leibovitz and Issey Miyake. ;o)

 
 

What struck me was not the fact that she was in the Hall. It would be just plain criminal if she weren’t.

What caught my eye was the fact that, of all these names I just dropped, she’s the ONLY ONE who was praised for her ability to come up with concepts.

Here’s an excerpt of her full description in the ADC Hall of Fame.

“Paula Scher plunged into the New York design world in the early 1970s (…)
As a student, Scher avoided graphic design because she lacked the necessary “neatness skills” (…)
She didn’t draw well either (…) but she discovered what she could do: COME UP WITH CONCEPTS and illustrate them with type. (…)
In 1991, Scher became a partner in the New York office of Pentagram. (…)
The years at Pentagram have allowed Scher to sharpen her typographic wit and her knack for CONCEPTUAL SOLUTIONS into a powerful approach to identity and branding”.

Coincidence or not, that’s EXACTLY what Curt Cloninger, author of the book “Hot-Wiring Your Creative Process: Strategies for Print and New Media Designers”, called Scher’s logo proposal for the newly formed Citigroup – a conceptual solution (we’ll discuss the logo in more details in the second part of this post).

 
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“I thought graphic design was about being neat. (...) But I found out that it wasn’t about that.
It was about IDEAS.”
— Paula Scher
 

All in all, Mrs. Scher has been leaving her mark in the world of design for half a century now.

In 2017, during her talk at “beyondtellerrand”, a design and web development conference, in Berlin, she spoke to the audience about how her career has evolved throughout almost five decades. You can listen to the full version of her talk here.

“In the ‘70s, I was essentially a conceptual art director. (…)
In the ‘80s, I think I was a postmodernist. (…)
In the ‘90s, I was a typographic expressionist. (…)
Then by the 2000 period, I became a minimalist. (…)
Now, in 2010, I would call myself, in this decade, fairly much a visual language designer, which is creating components that collectively you recognize something.
I could not have possibly been working without changing, without adapting to stuff.
It’s not that I change the basic core of who I am, but I did change the way I worked”.

She’s right.

At her core, Mrs. Scher is still that same conceptual artist from the 70s. The same person who discovered – while still in school – that design isn’t about drawing. It isn’t about illustrating. It’s not even about learning how to sketch. It’s about something else. Or, in her own words:

“In the second semester of my sophomore year though, I took a course called Graphic Design! I didn’t know what it was - I thought it was about being neat (…) But I found out that graphic design wasn’t about that, it was about ideas.”

We couldn’t agree more Mrs. Scher.

 

 

Sources

1. ADC Hall of Fame http://adcglobal.org/hall-of-fame/paula-scher/
2. Madame Architec https://www.madamearchitect.org/interviews/2020/7/16/paula-scher
3. Eye Magazine http://www.eyemagazine.com/feature/article/reputations-paula-scher
4. Cloninger, C. (2007). Hot-Wiring Your Creative Process: Strategies for Print and New Media Designers. Berkeley, CA: New Riders, p.38.
5. On Creativity https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foeV4ZML55s
6. Fast Company: https://www.fastcompany.com/57935/wordsmith
7. https://www.nytimes.com/1998/04/07/news/citicorp-and-travelers-plan-to-merge-in-record-70-billion-deal-a-new-no.html
8. Clever Podcast https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrBTLw1yPBk
9. Design Interview 1Q: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ddshhUa_VQ
10. Abstract Paula Scher Episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCfBYE97rFk
11. https://www.6sqft.com/interview-paula-scher-on-designing-the-brands-of-new-yorks-most-beloved-institutions/
12. beyondtellerrand https://beyondtellerrand.com/events/berlin-2017/speakers/paula-scher

Lotus Flower

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More than a T-shirt design: an invitation to be kind and generous with one another. Without seeking anything in return.

布施的人有福, 行善的人快樂
(Pīnyīn: Bùshī de rén yǒufú，Xíngshàn de rén kuàilè)
Rough translation: “He who gives is blessed. He who acts with purity of heart is happy. 

