Stefan Sagmeister
His story
“The only risk in life is to take no risk.”
Stefan Sagmeister the graphic designer who pours his heart and soul into every piece of work who has elevated to the top of his field and has became a living legend in the world of design. Sagmeisters work has a definite unique style, which is easily recognizable, striking to the point of sensationalism and humor he always finds a way to get people talking about his work, whether that’s singing him in high praise or being shocked by his mix of sexuality and humor you cannot deny that Sagmeister is an inspiration to many designers including myself. He continues to strive to be the best designer he can be, by taking a sabbatical year every 7 years he takes his low points and mistakes and refreshes himself and his ideas to keep producing work that keeps him at the peak of design.
Born in 1962 in a small town Bregenz hidden in the Austrian Alps Sagmeister was far from the epicenter of the design world but here he started his incredible journey. He first got into design when he was 14 or 15 when he started working for a local left wing magazine called Alphorn. He quickly found out during this job that he much rather enjoyed the design side to the writing. During these years he was very into his music and played in bands which ‘where not very good’ but this got into him into album cover design combining his love for music and design.
“just about everyone was better at drawing than I was.”
This led him to applying for art school when he was 18 but did not get in first time stating that “just about everyone was better at drawing than I was.” He reapplied a year later after completing a course at a local private school. During this time Sagmeister was introduced to the Schauspielhaus theatre group through Alexander Goebbel, his sisters boyfriend. He designed posters for them as part of the Gruppe Gut collective. His style for the theatre group did not represent his current of wit and humour but it was a wonderful success and was the first work he did that gained him publicity and made him realize that design was for him and motivated him to pursue a career in the field. He then reapplied and got accepted into the University of Applied Arts Vienna where he studied for four years. He received a scholarship for the Pratt institute in New York stayed there for a year before he had to return home for a two-year mandatory military conscription.
Typically as you would expect from a designer, Sagmeister was against the idea and managed to serve his time near Vienna contributing towards community work in a refugee camp. This allowed him to continue work as a graphic designer in Vienna. In 1991 Sagmeister agreed to go to Japan to work for Leo Burnett a large ad agency, for a high salary he said he would do it for. He stated that being under the mantle of a large ad agency lead this to beings the most commercial time of his life. He did open a design studio for them and it was here he learnt everything he had to know about running a design studio.
While Sagmeister was studying he followed the work of M&Co, which was the studio ran by his idol Tibor Kalman. Its work matched his style, witty, smart, conceptual, it took its form seriously but in an understated way, which suited him down to a tee. This was the ‘Holy Grail’ for him the company he dreamed of working for and due to his hard work and talent it came true in 1993. Unfortunately this did not last long and Sagmeister only got to work for Kalman for two months before he moved to Rome to work exclusively on Colors Magazine.
Rolling stones album cover, 1997.
Following in his idols departure Sagmeister decided to set up his own design studio and founded Sagmeister Inc. His company was small just him, a designer and an intern. He had taken advice from Kalman to do this a principle he still swears by even with all his success. Now with his own company Sagmeister could start working on what he always intended to do, design on music projects and album covers. At first Sagmeister found it hard sourcing clients for his desired work. He settled designing the cover for Mountians of Madness his friend H.P Zinkers’ album. The album design was a huge success went on to win Sagmeister his first grammy nomination, it showed a depressed looking man but when the red transparent sheet was removed it showed the same man screaming, an idea he picked up from a dyslexic girl who used the same type of sheet to assist her in reading her textbook. This kicked off his career in designing album covers during a time when the beautiful platform vinyl was being replaced by the plastic ugliness cd cover. His talent still flourished going on to design for clients as diverse as the Rolling Stones, Lou Reed, David Byrne, OK Go, Aerosmith and Path Metheny.
Sagmeisters first album cover design, 1994.
“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
Lou Reeds album cover, 1997.
He did this for around 6 or 7 years before branching out in many different directions after funnily enough getting bored of designing album covers. Sagmeister knew that there was more for him in the industry and went on to create and work on more and more mind-blowing projects which show what a unique talent the man is. He worked with clients as big as HBO, Adobe, Red Bull, AIGA, New York Times, BMW, Aishti Deparmtent and the list goes on and on.
“we tried to visualize the pain that seems to accompany most of our design projects. Our intern Martin cut all the type into my skin. Yes, it did hurt real bad.”
AIGA self harm poster.
It is quite bizzare to believe that someone would go to them lengths for design but that shows how passionate Sagmeister is about his work. He is prepared to take risks and this is not the only he has taken, also posing naked for his business cards when first opening Sagmeister Inc. Nowadays Sagmeister Inc. has been named Sagmeister & Walsh after a huge decision in 2012 to go in a new direction with 25 year old graphic designer Jessica Walsh. Showing his humor again together they reworked the original poster of them both posing naked. Not a risk for Sagmeister like the first time but it “probably was for Jessica.” There first work together was The Happy Show in 2012, at the the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia. The show was to show the graphic representation of happiness throughout a community set in the colours of yellow and black. The show was a success as Sagmeister aims to show the world how happiness can be achieved in design.
Sagmeister say the other big risk in his life was his first sabbatical. He feared he would lose clients who had been with him the first seven years. It turned not to be true and the second sabbatical was zero risk. His sabbatical where he often spends in hihihih gives him time to reflect of the past seven years and lets him come up with new and refreshing ideas. The fact that Sagmeister can afford to take a year long break shows how successful and talented the man is. He even turned down to work on Barack Obamas presidential campaign poster because he was on his break!
“There are vast periods where I’m quite lame and tame and risk nothing. I was not born gutsy. I’m the kind of person who needs to talk himself into overcoming his fear.”
To conclude I have to say that the diversity in skills and ideas of every piece of work of Sagmeisters’ that I have looked at shows how much of a unique talent the man is. His personal projects give us an insight into his mind and how far he is willing to go for success. He is most definitely a phenomenon in the world of design and an inspiration to many designers. His work is not everyones cup of tea but you cannot fault his passion and commitment to the field. While a sense of humour and wit surfaces in a lot of his work ranging from his personal work to big clients like . He shows that he is more than capable of producing any type of work of dream quality. Stefan Sagmeister is definitely now a designer I will continue to keep an interest in throughout my own education and career. A man who is not worried about the legacy he leaves has already and will continue to leave his stamp on design.
