GOBBLEDY-GOOK, by Paula Scher
The 2007 Publikum Calendar will include a book, an exhibition, lectures, documentaries, and a media campaign both in Serbia and the U.S. Richard Wilde, chairman, Advertising and Graphic Design Departments, School of Visual Arts, wrote in his introduction for the calendar: “Paula’s calendar is a visual and verbal journey that juxtaposes Cyrillic and Roman alphabets whose convergence creates a world of absurdities, anomalies, and eccentricities, as well as similarities that result in a heightened consciousness of both the Serbian- and English-speaking worlds.” Publikum Calendar creative director George Mill says, “Paula did an amazing job, and I think she set a new standard in ideas and approach to the project. Very, very interesting, that’s all I can say!”

INTRODUCTION BY PAULA SCHER (EXCERPT)
“GOBBLEDY-GOOK, NONSENSE, BALDERDASH. That’s how an alphabet looks to an illiterate person. It seems impossible that the odd shapes and forms that comprise the character of letters have sounds attached to them, and that those strange sounds depicted by forms have meaning when they are strung together. I can’t read Cyrillic characters. Neither can any of the designers who work with me. The Cyrillic words on the page simply look like complete gobbledy-gook. We took this rare opportunity of accidental illiteracy to explore a foreign typeface and language (Serbian) formalistically and compare and contrast it to the one we understand (English). What follows are some typographic explorations in form and meaning.”