Paula Scher, Pentagram senior partner, is helping CCNY students majoring in design experience what it’s like to be affiliated with an elite firm.
There are few design houses that have more widespread identity recognition than Pentagram. Their diverse clientele includes the National Gallery of Art, The Wellcome Trust, and Shake Shack.
A program initiated this Fall with The City College of New York’s Electronic Design and Multimedia program (EDM) by Pentagram senior partner, Paula Scher, offers students the opportunity to experience what it’s like to be affiliated with an elite firm. The Pentagram Portfolio Program offers 27 current students and recent alumni the opportunity to develop their portfolios for careers in the design industry.
The program is tuition-free. Pentagram partners are donating their time to work with students.
“The program prepares students for the working world,” said Mark Addison Smith, Program Director for EDM and assistant professor in CCNY’s Division of Humanities and the Arts.
Scher, whose landmark projects for institutions such as The Public Theater have made her an internationally-renowned figure in the design world, approached EDM after giving a lecture at CCNY.
“I’d done a logo for an entrepreneur who wanted to show business students [they could] work with design,” said Scher. Members of the design department showed up too. The event coincided with the beginning of the Black Lives Matter movement.
The experience caused Scher to have a personal revelation: the private art school where she taught for decades didn’t give any scholarships. “That meant I was not getting a diverse population. I had four Black students in 37 years of teaching,” she said.
The Portfolio program classes, held at the Pentagram studios, are taught by Scher and three other Pentagram partners.
SuYin Liang, a recent CCNY graduate, finds her portfolio has evolved since the course began.
“I tended to design a lot of work in the center [of a work] and nothing in the corners. Now I’m more conscious of how to occupy a rectangle – or a triangle – efficiently.”
The Portfolio program isn’t only about teaching design techniques. “[Designers] create a condition for clients where they can express themselves, while at the same time elevating the client’s expectation of what a design can be,” said Scher. “They’re not just doing what the client tells them. Students learn this as part of the class.”
With the Portfolio program, Scher’s professional élan will inspire a new, racially-diverse generation of previously under-represented talent.
About the City College of New York
Since 1847, The City College of New York has provided a high-quality and affordable education to generations of New Yorkers in a wide variety of disciplines. CCNY embraces its position at the forefront of social change. It is ranked #1 by the Harvard-based Opportunity Insights out of 369 selective public colleges in the United States on the overall mobility index. This measure reflects both access and outcomes, representing the likelihood that a student at CCNY can move up two or more income quintiles. In addition, the Center for World University Rankings places CCNY in the top 1.8% of universities worldwide in terms of academic excellence. Labor analytics firm Emsi puts at $1.9 billion CCNY’s annual economic impact on the regional economy (5 boroughs and 5 adjacent counties) and quantifies the “for dollar” return on investment to students, taxpayers and society. At City College, more than 16,000 students pursue undergraduate and graduate degrees in eight schools and divisions, driven by significant funded research, creativity and scholarship. CCNY is as diverse, dynamic and visionary as New York City itself. View CCNY Media Kit.
Erica Rex
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erex@ccny.cuny.edu