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Complaining is Silly - an interview with Stefan Sagmeister
By James Posey
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If you're doing research on Stefan Sagmeister and his work, you'd better make sure your computer has enough free disk space. For someone still comfortably under the age of 50 (b.1962 in Bregenz, Austria), his work, as well as the many reviews, interviews and other written overviews would easily fill your memory stick for sure.
Stefan's work has spanned an amazing amount of applications, uses and media. He is perhaps best known to the masses for his album covers for such stars as Lou Reed, the Rolling Stones, Aerosmith, and David Byrne – former lead man and pure genius behind the Talking Heads for those not keeping up, with Stefan even winning a Grammy for his cover design for a special limited edition box set for this band.
During his various stops around the world he has also built up an amazing portfolio of books, branding designs, graphics, packaging, posters, even cars and other "mobile" forms of getting the message across! His media has ranged from the usual to the extremely unusual and he is known for clever works made of rubber (for example, just search for the phrase "monkey balloons in Scotland"), sculptures designed specifically for each award winner, clothing to spell out type, organic materials of all sorts, interactive visual media that change as someone walks by, works created with thousands of filled coffee cups, works made of bananas (changing color over time), billboards that slowly fade away in the sun, and even a very painful – though ultimately rewarding – venture into carving his work into his own skin.
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 Selection of stills from Stefan Sagmeister's recent work using bananas to create a different effect over time. See the full set and get more details in the Gallery of Work. |
Stefan's website is also one of the most well presented electronic playgrounds you can find. Not only does it take the viewer through a well-presented tour of many of the works and themes mentioned above, but also takes the time to share "typical" questions with enquiring minds and young designers, not that these two are necessarily exclusive from one another (note: we do indeed encourage everyone – particularly those interested in the business of design or crazy enough to be thinking about going into this field – to visit the web-site's "Design as a Process" section).
Stefan, to start off with something completely different: you are certainly one of the most decorated designers we've met with, if not at least the tallest. To quote one of my favorite Monty Python sketches: how tall are you (the picture from a recent show of you standing next to your lady friend was perhaps a bad comparison)? Secondly, can you tell us how it feels or what it means to be essentially considered a "celebrity designer"?
First, I am 1.95 m (or 6 ft. 5 in.). The picture you're thinking of was probably then a bit misleading in terms of my height.
Second, my favorite fame-in-design quote comes from Chip Kidd: "a famous designer is like a famous electrician". In my opinion, electricians and designers enjoy the most desirable kind of fame, because they are to a large extent in charge of it. When famous electricians decide to visit electricians’ conferences, there will be pats on their backs and egos will be stroked, but outside of these conferences they will be able to go anywhere without intrusions.
In terms of being a "celebrity": I have worked with numerous actual stars, famous clients whose fame - up close - did not look like much fun at all. For example, if you walk into a Starbucks in New York City with Lou Reed, the whole place goes quiet. People turn around. They whisper.
How did your recent "Things I Have Learned In My Life So Far" show go?
Right from the start it was so crowded that the police had to come with bullhorns to get the waiting masses out of the traffic on Grand Street. Inside it felt more like a Bangkok disco then a New York design exhibit opening.
We did have 10,000 typographically arranged bananas on the wall, a couple of giant inflatable monkeys about, and Milton Glaser, Massimo Vignelli and Bob Gill all taking hourly shifts drawing type into the fogged up window of the gallery.
Two versions of the cover to "Things I Have Learned in My Life". See more versions and get more details in the Gallery of Work.
Can you give us some insight into your general design process?
One of my most frequent sources of inspiration is a newly occupied hotel room. I find it easy to work in a place far away from the studio, where thoughts about the implementation of an idea don't come to mind immediately but I can dream a bit more freely.
Many designers I respect create (non-client driven) experiments as a regular part of their practice. The key word here is 'regular'. I found that experiments which are not part of a regular schedule, have a tendency to get pushed out by more 'urgent' jobs simply on account of having a deadline attached to them.
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