Paula Scher has never liked coloring within the lines. Even from her first days as a design student at Philadelphia's Tyler School of Art," I felt I was being forced to clean up my room," she says.

Since then, Scher's "creative messiness" has transformed her into a graphic design legend, with a career that spans from instantly recognizable record covers for Billy Joel to an award-winning identity campaign for The Public Theater to her work as a partner of Pentagram. Her ability to fuse vibrant pop accessibility-"I always try to adopt the perspective of the first-time user," she says-with visually fresh vernacular and historical typefaces is the secret to her standout identity campaigns. Clients ranging from the American Museum of Natural History to Herman Miller have enjoyed the results. "If there is not a layer of joy attached to the project that goes beyond its original intent," she says, "then I have failed."

Scher, who has taught at New York's School of Visual Arts for the past 18 years, has won hundreds of design awards and citations, including four Grammy® nominations and the Beacon Award. In 1998 she was named to The Art Directors Club Hall of Fame. Her writings are included in a book, Looking Closer: Critical Writings on Graphic Design (Allworth Press, 1994), and her work is represented in numerous museums, including New York's Museum of Modern Art and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.