The work needs to get out of your head and on to the table, and it needs to be done from the heart.
Paula ScherI love the big scale and immediate impact of posters. They're my favourite things to design.
Paula ScherIt could be that going to work is better than being home. But you should never think of days as the weekend. It should all be the same, it should all be stuff you want to do. And when it isn't then you have to change it, and you have to think about how you change it.
Paula ScherWhat you do is look at yourself and find your own way to address the fact that the times have changed and that you have to pay attention. You can't be a designer and say, "Oh, this is timeless".
Paula ScherI think Apple is a wonderful example of spectacular marketing and I love having my iPod. There are the naysayers who say that "nyah, nyah, it breaks" and I think "well, I don't like what Microsoft made..."
Paula ScherI never thought I'd be able to design all the things I've been able to design. I thought that I'd be far more limited to a specific kind of work, and I've been able to establish an incredibly broad practice in all different ways, and it's because the expectations have gotten elevated.
Paula ScherI'm hoping that I continue to be innovative on things that are tremendously visible and are still important projects.
Paula ScherI think design, to a degree, is more generous and more humanistic than art, though great art can move us more.
Paula ScherBe culturally literate, because if you don't have any understanding of the world you live in and the culture you live in, you're not going to express anything to anybody else.
Paula ScherI don't think of design as a job. I think of it as - and I hate to use this term for it - more of a calling. If you're just doing it because it's a nice job and you want to go home and do something else, then don't do it, because nobody needs what you're going to make.
Paula ScherYou can build an ordinary hot dog stand or you can build a spectacular one, and you can do it sometimes without that much difference in money - if somebody thinks about it.
Paula ScherMarketing is not inherently bad. That's just dumb. That's said by somebody that isn't doing enough work.
Paula ScherI get to work on things I've never done before and I get better at it, and I can do things that are innovative. Which I've done in my fifties, and want to continue to do through my sixties.
Paula ScherCreativity isn't about the advantage or disadvantage of a specific time or culture. Creativity is something that comes internally from a human being having a genuine mistrust of rules. And that may be the constant. It's almost like there's some rebellion in it.
Paula ScherI don't want being a woman to be a factor, or being short to bea factor, or being Jewish to be a factor, or anything that makes you outside some design "norm"that I don't understand anyway. That makes me nervous.
Paula ScherWhatever you design[/make/build], use it to raise the expectations of what can be achieved
Paula ScherIf I get up every day with the optimism that I have the capacity for growth, then that’s success for me.
Paula ScherDesign always has a purpose, art has no purpose. That's really the difference between them. Do I think one is better than the other? Absolutely not. I think they both fulfill functions.
Paula ScherTo me what really matters is that it shouldn't matter to you what day of the week it is.
Paula ScherHaving no purpose is the function of art, so somebody else can look at it and ask a question. Design is different - you're supposed to understand what's going on. You can be delighted by it, intrigued by it, but you're supposed to know it's a hot dog stand.
Paula ScherI think that the notion of being creative is the notion that, inwardly, you assume that many things are possible. And that you can try these things and that something will happen.
Paula ScherThe best way to accomplish serious design ... is to be totally and completely unqualified for the job.
Paula ScherMy work is play. And I play when I design. I even looked it up in the dictionary, to make sure that I actually do that, and the definition of “play,” number one, was “engaging in a childlike activity or endeavor,” and number two was “gambling.” And I realize I do both when I’m designing.
Paula ScherSome people are in stultifying environments where there are rigid rules and rituals and they need that to thrive, where other people are just asphyxiated by stuff like that.
Paula ScherIt took me a few seconds to draw it, but it took me 34 years to learn how to draw it in a few seconds.
Paula ScherFind out what the next thing is that you can push, that you can invent, that you can be ignorant about, that you can be arrogant about, that you can fail with, and that you can be a fool with. Because in the end, that's how you grow.
Paula ScherWhat I hate is when something I've done is replaced by something better than what I've done. It's really embarrassing.
Paula ScherIdentity means "how do I get known? How do I expressmyself?" and that's generally what I'm helping somebody do. It may be three dimensional, it may be a public space, it may involve government,it may involve cultural institutions, it may involve corporations, it may involve editorial publications - it can be anything, really.
Paula ScherStefan Sagmeister says that nobody innovates past forty-five, but I think he's wrong. I want to keep doing it.
Paula ScherFor people who make inventions, whether they make scientific inventions or artistic inventions, they're driven by pretty much the same thing. It's some mistrust from somebody saying it couldn't be a certain way, and overthrowing that. But that can happen at any point in history, at any time you come along. It doesn't get better or worse because you're born in this era or that era - I think it's more individualistic. It comes from within, you know, it's an internal thing.
Paula Scher