Paula Scher’s poster designs for Sam Shephard’s 1994 play Simpatico were among her earliest for the Public Theater. While here she plays with the scale, color, and placement of traditional typefaces to create an abstract typographic composition, in a variant of the design, a photograph of face of the actor Ed Harris appears in the letters of the play’s title. Simpatico, described by the New York Times as “Mr. Shephard’s highly idiosyncratic take on the film-noir genre” is a revenge drama set in California in the seedy world of thoroughbred horse racing.