Stefan Sagmeister:
"Design that needed guts from the creator and still carries the ghost of these guts in the final execution."- Stefan Sagmeister
“Inspirational and intriguing designer Stefan Sagmeister is recognized for his unorthodox, provocative designs that tweak the status quo and question the designer’s role in society.” - Steven Heller
desideratum
dɪˌzɪdəˈrɑːtəm,dɪˌzɪdəˈreɪtəm,dɪˌsɪdəˈrɑːtəm/
noun
plural noun: desiderata
something that is needed or wanted.
Attitude to be shown in designs/ artworks and doing things the unconventional way is to Stefan Sagmeister a desideratum. The most famous piece of Sagmeister is in 1999 when he made a lettering for an event poster where he carved it onto his own naked skin. This shows that his vision is to challenge the norm of design and to be different in every design he makes. If you also look at his younger projects where he used people to form the words for posters. He used different mediums to what the traditional way is to do typography with.
Not only does he challenge the design community to go out of their comfort zone but also himself. His passion for getting the perfect design is very evident when he gained weight just to get the perfect photos. He did a before and after photo of his semi-nude body for a short typography film and the list goes on and on.
This shows that he has no limitations to his creativity he loves to change characters from being a performance artist to a typographer/graphic designer, it all depends on what mood strikes first.
When he studied the person, who had the biggest influence on his design career was Tibor Kalman from M&Co. also known as a bad boy in the design community. To Sagmeister, Kalman was a Graphic design master and he looked up to him. He got the opportunity to get into contact with Kalman and when he shared some of his sketches he saw that it was almost like M&Co.’s work that they were making. That is how big of an influence Kalman had on Sagmeister.
Sagmeister's dreams came true when he was hired to work at M&Co. This is where Kalman encourages Sagmeister to use his own creative restlessness and to continue his own. He could never do the same thing over and over he always needed to do something different.
That is why before he started his own company he moved from different jobs a lot and always had a new and different project he worked on. If it wasn’t corporate identity design he would go to children books, documentaries, music videos, album covers, you name it he did it.
The Happy film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Akn0wnQ6rxE
The link above goes to a page with the trailer of the short film he made called The happy film.
Photography: http://www.lamondamagazine.com/en/m/stefan-sagmeister-2/
In 2008 His Company Changed from Sagmeister to Sagmeister & Walsh when he partnered with Jessica Walsh. Jessica reached out to him and she quit her job at Print Magazine to go and work for Sagmeister.
Now clients go to him knowing his work because of his work is so well known and they give him the chance to have the freedom to do whatever he wants for them.
Sagmeister is an example of not being like a sheep and following everyone else in the designing world. He is the one who will take the different road every time because the normal road is too boring for him.
“If it’s too new I get anxious, if it’s too familiar I get bored. I follow the direction that seems juicy, and has the right balance of newness and familiarity,” Sagmeister
He now has been awarded quite a few awards for being a very influential designer and for being different and innovative. He has worked on various projects with a lot of big companies because of his wiliness to do different projects. That is how he opened the doors for himself by being different and above all the other designers of his time. His versatility leads to his ultimate success.
That is basically the strive to be the perfect designer by being versatile and to have no limitations to your creativity and Sagmeister is the master in that.
