"As a designer it's our job to communicate. I find that so much of communication falls into an old version of modernism: informed by machines, very exact, and ultimately cold. Although that kind of communication worked very well in the 20s and 30s when it was new—we've had it now 80 years, at least 40 of which it was the status quo—modernism now leaves a vast percentage of the audience pretty cold. So to bring in a personal point of view or even subjectivity seems to me like a pretty obvious strategy. I am not arguing that every piece of communication should be designed from a personal point of view, but even the type of communication that seems the least conducive to personal communication would work much better were it not done in the standard modernism mode."
-Stefan Sagmeister from 2008 interview

im sure there are fine artists out there who keep the audience in mind when they work. but its not the accepted trajectory of the profession. conversely, its very clear in design that what we do needs to be seen an understood by an audience.
                                -Stefan Sagmeister

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

S-s now works mainly withing 4 quarters: music/art/business/social work.

uses a sort of handmade aesthetic, improvisational, kind of intuitive. for example one work was generated from the sun bleaching out the area around the letters on paper, then as the billboard was up over time, the sun bleached the letters away again

likes pithy, funny sentences: 'trying to look good limits my life". a kind of 'social good' inherent in these sayings, like "everything i do always comes back to me", or "money does not make me happy"
form + content have nice interplay in his work, likewise flexible strategies for approaching projects. so form and content are not always bound together. but for example sentence "complaining is silly, either act of forget" is displayed in steadily fading sun bleached type which slowly dissolves.

design approach that is not necessarily rooted in sitting on a computer and using software for everything. uses handwritten typography and 'group collaborations/activities"

"design should make life easier, not more difficult"

furniture design

Design legend Stefan Sagmeister has ventured into furniture design but sticking true to his graphic design roots. The Darwin Chair, shown as part of Dutch design company Droog’sshow at Design Miami features more than 200 patterned sheets to suit any environment and desired look. The Darwin chair utilizes a free swinging structure that includes about 200 sheets of attached prints. As the top sheet gets dirty or tired, the user can simply rip it off thereby transforming the chair’s appearance.

timeline bio

Biography

-1962 Born in Bregenz, Austria. His parents own a fashion retailing business. Educated at a local engineering school, then at a college in nearby Dornbirn.
-1981 Moves to Vienna. Accepted on his second attempt to study graphic design at the Vienna University of Applied Arts.
-1984 Having designed posters for Vienna’s Schauspielhaus theatre with the Gruppe Gut collective, creates the posters for a successful campaign to save the Ronacher music hall from demolition.
-1985 Graduates with a first class degree and a $1,000 prize from the City of Vienna.
-1987 Arrives in New York with a Fulbright scholarship to study at the Pratt Institute.
-1990 Returns to Vienna for community service as an alternative to military conscription. Works in a refugee centre. Posters for Nickelsdorf jazz festival.
-1991 Moves to Hong Kong and lands a job with ad agency, Leo Burnett.
-1992 Controversy over Sagmeister’s bum-bearing 4As awards poster.
-1993 Returns to New York (via Sri Lanka) to work for Tibor Kalman at M&Co. Six months later, Kalman closes M&Co and Sagmeister opens his own studio.
-1994 Creates identity for his brother, Martin’s jeans stores, Blue. Nominated for a Grammy Award for the cover for H. P. Zinker’s Mountains of Madness.
-1995 Starts collaboration with David Byrne by designing the cover of his Afropea compilation album.
-1996 First project with Lou Reed: Set the Twilight Reeling album cover. Emblazons a pair of tongues on poster for AIGA’s Fresh Dialogue talks
-1997 Creates Headless Chicken poster for AIGA biennial conference in New Orleans and designs graphics for David Byrne’s Feelings and Rolling Stones’ Bridges to Babylon.
-1999 Sagmeister carves the text of a poster for an AIGA lecture at Cranbrook near Detroit into his own torso.
-2000 Takes a year off to work on experimental projects.
-2001 Reopens studio and publishes the book, Sagmeister: Made You Look.
-2003 Designs Once in a Lifetime boxed set for Talking Heads.
-2004 Visiting professor in Berlin and unveils Trying to look good limits my life, series of typographic billboards.

-2005 received a Grammy Award in 2005 in Best Boxed or Special Limited Edition Package category for art directing Once in a Lifetime box set by Talking Heads.

-2008 David Byrne and Brian Eno album Everything That Happens Will Happen Today.

-2010 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.

design talk

link to questions and answers about design on sagmeisters website. 

Sagmeisters use of the Human body as an artform

Being not truthful

http://www.sagmeister.com/worknew12.html

Stefan Sagmeister: Things I have learned in my life so far

link to website

http://www.sagmeister.com/work11.html

Renowned for album covers, posters and his recent book of life lessons, designer Stefan Sagmeister invariably has a slightly different way of looking at things.