The Zhai-ming Monastery (齋明寺 / Pīnyīn: Zhāi míng sì) is located at the top of a hill in the District of Daxi (大溪鎮 / Pīnyīn: Dàxī Zhèn), in Taiwan. It’s one of those places that, despite being super easy to get to, for some reason, remains strategically isolated. Inside its walls, you’ll find monks interacting with locals as well as tourists who come by to meditate or who are simply searching for a little bit of peace and quiet.

If you’re into Eastern Philosophy, you’ll be glad to learn that everthing in Zhai-ming breathes, eats and sleeps Buddhism. It comes as no surprise, then, that the only existing copy of the Chinese Buddhist Canon in Taiwan is being kept here. This Canon is also known as 磧砂藏 (Pīnyīn: Qì shā cáng), and the first writings of its original version can be traced back to year 1234 (!), during the Song dinasty (宋朝 / Pīnyīn: Sòng cháo).

Ok, enough with the History classes. ;o)

The words that we used in our design are literally carved on a huge wooden board at the entrance of the monastery, and they’re a reminder of the “noble eightfold path”, one of Buda’s teachings. These words convey a beautiful message that, regardless of creed and religion, speaks to us all: we may look at it either as an inspiration to help us build a better world, or a code of conduct to guide us towards a kinder and gentler society.

In the Zhai-ming monastery, there are several replicas of the famous stone lanterns from the Tang Dinasty (唐朝 / Pīnyīn: Tángcháo). On one of them, in particular, displays holes carved in the sahpe of a lotus flower, which is where the light goes through when the lantern is on. This is the flower we chose to go with the Chinese characters in our design.

In Chinese culture, the lotus flower symbolizes purity: it has its roots latched in mud and it emerges from murky waters; still, it rises above it all to become something entirely different from its environment, something uniquely beautiful. We can do the same: no matter how dirty or corrupt our environment is, we can always embrace and act with purity of heart, turning an otherwise ordinary moment into an extraordinary one, into something uniquely beautiful.

Health Is Everything

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We hope you’re all healthy. That’s the message we’d like to convey with this design and with all our hearts.

健康是唯一的財富
(Pīnyīn: Jiànkāng shì wéiyī de cáifù)
Translation: “Health is the only wealth”.

Health is without a doubt our most precious wealth. Or as the proverb says: health is our ONLY wealth. The kind that no money in the world can buy.

That’s why we decided pair this proverb with an illustration inspired by the universal symbol of medicine: the Rod of Asclepius (the God of cure, in Greek mythology), with the snake entwined around a staff. However, we created an Estern version of this symbol, by replacing the snake with a Chinese dragon and the staff with the most famous of all Chinese swords: the “Lóngquán” sword (龍泉劍 / Pīnyīn: Lóngquán jiàn).

There are many stories that explain the origins of the 12 animals of the Chinese Zodiac, but the most famous one is known as “The Great Race”, promoted by the Jade Emperor (dang, that name sounds like it belongs to a character from a Chinese soap opera, doesn’t it? ;o)). Essentially, the animals had to cross a river before getting to the finish line. The dragon arrived at 5th place, which is why it is the 5th sign of the Zodiac. However, if the dragon was the only one who could fly, how come it didn’t finish first? Because mid-race, it saw a village burning in flames and it stopped to help, by bringing rain to the villagers. That’s why dragons represent dignity.

Lóngquán is a city located in the province of Zhejiang (浙江省 / Pīnyīn: Zhèjiāng Shěng). Legend has it that it was there that the first iron sword was created, 2600 years ago, by the famous master of sword-making Ou Yezi (歐冶子 / Pīnyīn: Ōu Yězǐ). Since then, Lóngquán became famously known for its swords (it even inspired the “Green Destiny”, which appears in the film “Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon”).

It also became home to the Schen family, who has been responsible for safeguarding the tradition and mastering the techniques necessary to forge a Lóngquán sword for over five generations. According to the clan’s patriarch, Shen Xin Pei (沈 新培 / Pīnyīn: Chén Xīn Péi), forging a brand new sword means “going back to what’s essential”. 

And let’s face it. Nothing is more essential than our health, right? Not only because it gives us the opportunity to live our lives to the fullest, but above all, because it allows us to live a life with DIGNITY. So raise your glasses and let’s make a toast: to our good health!