Stefansagmeister

Stefan Sagmeister

ONE QUIRKY BAD BOY

1962

1977

1991

Stefan Sagmeister comes to the world.

His career in design started.

Started working in Leo Burnett HK.

Who Is Stefan Sagmeister?

Stefan Sagmeister is an Austrian graphic designer and typographer based in New York. He was born August 6th, 1962. With Jessica Walsh, he co-founded the very well known design firm Sagmeister & Walsh Inc., located in New York City. After graduating from high school, Sagmeister started his studies in engineering but later on he changed careers to graphic design. Sagmeister graduated from the University of Applied Arts Vienna and in 1987 he received a Fulbright scholarship to study at the Pratt Institute in New York. His career as a graphic designer started when he was just 15 years old, he started in an Austrian youth magazine named “Alphorn�.

Stefan Sagmeister is a great mind that has worked in agencies like Leo Burnett Hong Kong and M&Co. Before starting his work in Leo Burnett Hong Kong (1991) he was in Austria doing his military service. In 1993, Sagmeister opened the doors to Sagmeister Inc. In 2012 Stefan made Jessica Walsh a partner and Sagmeister & Walsh Inc. came to life. He teaches at the School of Visual Arts in New York and has been assigned as the Frank Stanton Chair at the Cooper Union School of Art, also in New York.

1992

1993

2012

Comes back to NYC and works in M&Co.

Sagmeister Inc. opens its doors.

Sagmeister & Walsh opens its doors.

His Quirkiness “Style=Fart”

Something that makes Stefan Sagmeister stand out is his quirkiness. He is a very peculiar designer and that is something that really grabs my attention.

A way that we can see his way of thinking and personality is with his motto, “design that needed guts from the creator and still carries the ghost of these guts in the final execution”. His old motto was “Style=fart”, but when he changed his motto he replaced the style with attitude. We can see this kind of personality reflected in his work. A very well know poster he made is the AIGA Detroit poster (1999). For this poster we see the body of Stefan carved with all of the information needed for the event. With this poster we can also see his way of thinking when it comes to design. Sagmeister wants to emphasize the physicality of the body; he tries to portray this mainly with mark making. He likes to work a lot with his body and he has different posters to show. In his poster Sagmeister on a binge he ate 100 different types of junk food to gain 25 pounds and do his before and after poster.

He takes a sabbatical every 7 years. It was in a sabbatical that his “aha” moment came to him.

Every 7 years, Sagmeister takes a year to put aside clients and work on experiments of is own, he explains it as that he wants that year to create significant things instead of cool things. His “aha” moment was when he discovered and realized that he could create more emotional moments.

“design that needed guts from the creator and still carries the ghost of these guts in the final execution”.

How Stefan Thinks Sagmeister has a very peculiar way of thinking and we see it a lot in much of his work. He wants to emphasize the physicality of the body.

He emphasizes in the body to reinforce the humanity of design and the human scale of interpersonal communication. Another way in which he shows his personality and way of thinking is when he chooses his projects. He wants projects that are different and new. He wants and adventure, if chooses the one he’s familiar with he says that it gets boring for him.

He wants to set his studio apart from the others.

He explains how he wants to create significant things instead of cool things. Sagmeister once said “I follow the direction that seems juicy, and has the right balance of newness and familiarity”.

This takes everyone to think that it’s interesting that he chose the word follow since he is not a follower, he is someone that sets himself apart from other designers, he is unique. Stefan Sagmeister is a designer that has guts, he is not afraid to show what he thinks. It’s not easy to get out to this world as a designer and do what you want, we usually have to do what the client wants, follow the rules, but Sagmeister is a “bad boy”, he defies the typical graphic designer and shows the world that its possible.

“i follow the direction that seems juicy, and has the right balance of newness and familiarity�

Stefan And The Music Industry

Sagmeister is very well known for his work in the music industry.

Big part of his work is made up of album covers for big artists like Aerosmith, Talking Heads, David Byrne and Lou Reed. Some of his accomplishments in the music industry are 2 Grammy Awards.

The first one he won it in 2005 for the Once in a Lifetime box set for Talking Heads. The second Grammy Award he won it in 2010 for the design of the album Everything That Happens Will Happen Today by David Byrne and Brian Eno. Sagmeister explains how there are different routes to succeed in the music industry.

From these different paths it was obvious that Stefan Sagmeister was going to take the path less taken.

“You can try to get a job in a record label’s in-house design department, work for a design firm that has music industry clients, or you can go out on your own.”

Take It On

The posters consist of a face and we see the word “take it on, SVA� on their face. When Sagmeister explains this poster he sees it as how the people that work on Sagmeister & Walsh Inc. are part of the School of Visual Art. The 3 different faces in the posters are Stefan Sagmeister, Jessica Walsh and Santiago Carrasquilla. The 3 designers are related to SVA. Stefan Sagmeister teaches at the MFA Design department, Jessica Walsh teaches at the BFA Design department, and Santiago Carrasquilla has studied at the BFA Design department. The posters were created in cooperation with photographer Henry Leutwyler and creative retoucher Erik Johansson. The meaning behind this poster is that we have to confront our fear for change. When asked about the fear of changed he explained how he had a fear of getting into the film industry, never the less he confronted this fear and went on to get into it.

Stefan Sagmeister

Heller, Steve. “Stefan Sagmeister.” AIGA. 2013. Web. 07 Mar. 2016.

“Stefan Sagmeister | Biography, Designs and Facts.” Famous Graphic Designers. Web. 07 Mar. 2016.

Zevelakis, Spyros. “Stefan Sagmeister: “Trying To Look Good Limits My Life” – Smashing Magazine.” Smashing Magazine. Smashing Magazine, 03 Oct. 2012. Web. 07 Mar. 2016.

Happiness by Design. Perf. Stefan Sagmeister. TED, 2014. Video.