When Boredom Is a Good Thing
Stefan Sagmeister, design icon.
By Chip Compton
Calling Stefan Sagmeister simply a graphic designer is like calling Paul McCartney just a singer. Um, if you are doing this, you are not giving him his due. Please cease and desist, and begin seeing Sagmeister for the influential artist that he is.
Even if you don’t know Sagmeister, you know of him, or his work at least. No, you say? What about the Rolling Stones, Talking Heads, Brian Eno, Aerosmith or Lou Reed? Are you familiar with any of them? If so, you are familiar with Sagmeister. That’s because he has designed album covers for all of these performers, and picked up two Grammys in the process. One for art direction for Talking Heads’ Once in a Lifetime and another for Best Recording Package for David Byrne and Brian Eno’sEverything That Happens Will Happen Today. While these achievements are impressive, they are just the starting point.
The Austrian-born Sagmeister is the co-founder of New York design firm Sagmeister & Walsh. He has been quoted as saying that he is “rather bored with definitions,” which is a rather conservative explanation from a creative mind that has had his staff pose nude for agency photos, and who reportedly takes a year off from work every seven years while not taking any new work from clients. Apparently, this boredom can be a catalyst for design, for creativity.
Sagmeister has had his work displayed in museums all around the world, and this has offered another spark of creativity and an opportunity for keeping boredom at bay. For instance, during a Hillman Curtis Artist Series interview, Sagmeister defined success as “being able to do the kind of work that I find enriching for the audience, the client, the people who work with me and for myself. Being able to change directions so new challenges and growth are possible and utter boredom can be avoided.”
… in addition to being an influential artist, he is a slayer of boredom, infusing life and happiness into each of his projects.
It’s that kind of thinking that inspires designers. “There is an introspective element in both his work and musings that resonates with me,” Bartholomew Fish, former Britton Marketing & Design Group designer and illustrator, says. “It blurs the lines between advertising, design and art.”
Sagmeister’s influence can also be seen in his book Things I’ve Learned in My Life So Far, a diary of sorts that spells out statements that are meaningful to him. These include “worrying solves nothing” and “trying to look good limits my life.” As Maria Popova writes for Brain Pickings, “What makes Sagmeister’s maxims so beautiful and so moving is that, rather than mindless aphorisms dispensed as vacant cultural currency, they are the lived and living truths of a man who approaches his life with equal parts humor and humility, vigor and vulnerability.”
Play Hard — Stefan Sagmeister
About Things, Fish adds, “I loved how he and his team interpreted his life lessons through photography and imagery. The creative exploration in it really inspired me.”
And Sagmeister’s beliefs extend beyond the personal. For instance, in regard to commercial projects, he states, “We want the product or service to be worthwhile. We want to work with kind people.”
Kindness. Happiness. These are topics that rear their heads regularly in regard to Sagmeister. And he talks about “being happy while experiencing design” and a “scale of happiness” — defined as comfort, contentment, joy, delight and bliss — in a TED Talk.
Add to these positive vibes 2013’s The Happy Show, an interactive display that allowed participants the feeling of “walking into the designer’s mind as he attempts to increase his happiness via meditation, cognitive therapy and mood-altering pharmaceuticals,” according to the Chicago Cultural Center. Once again, this was Sagmeister’s result from being rather “bored with definition.”
All of these beliefs add up to more than just thoughts of an artist. They involve looking at art as an experience. “This is why I have an affinity for his approach and work,” Fish says. “And it’s one of the things that has been influential for me.”
So Sagmeister is a graphic designer. Sure. But more importantly, in addition to being an influential artist, he is a slayer of boredom, infusing life and happiness into each of his projects. Oh, and he has a couple of Grammys, to boot!
Chip Compton
Copy Editor
BMDG
Photos: Sagmeister & Walsh and Letter 19 Design
