Best quotes by Paula Scher

I 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.

I 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..."

I'm not from a generation of kids that grew up on a Mac.

Marketing is not inherently bad. That's just dumb. That's said by somebody that isn't doing enough work.

I 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.

I'm hoping that I continue to be innovative on things that are tremendously visible and are still important projects.

You can't say there shouldn't be marketing and (that) marketing is a bad thing.

I don't want people to think about my age. Notbecause I don't want them to know my age, I just don't want them to think about it, I don't want itto be a factor.

I always drew. I was, you know, the school artist. I was the person who made the posters for the prom. That's who I was.

If people that made products didn't market them and sell them we'd have no economy and nobody would be working.

I've become much more interested in architecture than I've ever been.

Technology is something that grows and changes, and what I need to do is find out what it can do so it can do what I want it to do. And I want it to do whatever I want it to do really fast. And it's fantastic.

Some 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.

New Zealand looks like the future to me

As a painter I make up projects for myself to express myself. And there's no client, there's no direction.

We don't do everything the same way we always did it. We just don't.

If I know something well, it no longer makes me say "wow" even if it's really terrific, even if it's a great iteration of it, because I know it well.

You 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.

For 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.

We become different people and we adapt to our environments, but that doesn't have anything to do with being creative.

You have to have a lot of kids.

I 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.

What makes me say "wow" continually changes. It changes based on what I know.

My expectation is that technology always changes.

What I hate is when something I've done is replaced by something better than what I've done. It's really embarrassing.

What happens is people - especially, I think, audiences in the United States - people confront new things a little bit afraid. It's like when you're a kid and your mother puts something on your plate you never ate before. I think that American audiences are very much like that, and when they can accept something new they can accept the next new thing, it's incredible. And what happens is that their expectation of what things should be is elevated, and that's really terrific for us.

What 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".

My fear is that when you become an expert in anything then the expectation somehow makes you ordinary, in a way, because you become the firm that does that, or you become the person that does that. You really need to change the form to make the discovery.

Marketing is neither good nor evil.

Marketing implies that you want a public to relate to your product - if it's a product - in a way that makes them want to use it. That is only good or evil in relationship to what the product actually does.

What makes me say "wow" is usually something I haven't encountered, in a new way... something I haven't encountered before or something I have encountered that I see in a new way.

The idea of retirement seems to imply that you stop doing what you always did. Why would you do that? I don't get that.

What a designer does is he makes things possible that you didn't imagine could exist before, and it makes the world a better place. You know, it's a great thing to be doing. A fine artist does that, too, but they make the expression for themselves, not for others' use.

I 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.

Marketing is a necessary part of the creative process.

I do different things. I'm a designer. I'm a painter.

I love that the level of mediocrity rises.

I find that I'm at my least creative point when I am doing something that I've done in repetition and I know all the rules - I never break the rules because I know them.

Planning is design. As a designer what I tend to do, and what's different from being a painter, is that I interact with other people, and the people have things they need to have happen.

I know that in my own work I'm able to do all kinds of things I never thought I'd be able to do.

All maps are distorted, they are not literal fact.

Creativity has to do with what came before you immediately, not what came before you a long time ago.

You need to be able to ride past the technology by understanding what it can do, who you are, and where you want to take it. You don't want technology to lead you; you want to lead it, but it's very hard to do that when you're in the middle of it.

Identity 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.

All the little risks I took were sort of like all the apartments I had moved into: I was finding the right spot.

It 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.

Stefan Sagmeister says that nobody innovates past forty-five, but I think he's wrong. I want to keep doing it.

I think that the ability of people to accept new things is growing, and that's good for all of us.

When I paint I do a different thing than when I design. But both involve aesthetics, both involve thought, both involve planning.

To me what really matters is that it shouldn't matter to you what day of the week it is.

I think that it's a great time to be a designer.

I love the big scale and immediate impact of posters. They're my favourite things to design.

Your work gets destroyed by dumb people and it gets enhanced by smart people and it really doesn't have anything to do with marketing.

I think design, to a degree, is more generous and more humanistic than art, though great art can move us more.

Whatever you design[/make/build], use it to raise the expectations of what can be achieved

I like what I do. So why would I want to stop doing it?

I wasn't a very good illustrator so I became a designer.

When I don't know all the rules I'm just wild.

Planning involves considering how other people may use something.

Really, everything is designed.

Design 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.

I 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.

Your name is Windows. Why are you a flag?

Helvetica is the font of the Vietnam War.

Beige is the color of indecision.

Design really can be anything.

Art has no purpose. It exists for its own sake.

Great design is serious, not solemn

Identities are the beginning of everything. They are how something is recognized and understood. What could be better than that?

Having 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.

Creativity 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.

If I get up every day with the optimism that I have the capacity for growth, then that’s success for me.

The work needs to get out of your head and on to the table, and it needs to be done from the heart.

I'm most proud of the fact that I get to keep growing.

Be 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.