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Work
Music tends to be able to transport emotions more effectively than any other art form, and this emotionality became elusive once we stopped designing for the music industry. So we tried to recapture some of it through personal projects.
Although Stefan Sagmeister is well acknowledged for his work and exhibitions with Sagmeister and Walsh, his beginnings in the music industry play a huge role in his conceptual style.
As Sagmeister began to take clients outside of the music industry, he strived to preserve intimate emotions in his work. While Sagmeister stands out for his expressive, digital or photographed type in many of his branding designs for clients, he is also known to use hand-written type in his personal projects. He explained that it “personalizes the piece and can be interpreted as an anti-computer statement all in one easy move” and uses it when “the content is personal, emotional, and deeply human.”
Most of Sagmeister’s inspiration for his work comes from new experiences like train rides, hotel rooms, and sabbaticals. Above all, he wants his work to “touch the heart of the viewer”. For his work in the music industry, he strived to create designs that replicated the emotions conveyed by each album. In order to preserve the emotional effect of music, Sagmeister used his unconventional type and intimate photography to encourage the audience to experience his work with an open mind.
Something that makes his work even more personal is his pursuit of happiness and growth as a designer. Sagmeister often practices and reflects upon his value of happiness in his day to day routine, his design theory, books, interviews, and Ted Talks. His personal goals and insights on design and life encourage designers like himself to create designs that provoke memorable experiences that are unique to each viewer, while continuously renewing his creativity and excitement for design with new experiences around the world.
His infamous lecture poster for AIGA uses his quirky handwriting as type, however not in an expected way: the text is cut into his chest and arms with an Exacto knife.
Banana Wall This was an exhibition for Deich Projects in New York. Sagmeister used 10,000 bananas to create this enormous wall of bananas. Placing bananas by their color, Sagmeister spelled out “Self confidence produces fine results”. Slowly, the banana wall began to loose distinctive color and decayed to a wall of brown.
