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design leaders
CONVERSATION WITH ELLEN LUPTON AND JENNIFER TOBIAS
For many designers, the first requirement for success is finding stable employment with appropriate compensation in a healthy, inclusive workplace. This success can take a surprising number of forms. Designers work in small studios and big agencies as well as start-ups and cultural institutions. They teach in colleges and universities. They run their own practices and sell their own products. Many nine-to- five designers have side hustles. Successful designers reinvest in the profession by speaking, publishing, running workshops, becoming mentors, sharing their work, and being open to learning and critique.
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Among women designers, few have achieved influence and admiration at the scale of Paula Scher. In the early 1970s, she landed a job at CBS Records in New York before founding her own studio, Koppel and Scher. When she joined the New York office of Pentagram in 1991, she was the only woman among fourteen male partners in New York, London, and San Francisco.
At a global partners’ meeting in the early 1990s, she showed her partners a series
of posters she had designed for the Public Theater; some of her London colleagues walked out, appalled by her clashing type styles. She put aside their modernist disdain and kept working—and her posters for the Public Theater ended up attracting prominent commissions from museums and concert halls.
Achieving stratospheric success requires years of hard work as well as confidence, courage, and lots of talent. Until recently, it was difficult for any woman to rise to this level of prominence, and nearly all “famous” designers in the West were White. The status quo is beginning to shift as more people who are marginalized by sexism and/or racism take positions of influence in design and across society.
Being a design goddess is hard work. Scher is constantly asked to speak at
conferences and to field requests for jobs and internships, and her work is subject- ed to constant scrutiny on the internet.
We asked Scher if she had encountered obstacles as a woman. She said, “Sure, almost from day one. But having obstacles wasn’t an oddity. When I did notice people perceiving me as weaker or less power- ful—particularly when I was young and the clients were older—I overcame it by being funnier or faster or using whatever I had. Everybody has obstacles. If you expect to receive wonderful treatment and you don’t receive it, then I guess it is very disappoint- ing. If you have no expectation of it, then it doesn’t really matter.”
For many designers, becoming a leader means creating work that gets seen, shared, and understood by one’s peers
or by a broader public. This can happen in ways large and small. Designer Shira Inbar says, “Put yourself in the conversation and publish your work and ideas. Don’t be too precious about waiting for something to be perfect before showing the world. No one cares. Post things. Share things. Look for ways to participate through your work.” Blogging, speaking at events, and joining local design organizations are all ways to participate in the larger design discourse throughout your career.