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Paula Scher is an American graphic designer who first rose to prominence in the early 1970's with her work designing record sleeves for CBS Records in New York City. During her time in the record industry she produced a prolific body of work designing over 150 album covers a year. A particularly impressive feat considering many of these albums are considered some of the most visually recognisable LP covers of the 70's.

In 1982, Scher left CBS Records and formed the studio Koppel and Scher with her fellow Tyler School of Art graduate Terry Koppel. For the next six years Scher honed her considerable design talent in new areas and embraced the challenges of running her own studio. The two partners ran the studio until the recession of 1989, when Koppel resigned to take an editorial staff job at a magazine. Left to run the business solo and also turning 40 Scher remembers, "the scale of the jobs I was working on were always going to stay the same." For the talented and ambitious designer this was obviously an uncomfortable realisation. However, as seemly astute in her career choices as her design work,  Scher soon excepted an offer to become the first female partner of the multinational design firm Pentagram.

Despite initial reservations about 'losing her identity' in such a large design company, Scher recognised that Pentagram would also provide her with the profile she had longed for.  The decision almost immediately bore fruit when she was commissioned to produce the new identity and  visual collateral for the Public Theater in New York City. Looking back Scher sees this work as her 'break-out' project; one that set her trajectory as a designer into a new orbit. An orbit that has seen her become one of he most respected and celebrated designers of her generation.