Stefan Sagmeister is a New York-based graphic designer and typographer.
Sagmeister co-founded a design firm called Sagmeister & Walsh Inc. with
Jessica Walsh in New York City. He has designed album covers for Lou Reed, OK
Go, The Rolling Stones, David Byrne, Aerosmith and Pat Metheny.
Biography 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 Treviso, Italy.
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.
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. He has spent many years designing for
the music industry. Several years ago he decided to dedicate 25% of his work to
the art world, things like books and publications for galleries, another 25%
to the scientific community, 25% to social causes, and the remaining quarter
has stayed dedicated to the music industry.
Awards Sagmeister received a Grammy Award in
2005 in the Best Boxed or Special Limited Edition Package category for art
directing Once in a Lifetime box set by Talking Heads. 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. In 2005, Sagmeister won the National
Design Award for Communications from the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.
Some of his clients are; Aiga Detroit; Anni Kuan Design; Booth Clibborn
Editions; Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities; Capitol Records; Chaumont;
copy Magazine; Dai Nippon Printing Company; The Guggenheim Museum.
Exhibitions 2000 Design Biannual, Cooper-Hewitt
National Design Museum, New York 2001 Stealing Eyeballs, Kunstlerhaus,
Vienna; Solo exhibition, Gallery Frédéric Sanchez, Paris
2002 Solo exhibition, Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna
2003 Solo exhibition, Museum fur Gestaltung, Zurich, Switzerland; Solo
exhibition, DDD Gallery Tokyo 2015 The Happy Show, Museum of Applied
Arts, Vienna Further reading
Sagmeister, Stefan: Made You Look - Peter Hall ISBN 978-1-86154-207-6; also
Abrams paperback edition: ISBN 978-0-8109-0597-9
Sagmeister, Stefan; Things I have learned in my life so far New
York:Abrams, ISBN 978-0-8109-9529-1 website associated with above book:
www.ThingsIHaveLearnedInMyLife.com See also
Category:Albums with cover art by Stefan Sagmeister
References External links
Sagmeister Inc. London Design Museum's entry for
Sagmeister Portraits of Stefan Sagmeister @ The
Design Museum by Bartolomy 7 rules for making more happiness