Theatre Posters: The Umbilical Cord
Paula Scher has had a long-term influence on me. The rigor, strength, and purpose in her work have nudged me all along to get better at that craft of communication and persuasion with an evocative style. She did a lot of work for cultural institutions including theatre. Hold that thought.
From my time at the design school, I have always enjoyed working with traditional design elements — imagery, information, and style — tweaking them to achieve the desired result. Because I always believed that designers work towards better communication to aid the consumption of information and guide the audience's journey through awareness, knowledge, consideration, and eventually conversion.
This thinking has been the construct of my work for a long time. But in 1998, I moved towards design for technology (a rudimentary early form of User Experience Design) and began thinking about more complex problems. I found that moving from graphic design to user experience design allowed me to zoom out and understand the business goal, project structure, scope, and strategy. Although I used principles of graphic design for highly functional technology products with enterprise users (apparently they are not real people), it cramped my style. In 2013, I started working with theatre groups to create posters for their plays.
Most of our work has content that is emotional (what should the audience feel?), informational (what should they know?), and instructional (what should they do?). User experience design demands a lot more informational and instructional content. The theatre posters, on the other hand, are high on emotive content. They are evocative and liberating. They exercise my free-range creative muscle way more than digital products would ever do.
I try paper cutouts like Matisse or constructivist typography without a qualm. These posters push me to experiment with the vernacular, invent new fonts, new styles and investigate new tools (Generative AI or marker-based AR) to bridge the old with the new. They are the umbilical cord that connects me to my origin. They keep me grounded in my personal first principle —the postulate of contentment.
I hear varying views within the larger design community about the role of graphic design in UX. I have been a practitioner for three decades and I can make some hypotheses (the fun part is they are never backed with data). Rigor in visual design is a necessity and cannot become an indulgence while creating a product. It cannot be an excuse to release a new design system every quarter because you love graphic design. But keep that umbilical cord intact. Stay connected.
You can see some of my work for theatre and more on my Instagram portfolio profile. If you want to understand why I love Paula Scher’s work you should see this video.
