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.