Thursday, May 21, 2009

MIRANDA: Designer that interested me most - Stefan Sagmeister

Stefan Sagmeister


Stefan Sagmeister interested me most because of his kind of quirky ideas behind all his pieces. He also generally seems to have a good idea on how to be happy and stay happy working in the industry. If you didn’t choose him for your blog I suggest you take a look at some of his work because he has a lot of great, even inspirational pieces.


Stefan Sagmeister is among today’s most important graphic designers. Born in Austria (1962), he now lives and works in New York. His long-standing collaborators include the AIGA and musicians, David Byrne and Lou Reed.


Stefan Sagmeister is no mere commercial gun for hire. Sure, he's created eye-catching graphics for clients, but he pours his heart and soul into every piece of work. His design work is at once timeless and of the moment and his painstaking attention to the smallest details creates work that offers something new every time you look at it.


While a sense of humor invariably surfaces in his designs, Sagmeister is nonetheless very serious about his work; his intimate approach and sincere thoughtfulness elevate his design. A genuine maverick, Sagmeister achieved notoriety in the 1990s as the designer who self-harmed in the name of craft: He created a poster advertising a speaking engagement by asking his assistant to carve the salient details onto his torso with an X-acto knife and photographing the result. Sunning himself on a beach the following summer, Sagmeister noticed traces of the poster text rising in pink as his flesh tanned.


Striking to the point of sensationalism and humorous but in such an unsettling way that it’s nearly, but not quite unacceptable, his work mixes sexuality with wit and a whiff of the sinister. Sagmeister’s technique is often simple to the point of banality: from slashing D-I-Y text into his own skin for the AIGA Detroit poster, to spelling out words with roughly cut strips of white cloth for a 1999 brochure for his girlfriend, the fashion designer, Anni Kuan. The strength of his work lies in his ability to conceptualise: to come up with potent, original, stunningly appropriate ideas.


1 comment:

  1. i am also a big fan of stefan sagmeister. excellent work miff

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