Sagmeister Interview Excerpt
March 11th, 2009…however on a sunny afternoon in his compact conference room at the top of a red-stepped, spiral staircase near the trendy Meatpacking District of New York City, he shrugs off such terminology. What animates his conversation is talk of making things. At the mention of engineering - which he studied in high school - he talked at length about his respect for engineers as unsung heroes who are ‘creative at the very meaning of the word, in that there’s actual creation going on.’ Bring up typography - which, in his work, is made from materials as various as sausages, straw, or most famously, cuts in his own skin - and his thoughts turn to uncovering the person behind the forms.
‘I was never that interested in picking the right typeface,’ he says. ‘It seemed a tedious exercise. When we needed something that was beyong the general form, I felt the need to create it ourselves. Much of the type usage out there seemed so cold. I felt that the audience outside the design industry wouldn’t even know a person was behind it.’ In fact, Sagmeister is famous - or perhaps notorious - for making it clear exactly who is behind his work by featuring his own scantily clad body in memorable posters. Yet for him, there is nothing outrageous or ven self-aggrandising about this approac. ‘It’s actually quite logical,’ he says. ‘In all those pieces, the project was about myself. So using a picture of me in a lecture by me is the most conservative possibility that will work.’
For Sagmeister, design must make a direct, immediate, and logical connection. He started out wanting to make album covers for his favourate bands - which he did, for Lou Reed, th Rolling Stones, David Byrne, and Talking Heads. He even picked up a Grammy Award along th way. But the deeper desire was to make connections. ‘One of the reasons I became a designer was a fascination with mass communication.’ he says. He has no interest in being a ‘designers’ designer’, comapring that approach to the attitude of some directors he worked with who were contemptuous of the people in their theatres. ‘They did’t really care for the audience; they cared for newness,’ Sagmeister says. ‘At 19, I admired that. But then I began to realise that they only directed their friends, and that seemed morally reprehensible. If that’s your role, there’s no need to do it for an audience. Do it in your living room.’
In contrast, Sagmeister’s designs have appeared on billboards, magazines, books and galleries all over the world, which has led to a renewed effort to describe and define the man and his work. Nancey Spector, chief curator at the Guggenheim Museum, calls his output ‘design masquerading as art’. Designer Debbie Millman says, ‘Sagmeister is letting the world know that graphic designers are indeed artists.’ Graphic designer Steven Heller splits the difference and refers to him asn an ‘artist/designer’. Sagmeister prefers the simplicity of artists Donald Judd’s phrase, ‘Design has to work; art doesn’t’ and uses it as a standard to judge what he does. ; I first define what the design has to do, and then I test if it does that,’ he says. ‘When functionality declines and becomes unimportant, then it morphs from design to art.’
He also recognises that design has to sell. “My parents were salespeople and proud of it,” he points out. “Great salesmanship is inherent in all aspects of life.” He specifically admires the salesmanship required to get a big, bold idea, whether it’s a movie, television show, or the St. Louis arch, executed. “You have to get hundreds of people to share that vision,” he explains. “Even people that might want to change that vision into something much more mediocre.” However, he also realises that design, as an industry, has the potential to move beyond gross commercialism. “I know that the profession can do so much more,” he concedes. “But if there is a responsibility, it is from the individual designer. It’s a responsibility as a person. But no more than a streetsweeper or a mayor. The designer doesn’t have a special responsibility, any more than a restaurateur does, to do good work and be a good person.”
For his part, Sagmeister is continually looking for ways to express his own sense of responsibility to the larger world. “Considering what a rich language design is,” he says, “it is peculiar that we use it for only these two things, sales and promotion. Wouldn’t it be strange it we used only French for his, for example, instead of for poetry.” One of the riskiest ways to step beyond these limits involved taking a year off from design in 2002. He returned to his studio with a different set of professional priorities. He still takes on projects for music and corporate clients, but also for artistic and socially responsible organisations. These interests are not new to him. For someone with the reputation of a deisgn shock jock, look beyond the hype and you will find someone who is surprisingly gentle in person and in his interests. This is a man who teaches a class on using design to touch the heart. He gives extensive thanks to his colleauges, heroes, collaborators, and friends - three spreads of tiny type worth - in his latest book. He speaks frankly about striving for happiness, being good, helping others and loving his girlfriend as well. He even credits much of his success to being a good boy who got positive press early on simply because he was responsive to requests from the media; as a former magazine art director, he was sympathetic to their needs.
Instead of chasing the money machine, as he refers to it, he has kept his studio very small; just four people working cheek-by-jowl in a spare, unwalled window-lined space, looking out over the rooftops above 14th street and beyond. And he is generous with whatever wisdom he has acquired in the process. Not only in his latest book called Things I Have Learned in My Life So Far, but he is collegial and collaborative in his work. Studio designer Joe Shouldice points out, “We all work side-by-side and we’re super collaborative in everythgin. I mean, I can throw a paperclip and hit Stefan, so just listening to him on the phone and as he works, I’ve learned so much about every aspect of design.”
And even without chasing the big corporate dollars, Sagmeister has found some impressive financial and professional rewards. His current client roster includes the Azuero Earth Project, Levis, TrueMajority, Museum Plaza, Columbia University and Universal Music, but he is regularly paid to do whatever he wants in magazines and billboards. He currently has “about ten times the amount of work offered than we can possibly take on.” His year off was met with an outpouring of new commissions, and he plans to shut the studio again in 2009. He has two books out and another in development. His designs are collected by major museums. He is widely sought after as a public speaker, everywhere from design shcools to the TED conference. He is a lecturer at the School of Visual Arts and has held chairs and professorships at the Cooper Union adn the University of Arts in Berlin, among other places.
And instead of being a young designer plotting ways to get the attention of his design hero, Tibor Kalman (founding editor or Colours magazine, with whom Sagmeister worked at the beginning of his career), now he’s got designers happily waiting three years to start a coveted internship at his studio. “It sounds cheesy,” says Richard The, a staff member from Berlin, explaining how he cam to work with Sagmeister, “but I took his course about how to touch someone’s heart with design, and compared to what we were doing in digital design, this was super refreshing.”
Refreshing. It’s a word that certainly applies to the surprises to be discovered not only in the work, but also the man.