Up Close & Personal
Graphic design guru gets ...
Graphic design guru Stefan Sagmeister feels deep sorrow for people who copy the ideas of others.
GRAPHIC design guru Stefan Sagmeister strikes a pose for our post-interview photo shoot. However, the steely-looking Austrian is not smiling. On the flip side, our photographer is in stitches.
She coaxes him to smile but Sagmeister is not budging.
“I think it’s your job to make me do that,” he tells our poor photographer in a monotonous tone, who still cannot stop laughing due to the awkward position she’s in.
Don’t be mistaken, though. During the interview, Sagmeister is pretty animated, especially when talking about his main passion – graphic design. He personally believes that a person should be able to associate good graphic design work with how one treats his own flesh and blood!
“When looking for ideas, never look into the world of design. Always look outwards, otherwise you’re just going to end up copying (ideas) and you’ll never be happy.
“You should always push yourself, treat your work like your own child. Engage in it (the work) like a parent rather than a baby-sitter. There is an inherent joy in being a parent,” he tells StarBizWeek.
Sagmeister reiterates that he feels deep sorrow for people who copy the ideas of others.
“They just miss out on the joy of doing their own work.”
Born in 1962 in Bregenz, Austria, Sagmeister recalls not being very pleased about growing with many brothers and sisters, at least initially.
“I was the youngest of six children and wasn’t fond of my siblings. But we did grow closer over the years.”
Interestingly, it was Sagmeister’s passion for music that got him into the graphic design industry.
“I was in music bands when I was 14 or 15. I liked music and the images on the album covers used to intrigue me. That inspired me to do something artistic. I wanted to blend music and art,” he says.
Sagmeister felt that some of the best artistic work was expressed on album covers while he was growing up.
“The most interesting artwork at that time was expressed on album covers. They were visualised creatively. Historically, if you compared d movie posters and album covers, the creativity is greater in the latter.
“In a movie poster, a popular scene just ends up being channelled onto a large piece of paper. But on an album cover, you can’t do that. You have to come up with a graphic that’s not an image in the first place.”
Feeling that he had found his true calling, Sagmeister pursued graphic design at the university of applied arts in Vienna, Austria. In 1987, he won a Fulbright scholarship to study at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York.
Sagmeister says he enjoyed living and working in New York – so much so that it’s become his base of f operations today.
“It is a culturally rich city. It’s a place that welcomes foreigners. I never felt disadvantaged. There’s a foundation of friendliness there – something that’s evident in most American cities. It’s easy to meet and interact with the people, which is important for work.
“And because so many foreigners live there, you can really experience the entire world in New York.”
After three years in the US, Sagmeister returned to Austria for compulsory military service. He subsequently worked as a graphic designer in Austria before moving to Hong Kong in 1991 to join advertising agency, Leo Burnett.
In 1993, he returned to New York to work for Hungarian graphic designer, Tibor Kalman, at M&Co.
In an interview with New Yorkbased online design blog, KNSTRCT, Sagmeister says he considers Kalman as the single most influential person in his life and “my one and only design hero.”
“As a student in New York city, I called him every week for half a year and I got to know the M&Co receptionist really well. When he finally agreed to see me, it turned out I had a sketch in my portfolio rather similar in concept and execution with an idea M&Co was just working on.
“He rushed to show me the prototype out of fear that I’d say later that he stole it out of my portfolio. I was so flattered. When I finally started working there five years later, I discovered it was, more than anything else, his incredible salesmanship that set his studio apart from all the others,” he tells KNSTRCT.
In the interview with KNSTRCT, Sagmeister recalls Kalman having an uncanny knack for giving advice.
“Just don’t go and spend all the money they pay you or you are going to be the whore of the ad agencies for the rest of your life” was his parting sentence when I moved to Hong Kong to open up a design studio for Leo Burnett,” he tells KNSTRCT.
When Kalman’s firm closed that same year in 1993, Sagmeister opened his own studio, Sagmeister Inc, in New York. He has since designed branding, graphics, and packaging for clients such as the Rolling Stones, HBO, the Guggenheim Museum and Time Warner.
Sagmeister tells StarBizWeek that Kalman was influential on how he built his studio.
“His advice to me was that the most difficult thing to do was “not to grow.” Everything else would be easy, he told me. He said remaining small was very difficult, especially while working in New York.
Sagmeister recalls that when he moved to Hong Kong, Kalman advised him to “not get too comfortable with his new lifestyle.”
“When I moved to Hong Kong, and he (Kalman) knew I was going to work for an ad agency for a lot of money, he told me not to spend all of it because I would end up getting used to the lifestyle and end up being owned by the agency.
“When you get those (high) payments, you would want to live a certain lifestyle.”
Sagmeister was in Malaysia last month in conjunction with the oneday Commercial Radio Malaysia (CRM) Bootcamp. The event was coordinated by Marketing, with CRM as the event organiser and sponsored by TM.
He says his topic for discussion at the bootcamp would be on “designing happiness.”
“Most things I do in life gives me an elevated sense of wellbeing. What I want to talk about is what amounts to happiness and whether there is a direct way of achieving it.”
Sagmeister believes many people today are motivated by their salaries rather than job satisfaction.
“I know many people who aren’t happy with their jobs. If you work in a field that you don’t believe in for a long time, it’s not good for the soul.”
A highlight of Sagmeister’s career was when he received a Grammy Award in 2005 in the “Best Boxed or Special Limited Edition Package” category for art directing the “Once in a Lifetime” box set by Talking Heads.
He received a second Grammy Award for his design of the David Byrne and Brian Eno album “Everything That Happens Will Happen Today” for the “Best Recording Package” category in 2010.
For someone who’s not a big fan of awards, Sagmeister however says it was “lovely” to win a Grammy.
“I’m not a big fan of advertising awards. They’re overblown and taken much too seriously.
“However, the Grammys were lovely moments in my life and I enjoyed making the trip to those events.”
On what he considers his recipe for success, Sagmeister believes that it’s important to have a goal.
“For us (graphic designers), our goal is to do work that’s delightful and helpful for our clients. When we achieve that, it makes the world meaningful.
“But this is not just true for designers. It has to be worthwhile to get out of bed every morning,” he says.
Sagmeister points out that the creative industry has evolved tremendously and is changing constantly.
“In the past, a particular tool could last you for many years but today, that is not the case. When I went to school and worked on a particular project, we had so many tools and different rooms to work in to complete it. These days, everything is done in front of a computer screen!”
When not focusing on work, Sagmeister relaxes – while thinking of work! “I love what I do. When you love what you do, you don’t need hobbies,” Sagmeister says, adding that he enjoys visiting exhibitions and museums during his free time.
“As far as visiting galleries are concerned, there’s no better place than New York. But I also travel quite a bit. About 40% of my time is spent travelling.”
At 50, Sagmeister certainly does not look his age. Surprisingly, he admits that he’s not a fitness freak.
“I have very little athletic ambition. But I do run a bit. I ran in a marathon once. I do some form of exercise in the morning. It helps to give me energy
during the day.”