Take pop culture, and mix it up with fine art. Paula Scher, one of the world’s most influential graphic artists, has done this for decades. She fuses the high with the low, to create iconic, accessible, and memorable images that have entered into the global vernacular of graphic design.
Believing that type is also a visual image, Scher brought a new and eclectic approach to typography in the 1970s and 80s by “illustrating with type,” which has since become highly influential in the world of design. She claims it was her ability to paint and draw that allowed her to infuse graphic design with feeling, which radiate through the typography she created. In 1991 she was the first women to partner at Pentagram New York, the world’s largest independent design consultancy, realizing her conviction that “graphic design is an important profession because it’s part of what we put out into the world and it’s what people see and perceive.”
At Dan Alexander, we share in Scher’s approach that design should be used as a tool for bringing about social change. We see it as a vehicle for transporting important messages out to people about humanity, carried by the commercial weight of brands. For example, in our work for Celin Dion and nununu kidswear brand Celinununu, we aimed at inspiring parents to let children be free to find their own individuality through clothes, instead of the “pink for girls / blue for boys dichotomy socially forced on children from the day they are born.