Typography: Stefan Sagmeister
Designer Stefan Sagmeister is known for being a ‘trickster’ and ‘bad boy’ based on his bold and boundary-pushing designs created through typography, conceptual exhibitions, environmental art and video.
Few examples of extreme art he has created;
In 1999, he famously had the lettering for an AIGA event poster carved into his naked body.
For his 2003 “Sagmeister on a binge” exhibition poster, he gained 25 pounds by eating 100 different junk foods. He took before and after photographs of his semi-nude body.
For a short typographic film, he dangled his body out of an upper-story window of the Empire State Building.
Stefan Sagmeister, Born in Bregenz, Austria (1962) began career at age 15 when he began working for magazine ‘Alphorn’ writing articles, he soon realised that he much rather enjoyed working on the layouts than writing the articles.
In 1985 he earned an M.F.A. at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. He then received a scholarship to study at Pratt Institute in New York.
Whilst studying in New York, Sagmeister became friendly with Tibor Kalman, of M&Co. Sagmeister described him as his “design hero”. M&Co hired Sagmeister five years later. After M&Co abruptly ended as a company, Sagmeister began to specialize in CD cover design. He used printing and packaging tricks that involved die-cuts, laser-cuts, model building and more, but the witty and diverse concepts were the reason he received two Grammy Awards for his designs.
In the early 2000s hand held music devices came in to the picture and Sagmeister saw it was time to reinvent his practice and began taking on more corporate and media work. He took and time out and went to Bali and came back bigger and better, this when his text-based work came in to action.
Sagmeister made another major professional life change: He replaced the “S” with an “&” in his studio’s logo. The addition of Jessica Walsh as his new business partner it was announced with an update of another Sagmeister shocker. The updated announcement showing a naked portrait of the duo (Walsh standing on a pile of magazines next to Sagmeister) with the caption: “Nineteen years after the founding of Sagmeister Inc… We are renaming the company to Sagmeister & Walsh.”
Since, Sagmeister has had many other exhibitions and awards. As years go on he continues to shock and intrigue his viewers with new inventive ideas and designs.
REFERENCE
Websit title: AIGA
Article name: Stefan Sagmeister
