Stefan Sagmeister STEFAN SAGMEISTER is an Austrian born, New Yorkbased Graphic Designer who studied graphic design at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna and also at the Pratt Institute in New York. He began his design career at the age of fifteen and now runs his own studio with his partner Jessica Walsh in New York.
He has worked for the Rolling Stones, The Talking Heads, Lou Reed, The Guggenheim Museum, and Levis. His work has been shown all around the world including places like New York, Philadelphia, Tokyo, Osaka, Seoul, Paris, Lausanne, Zurich, Vienna, Prague, Cologne, and Berlin.
“For a student it’s a crime, for a young designer stupidity, for an established designer a possibility. For a dead designer it’s a necessity.” -Sagmeister on the importance of a designer having their own style. Sagmeister with his business partner, Jessica Walsh in their studio
Sagmeister’s studio in New York
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Art Direction: Stefan Sagmeister Photographed by Tom Schierlitz for AIGA Detroit, 1999
1962
Born in Bregenz, Austria.
1981
Moves to Vienna to study Graphic Design at the Vienna University of Applied Arts.
1985
Graduates with a first class degree and a $1000 prize from the city of Vienna.
1987
Goes to New York with a Fulbright scholarship to study at the Pratt Institute.
1991
Gets a job at the ad agency Leo Burnett in Hong Kong.
1993 Returns to New York for Kalman at M&Co. Opens his own studio.
1997 Creates a headless chicken poster for the AIGA biennial conference in New Orleans. Designs graphics for David Bryneʼs “Feelings” and Rolling Stonesʼ “Bridges to Babylon”
1999
Carves text of a poster for an AIGA lecture into his own torso.
2000 Takes a year off.
2001
Publishes the book “Made You Look”
2003
AIGA exhibition “Sagmeister on a binge.”
2005
Won the National Design Award for Communications from the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. Received a Grammy for art directing “Once in a Lifetime” box set by the Talking Heads
2010 Received a Grammy for his design of the David Bryne and Brian Eno album, “Everything That Happens Will Happen Today”
2012 Jessica Walsh becomes his business partner, renames his company to “Sagmeister & Walsh.”
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Art Direction: Stefan Sagmeister, Matthias Ernstberger Designed by Matthias Ernstberger, photographed by Bela Borsodi for .copy Magazine
Drugs are Fun
Sagmeister on a Binge
This set of work is a perfect example of how unorthodox and provocative Sagmiester’s work can be. He twists the social norms and causes people to question the designer’s role in society. “Drugs Are Fun” is part of his “Things I Have Learned in my Life So Far” series. Sagmeister views himself as someone who has a very addictive personality. He admitted to attending AA meetings at one point, but after a couple of meetings he realized that his problems were not as serious as the majority of the people that were there. So he stopped going.
Sagmeister created a poster to advertise his exhibitions in Osaka and Tokyo with a before and after picture. The top photo shows him before he consumed all of the junk food included in the bottom photo, which resulted in a 25 pound weight gain.
“When I drank, I drank until I became no fun to be around. And I had to stop.”
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Art Direction: Stefan Sagmeister Designed by Stefan Sagmeister and Matthias Ernstberger for DDD gallery, Osaka and GGG gallery, Tokyo, 2003
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The Happy Show Stefan Sagmeister’s “Happy Show” took up the entire second floor of the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA). The show includes a personal narrative, as Sagmeister’s person experience is portrayed beside social data detailing the role of age, race, money, and other factors that determine happiness. It’s faster and easier for negative thoughts or experiences to go through our brains than positive things. This show was not meant to instantly make someone happy. He said himself that no one will become happy just by looking at his exhibition for a couple of hours in the same way that going to the gym won’t make you instantly skinnier. Happiness can be broken down into three parts: 50% is your genetics, 40% would include the activities you choose to do, and the last 10% includes factors you cannot change in your life.
“When you get down to it, it seems that the two things lead most quickly and reliably to happiness are having sex and eating rich, fatty foods.”
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Everybody [Alaways] Thinks They Are Right This massive, wide-spread installation was designed by Sagmiester himself along with Matthias Ernstberger for Six Cities Design Festival. The monkeys were displayed in the six Scottish cities of Glasgow, Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Inverness, Dundee, and Stirling. Each of the 33-foot, white, angry monkeys were places in the center of one of the six cities. Built by Sportogo in California, organized by Scotland’s Centre for Architecture Design and the City, every monkey held a banner containing one word of the whole sentence, therefore there were only two ways the audience could understand the project. It was to either visit each of the six cities or through the media.
Esquire, Japan Two years earlier, Esquire (Japan) asked Sagmeister to design the cover for their “Design as a Weapon” issue and gave Sagmeister complete freedom to design whatever he wanted. After sending his design to Japan he received an e-mail stating that they would not be using his cover design because “street piss” is a crime and Japan and against their morals.
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Concept: Stefan Sagmeister Designed by Matthias Ernstberger, photographed by Bela Borsodi
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