Paula Scher on Bad Work

I think a lot of people would be surprised to hear you describing some of your work as bad. Would you share an example of something that falls into that category? And is it something you felt was bad at the time, or only in retrospect having arrived at a “breakthrough”?

I was really talking about bad periods of work, not individual pieces of design. My “professional” work is rarely “bad”, it’s mostly mediocre or a “B”. That’s because I am too experienced to deliver a terrible job, and I know how to create something appropriate for a given milieu that will function appropriately. There is a TED talk I gave on this about “serious” work versus “solemn” work. Serious work takes place in extraordinarily rare circumstances. That’s when real breakthroughs are made. Sometimes the breakthroughs aren’t that well crafted because when something is new, it isn’t totally refined. It takes the second or third version of it to get the kinks out. Then it just becomes “solemn” work. For example, I think my early work for the Public Theater was “serious” and my work for the Lincoln Center institutions was “solemn”.

The “bad” work I was referring to is process work that the public never sees. To make change, I try things that are just horrific. Sometimes I feel like I don’t know how to design anymore. I put together techniques and genres that don’t really work. I lose my sense of scale or color, I try things that are awful by any standard. If I’m working on a project with a deadline, I’ll finally abandon the failed experiments and fall back on something I already know how to do (solemn work). You can coast through a career like that, but you won’t grow.

Sometimes amidst the bad stuff I see something in a new way. That’s what I’m looking for.

Full Interview:

http://prttyshttydesign.blogspot.com/2010/02/ps-interviews-ps.html