Stefan Sagmeister is renowned for pushing design limits. Born in Bregenz, Austria in 1962, Sagmeister first stepped into the design arena when he wrote for a small magazine when he was 15. It wasn’t long before he realized that layout design was what he truly enjoyed rather than writing.
At the age of 18, he failed to get into design school, so he spent a year studying at a small, private art school. He then got into the University of Applied Arts, Vienna. After four academics years there, he got a Fulbright scholarship to study at Pratt Institute in New York.
Despite being raised in an environment where everyone works for the family business, in an interview for The Great Discontent Sagmeister said “when I expressed a desire to become a graphic designer, I was not stopped.”
In fact his perseverance didn’t stop there. As a Pratt student, he greatly admired the work of Tibor Kalman and constantly followed up with the work of M&Co, his studio. “As a student, that was the Holy Grail.” After 50 phone calls, he managed to interview Kalman for his thesis. Putting this opportunity to good use, he managed to sneak in his portfolio which later earned him a job at M&Co.
While Sagmeister may now disagree with some of Kalman’s approaches and philosophies, one thing he still certainly appreciates is his aphorisms. “You should do everything twice. The first time you don’t know what you’re doing. The second time you do. The third time it’s boring,” Tibor Kalman would say. “He had a fantastic way of being able to give advice that others could hear,” says Sagmeister about Kalman.
Although his work had become highly esteemed and he had a loyal base of clients, it wasn’t until his 2008 sabbatical that Sagmeister shifted from the commercial work he was immersed in. Returning from his Bali retreat, Sagmeister started a long line of text-based designs using simple, everyday elements.
Sagmeister’s work, although consistently daring and attention grabbing, took different forms. And yet, the one defining incident he refers to as an “Aha!” moment was when he worked with the director of the Schauspielhaus Theatre in Vienna at the age of 22. They worked hand in hand to stop the city from tearing down an abandoned theater in the heart of Vienna. With his designed posters hanging everywhere around the city, and the presence of media coverage, the theater was saved. Sagmeister recalls, “It had all the elements—it was like, “F**k, this shit really works. I can do something and it has an end result.””
This spirit continues to define Sagmeister's work. “When I started it [the studio], the idea behind the studio was to design for the music industry and to stay small. The first became boring after six or seven years, and we branched out in many other directions in addition to music. We stayed true to the second one; after 20 years of being in business, we are still tiny.”
“I follow the direction that seems juicy, and has the right balance of newness and familiarity,” Sagmeister told Steven Heller . “If it’s too new I get anxious, if it’s too familiar I get bored.”
In 2012, new blood was introduced to the studio when Jessica Walsh became a partner and the studio was renamed Sagmeister & Walsh .