Graphic Designer of the Month: Stefan Sagmeister

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A Short Biography: Stefan Sagmeister, born 1962 in Bregenz, Austria, is a New York-based graphic designer and typographer. He has his own design firm—Sagmeister & Walsh Inc.—in New York City. He has designed album covers for Lou Reed, OK Go, The Rolling Stones, David Byrne, Aerosmith and Pat Metheny.

"Things I Have Learned"
book cover.
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Sagmeister studied graphic design at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. He later received a Fulbright scholarship to study at the Pratt Institute in New York. He began his design career at the age of 15 at Alphorn, an Austrian Youth magazine, which is named after the traditional Alpine musical instrument.

In 1991, he moved to Hong Kong to work with Leo Burnett's Hong Kong Design Group. In 1993, he returned to New York to work with Tibor Kalman's M&Co design company. His tenure there was short lived, as Kalman soon decided to retire from the design business to edit 

Colors magazine for the Benetton Group in Rome.

The Rolling Stones
Bridge to Babylon.
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Stefan Sagmeister proceeded to form the New York based Sagmeister Inc. in 1993 and has since designed branding, graphics, and packaging for clients as diverse as the Rolling Stones, HBO, the Guggenheim Museum and Time Warner. Sagmeister Inc. has employed designers including Martin Woodtli, and Hjalti Karlsson and Jan Wilker, who later formed Karlssonwilker.

Stefan Sagmeister is a long-standing artistic collaborator with musicians David Byrne and Lou Reed. He is the author of the design monograph "Made You Look" which was published by Booth-Clibborn editions.

Once in a Lifetime box set.
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Solo shows on Sagmeister, Inc.'s work have been mounted in Zurich, Vienna, New York, Berlin, Japan, Osaka, Prague, Cologne, and Seoul. He teaches in the graduate department of the School of Visual Arts in New York and has been appointed as the Frank Stanton Chair at the Cooper Union School of Art, New York.

His motto is "Design that needed guts from the creator and still carries the ghost of these guts in the final execution."

Sagmeister goes on a year-long sabbatical around every seven years, where he does not take work from clients.

Everything That Happens Will
Happen Today album.
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What Is His Specialty: His best known work is probably that of his fantastical album covers for various bands, such as the Once in a Lifetime box set by Talking Heads, for which he received a Grammy Award for "Best Boxed or Special Limited Edition Package" category in 2005. He received a second Grammy Award for his design of the David Byrne and Brian Eno album Everything That Happens Will Happen Today in the Grammy Award for "Best Recording Package" category on January 31, 2010. His album cover for the Rolling Stones record Bridges to Babylon is probably his most featured in books and magazine articles about Graphic Design.

AIGA poster.
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His most famous poster can be argued between his Lou Reed's "Set the Twilight Reeling" promotional poster for the album of the same name, or his AIGA poster featuring typography etched into his skin - his assistant used an E-xacto knife. Now that's passion for your work.

Lou Reed poster.
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About His Work & Influences: In response to an interviewer's question about who influences his work: "Tibor Kalman was the single most influential person in my designy life and my one and only design hero. 15 years ago, as a student in NYC, I called him every week for half a year and I got to know the M&Co receptionist really well. When he finally agreed to see me it turned out I had a sketch in my portfolio rather similar in concept and execution then an idea M&Co was just working on: He rushed to show me the prototype out of fear I’d say later he stole it out of my portfolio. I was so flattered. When I finally started working there 5 years later I discovered it was, more than anything else, his incredible salesmanship that set his studio apart from all the others. There were probably a number of people around who were as smart as Tibor (and there were certainly a lot who were better at designing), but nobody else could sell these concepts without any changes, get those ideas with almost no alterations out into the hands of the public. Nobody else was as passionate. As a boss he had no qualms about upsetting his clients or his employees (I remember his reaction to a logo I had worked on for weeks and was very proud of: “Stefan, this is TERRIBLE, just terrible, I am so disappointed”). His big heart was shining through nevertheless. He had the guts to risk everything, I witnessed a very large architecture project where he and M&Co had collaborated with a famous architect and had spent a years worth of work: He was willing to walk away on the question of who will present to the client. Tibor had an uncanny knack for giving advice, for dispersing morsels of wisdom, packaged in rough language later known as Tiborisms: “The most difficult thing when running a design company is not to grow” he told me when I opened my own little studio. “Just don’t go and spend the money they pay you or you are going to be the whore of the ad agencies for the rest of your life” was his parting sentence when I moved to Hong Kong to open up a design studio for Leo Burnett.

Douglas Gordon's
The Vanity of Allegory.
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These insights were also the reason why M&Co. got so much press, journalists could just call him and he would supply the entire structure for a story and some fantastic quotes to boot. He was always happy and ready to jump from one field to another, corporate design, products, city planning, music video, documentary movies, children books, magazine editing were all treated under the mantra “you should do everything twice, the first time you don’t know what you’re doing, the second time you do, the third time its boring”. He did good work containing good ideas for good people."

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In response to "Who is your personal hero?" he had this to say: "As mentioned, Tibor Kalman, because he had the most guts of any designer I know and understood that spending energy on making sure that a design appears as designed is as important as designing it. Makoto Saito for selling the same photo shoot to different clients. Rick Valincenti for continuously doing ground breaking work. Paula Scher for designing the best project of her career (the type for the New Jersey Performing Art Center), after a 30 year career, last year."

When asked "What advice would you give up-and-coming graphic designers?", he said, "Don't take any advice from tried-and-true graphic designers."

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Where He Can Be Found: Mr. Sagmeister has a website with his design company, Sagmeister & Walsh, where he and his partner, Jessica Walsh, along with some associates, create "identities, commercials, websites, apps, films, books and objects for clients, audiences and ourselves." The website is located here: http://www.sagmeisterwalsh.com/. He also has a Facebook page which you can find here.

Current & Future Projects: Currently, Mr. Sagmeister teaches workshops at the School of Visual Arts while running his design business, Sagmeister & Walsh.

Effect on Graphic Design:

"Sagmeister's CD package designs are what poetry is to prose: distilled, intense, cunning, evocative and utterly complete. His intentions have set a new standard." - I.D. Magazine

Stefan Sagmeister is no mere commercial gun for hire. Sure, he's created eye-catching graphics for clients including the Rolling Stones and Lou Reed, but he pours his heart and soul into every piece of work. His design work is at once timeless and of the moment, and hispainstaking attention to the smallest details creates work that offers something new every time you look at it.

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. A genuine maverick, Sagmeister achieved notoriety in the 1990s as the designer who self-harmed in the name of craft: He created a poster advertising a speaking engagement by carving the salient details onto his torso.

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Bibliography:
- Sagmeister, Stefan, et al. Things I Have Learned In My Life So Far. Harry H. Abrams, 2008.

- Sagmeister, Stefan and Peter Hall. Made You Look. Abrams, 2009.

- Sagmeister, Stefan. Another Book About Sales & Promotional Material. Schmidt, 2011.

Sources:
- #1 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan_Sagmeister
- #2 - http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/240651.Stefan_Sagmeister
- #3 - http://knstrct.com/2011/10/03/an-insightful-interview-with-stefan-sagmeister/
- #4 - http://www.ted.com/speakers/stefan_sagmeister.html

Stefan Sagmeister on the 7 Rules of Making More Happiness: