A partner at Pentagram Design in New York, Paula Scher is one of the most renowned and respected personalities in the graphic design and communication world. Born in Washington DC in 1948, she studied at the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia and began her career as artistic director at CBS Records and later Atlantic, where her main work was designing record sleeves. In the early 1980s she became a leading proponent of the ‘retro’ style which was then all the rage in the USA. Paula Scher borrows her ideas from various currents of art history and graphic art, music and film, reinventing them in often humorous ways. She reinterprets Constructivism, Bauhaus and De Stijl, creating a new imagery that is now an integral part of New York culture and American culture in general.

In 1984 she co-founded Koppel & Scher with Terry Koppel, and in 1991 she joined the famous firm Pentagram, where she designed visual identities, packaging and editorial projects for such prestigious clients as the New York Times Magazine, the American Museum of Natural History, the Brooklyn Art Museum and New York’s Public Theater. These thoroughly revolutionized ways of thinking about cultural communication: Paula Scher totally renewed the theatre poster genre with completely dada typography and truly punchy colours.