Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data Clara Lestari A title of a BOOK : GUTS, Stefan Sagmeister p. cm. ISBN 978-0-9000000-0-0 1. The main category of THE BOOK —Design—Other category. 2. Another subject category —From one perspective. 3. More categories —And their modifiers. I. Johnson, Ben. II. Title. HF0000.A0 A00 2010 299.000 00–dc22 2010999999
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Stefan Sagmeister | GUTS
Stefan Sagmeister | GUTS
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Stefan Sagmeister | GUTS
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Stefan Sagmeister | GUTS
Stefan Sagmeister | GUTS
10 Inspirational and intriguing designer Stefan Sagmeister is recognized for his unorthodox, provocative designs that tweak the status quo and question the designer’s role in society. A cunning trickster turns convention upside down, stretches the bounds of propriety, stomps on mores and taboos and alters popular perceptions. Stefan Sagmeister has long fit this “bad boy” bill. Known for upsetting norms, he tricks the senses through design, typography,and environmental art.
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Stefan Sagmeister | GUTS
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“TOUCH SOMEBODY’S HEART with GRAPHIC DESIGN”.That “somebody” can be a single person, or a small group that is part of RIT
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Stefan Sagmeister | GUTS
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Stefan Sagmeister | GUTS
Was Sagmeister nuts? Would clients who relied on him remain loyal? Was this a trickster’s trick? True to form, he took the leap not knowing what the consequences might be. In return, he experienced one of those precious “aha” moments. It was during this sabbatical when, after deciding against learning how to direct film out of fear “I might devote a lot of time learning this new language and wind up having nothing to say,” he recalled, “it occurred to me I should try to stick with the language I do know how to talk, design, and see if I’d have something to say in it.”
16 Long ago, Sagmeister, whose motto was “Style=Fart,” replaced style with attitude. His designs are rooted in disorienting images and self-defining aphorisms. With apparent ease, Sagmeister morphs— as tricksters are wont to do—taking on various skins, from graphic designer to conceptual typographer to performance artist. When the mood strikes, he returns to being a designer, and a completely new cycle of transformation commences.
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Stefan Sagmeister | GUTS
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Outwardly our last year with clients had been the most successful to date, we had won the most awards in our brief company history and the then booming economy had filled our coffers. But actually I was bored. The work became repetitive. At the same time I went to Cranbrook giving a workshop and actually got rather jealous of all the mature students there being able to spend their entire day just experimenting. Then Ed Fella came into the studio and showed me all the notebooks with his freewheeling typographic experiments. That did it. I settled on a date a year in advance and I called up all my clients. I had all sorts of fears before the first year (that we will lose all clients, that we will be forgotten, that we’ll have to start from scratch). As none of these fears seam to have been warranted, I started the second one with few worries.
The original impulse for the first one had many fathers, among them Ed Fella visiting the studio and bringing a number of his fantastic type experiments executed into a sketchbook with a 4 color ball point pen. When he self mockingly called it exit art I felt what a pity it is that one does this sort of stuff only with 60, it would have had a much bigger impact on a working life when it would be interspersed regularly throughout ones life. Tibor’s early death played a role as any death reminds us that our time here is finite and that we better use it a good as we can. As I did the first year when I was 38, the second with 46, I have only two more years to go before the retirement age of 65. I think its much more useful to take those years early, divided up throughout my working life rather then pinning them to the end of it. Ferran Adria, who is considered by many as the best chef in the world
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Stefan Sagmeister | GUTS
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CD Cover Project for H.P. Zinker SAGMEISTER INC.
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The lyrics of this CD deal with angst and schizophrenia in big-city life. When I first arrived in New York, I saw an old, quite distinguished man coming toward me on the sidewalk. Just as he passed me, he freaked and started to shout obscenities at nobody in particular.
Stefan Sagmeister | GUTS
Stefan Sagmeister | GUTS
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When the singer of H.P. Zinker told me what the lyrics were about, the old man came to mind again. Tom Schierlitz took a calm and a frantic picture of an old man. We printed the calm one in green and overprinted the frantic image in red If you put this into a red tinted plastic case, the green image turns black and the red image becomes invisible because red and green are complimentary colors.
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THE 26
SHOW Installation Art Exhibition SAGMEISTER & WALSH
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One of the largest exhibitions in MOV’s 120year history, this astonishing experience transcends the boundary between art and design. It takes over museum galleries and in-between spaces-stairwells, hallways, and restrooms-in order to ask: what is it that makes us happy?
Sagmeister, who has documented his struggles with alcohol and drugs, weight gain, and depression, first conceptualized The Happy Show in an attempt to define and control his own happiness during a client-free sabbatical—a year-long break he takes every seven years to creatively recharge his juice.
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Stefan Sagmeister | GUTS
Stefan Sagmeister | GUTS
ON THE SCALE OF 1 TO 10, 32
HOW
ARE YOU?
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AIGA 34
Poster for AIGA in Detroit Sagmeister & INC.
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Stefan Sagmeister | GUTS
36 Most design lectures talk about the beauty of being a graphic designer. Stefan Sagmeister didn’t want to hide the painful truth about the “anxiety and angst” that accompany designer’s life. So he asked Martin, the intern working for Sagmeister, to cut the lecture details on his body with an X-acto knife, photographed it and used for a stirring AIGA poster. “We probably could have Photoshoped that AIGA Detroit poster, rather than cutting the type in my skin. I think the results are more authentic and the process more interesting (and painful)”, revealed Stefan.
STEFAN SAGMEISTER - GUTS