Paula Scher

Attending Typo '12 last year, Paula was one of the key speakers talking around the subject of 'social'. She talked through a series of projects spanning over the majority of her career, one of which was her own take on mapping. The majority of her work is based around identity but she felt a lot of it to often be 'political' and 'mind-numbing' and in order to 'balance herself' she went to a weekend house and started painting maps. Her father was a map maker and invented 'stereo templates', of which all of Google maps are reliant on. She quoted a saying of his that 'all maps lie, because you can't correct the distortion'.

Paula's maps are very hectic and she said herself that they are 'almost there' and are 'about as accurate as the New York Times'.

You can listen to her talk form Typo 12 here.

[source - paulaschermaps.com]

This reasoning behind her experimentation with maps is similar to my decision to play around with a brief based on elements of mapping. To kind of balance myself with the more structured briefs I've set.

Paula's aesthetic is nothing like what I want to aim for (as much as I respect and admire them), however it was the quote from her father that really got me thinking about experimentation; 'all maps lie'. This said, it offers possibilities to explore outside of absolute strict rules within mapping and present my own take on the concept.

This recent post of Paula's 'Maps' mini journals on Pentagram's website sparked the remembrance of her talk at Typo 12 encouraging me to go back and listen to her talk again...

[source - Pentagram]

This set of journals (like a lot of Paula's work) ties into my research for the context publication we are to create.