Sagmeister’s goal was to design music graphics, but only for music he liked. To have the freedom to do so, Sagmeister decided to follow Kalman’s advice by keeping his company small with a team of three: himself, a designer (since 1996, the Icelander, Hjalti Karlsson) and an intern. Sagmeister Inc’s first project was its own business card, which came in an acrylic slipcase. When the card is inside the case, all you see is an S in a circle. While a sense of humor invariably surfaces in his designs, Sagmeister is nonetheless very serious about his work; his intimate approach and sincere thoughtfulness elevate his design.
Stefan Sagmeister formed the New York–based Sagmeister Inc. in 1993 and has since designed for clients as diverse as the Rolling Stones, HBO and the Guggenheim Museum. He has received a total of eight Grammy nominations, and has won two such awards: for his package design for the Talking Heads in 2005 and for Brian Eno and David Byrne in 2010. A native of Austria, Sagmeister received his M.F.A. from the University of Applied Arts Vienna and, as a Fulbright Scholar, a master’s degree from Pratt Institute in New York. After completing his studies, he worked as a creative director for Leo Burnett in Hong Kong and for M&Co in New York. He stayed in Austria working as a graphic designer before moving to Hong Kong in 1991 to join the advertising agency, Leo Burnett. “They asked if I would be interested in being a typographer, “ he later told the author, Peter Hall. “So I made up a high number and said I would do it for that.” When the agency was invited to design a poster for the 1992 4As advertising awards ceremony, Sagmeister depicted a traditional Cantonese image featuring four bare male bottoms.Some ad agencies boycotted the awards in protest and the Hong Kong newspapers received numerous letters of complaint. Sagmeister’s favorites said: “Who’s the asshole who designed this poster?”
Stefan Sagmeister’s style is striking to the point of sensationalism and humorous but in such an unsettling way that it’s nearly, but not quite unacceptable. His work mixes sexuality with wit and a whiff of the sinister. Sagmeister’s technique is often simple to the point of banality: from slashing D-I-Y text into his own skin for the AIGA Detroit poster, to spelling out words with roughly cut strips of white cloth for a 1999 brochure for his girlfriend, the fashion designer, Anni Kuan. The strength of his work lies in his ability to conceptualise: to come up with potent, original, stunningly appropriate ideas. Probably the most notorious poster to emerge from Sagmeister was when he was invited to design the poster for an AIGA lecture he was giving on the campus at Cranbrook near Detroit, he wanted to carve the details onto his torso with an X-acto knife and photographed the result. He tried to do it himself but was unable to so he asked his assistant Hjalti Karlsson who looked at the amount to copy and refused. Karlsson gestured to the studio intern, the Swiss designer Martin Woodtli. It took 8 hours of cutting the worst hour was the last when Woodtli began to carve the “stupid” tiny credits around the pelvis.
In 2008, a comprehensive book of his work titled Things I have learned in my life so far was published by Abrams. Solo exhibitions of Sagmeister Inc.’s work have been mounted in Berlin, Chicago, Cologne, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Osaka, Paris, Prague, Seoul, Tokyo, Toronto, Vienna and Zurich.
In Sagmeister’s current show, the Happy Show, he incorporates his handwritten style with a more computer oriented type face. The title, Happy Show is designed in a way that the Happy can be mirrored to show the word show. The text is interchangable. The show itself was questioning what happiness is and addressed the public, themselves by asking:
Stefan Sagmeister has a thing for self-exposure. Last May, when he changed the name of his studio from Sagmeister Inc. to Sagmeister & Walsh, he and his new partner, Jessica Walsh, visually quoted the postcard by posing completely naked for the e-mail announcement. There were some plaudits and a bit of paternalistic hand-wringing, but the default reaction was a prolonged leer. Internet commenters wondered if the partners were sleeping together, or simply assumed that they were.
Last Thursday, Sagmeister & Walsh unveiled a new website and identity system. The partners again disrobed, this time joined by the rest of their staff, interns included. At one point, the site was getting more than 700 new visitors per second. It is the identity, though—stationery, pencils, business cards, CDs, condoms—that has drawn the most reaction.
“Sagmeister & Walsh. .” Sagmeister & Walsh. . N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Apr. 2013. <http://www.sagmeisterwalsh.com/>. Hall, Peter, Stefan Sagmeister, and Chee Pearlman. Sagmeister: made you look. New York: Booth-Clibborn Editions, 2001. Print. AIGA | Stefan Sagmeister.” AIGA | the professional association for design. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Apr. 2013. <http://www. aiga.org/medalist-stefan-sagmeister/>. “Behind Stefan Sagmeister and Jessica Walsh’s troubling new identity.” Imprint-The Online Community for Graphic Designers — Expanding the Design Conversation. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Apr. 2013. <http://imprint.printmag.com/ branding/some-uncomfortable-thoughts-about-sagmeister-walshs-new-identity/>. Cattelan, Maurizio. “ICA: Stefan Sagmeister « Miranda.” ICA - Institute of Contemporary Art - Philadelphia, PA. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Apr. 2013. <http://www.icaphila.org/miranda/tag/ stefan-sagmeister/>. “Stefan Sagmeister / Design Museum Collection : - Design/ Designer Information.” Design Museum London. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Apr. 2013. <http://designmuseum.org/design/stefan-sagmeister>. “Stefan Sagmeister | Profile on TED.com.” TED: Ideas worth spreading. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Apr. 2013. <http://www.ted. com/speakers/stefan_sagmeister.html>.