Stefan Sagmeister is an avant-guarde designer with an interesting outlook on design.  He takes one year Sabbaticals every 7 years, makes design using bananas, and is all around an interesting character. find out why.

Born: 1962 in Bregenz, Austria.
Studied:  University of Applied Arts Vienna, Pratt Institute.

Some of his work includes work done for: Lou Reed, OK Go, The Rolling Stones, David Byrne, Aerosmith and Pat Metheny. at 15 He began his design career at “Alphorn.” In 1991 he went to work for Leo Burnett’s Hong Kong Design Group. Returning to New York in 93′ when he went to work for Tibor Kalman’s M&Co design company, which is now closed, but still very influential on the design scene

some of their work (Tibor Kalman’s M&Co design):

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 Rome. 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.

douglas gordon’s ‘the vanity of allegory’ (2005)

a collection of postcards for the guggenheim museum, berlin. the wedge cut in the lid has a strip of mirror-foil on the right side to reflect the other half of the word ‘vanity.’ You can see his skill in elaborate line work here, it definitely sines in this project.

talking heads box set ‘once in a lifetime’ (2005)

paintings by vladimir dubossarsky & alexander vinogradov)

fantastic CD design for talking heads. The use of a continuous design all the way around really ties the design together. You don’t see enough of this kind of cohesive design.

Trying/to look good/limits/my life. (2004)

Part of an on-going typographic project ‘20 things I have learned in my life so far’. There is a video that explores this idea more closer to the end of this post. it’s most definitely worth a watch. It’s on a website called ted talks, if you haven’t checked it out, it is a MUST see website.

AIGA lecture poster (1999).
sagmeister had the words carved into his skin to try and vizualize the pain that accompanies each of his design projects. youch. Guess this one fits with another project he did “Having guts always works out for me.”

AIGA biennial conference – new orleans poster (1997)

Another done for AIGA.

Lou Reed ‘set the twilight reeling’ poster (1996)

Poster design. You can really see his style come through here with the loose handmade type, and the face motif that seems to run through a lot of his pieces.

Rolling stones’ ‘bridges to babylon’ (1997)

album cover design. You can see the attention to detail here, each line is balanced with the whole, and it also works with the background which was obviously considered when the shapes were being made.

Mountains of madness (1994)

album cover for h. p. zinker. when the album is removed from the transparent red case the facial expression dramatically changes. who says you can’t create actual motion and emotion in print design? here is proof positive if you think outside the box you can.

AIGA Poster (2003)

This work is created out of 2500 paper coffee cups and symbolizes the pure caffeine design students are often running on.

Client contacts you and says they need a project by tomorrow. You say, no sweat and get the pencil and paper out, boot up your computer and you realize you have absolutely no inspiration. what now? Well do not fret my friend! here is an effective and quick way to develop a solid concept.

conceptualizing an idea will show you how all the pieces fit together and let you visualize the final result. —Karl Aspelund

Very wise words. This is crucial to making a concept work. Too often we want to just jump into drawing and visual elements of an idea.  This approach for the most part is counter productive for a few reason.   If you just start guessing what will work what wont you have anything solid backing your idea.

Even if your on a tight deadline here are a few things you always want to keep in mind:

The questions

1. What is the most important thing you want to say about what you’re going to present?
2. Who are you communicating with? Students, Teachers, People with lots of time, Someone passing by?
3. Once you have what the most important thing is, how are you trying to say this?
4. Are people familiar with what you are presenting?
5. What do you want people to think of the thing being presented?
6. What is the history of the people/thing being presented.
7. What is the emotional connection and how do you make it resonate with them?
8. What tone or attitude do you want to want to convey.
9. Where will this be presented and how can you make it stand out from other things presented in the same way?
10. What is in it for the demographic?

One great tool to get those gears grinding is *dun dun dun* brainstorming. There are several ways to do this.

Mind map:

• this is simply just a random list of webbed connections. it can be really neat and organized or totally sporadic. That’s the fun  part of brain storming, There really is no wrong way of doing it.  Remember to always write down everything no matter how silly it might be because it can trigger a great idea. Use those neural synapses!

remember this can be done as a list too. It doesn’t have to be done with visual arrows. It can simply be a list of words or phrases in a notebook. What does the idea smell like? what does it feel like? what color would it be? what season?

I prefer to do it on paper so I can have access to it wherever I am, however if you’re not much of pen paper kind of person you can try some internet apps. Here is a good one to try out:

MindMeister
http://www.mindmeister.com/