Stefan Sagmeister (born August 6, 1962) is an Austrian

graphic designer A graphic designer is a professional within the graphic design and graphic arts industry who assembles together images, typography, or motion graphics to create a piece of design. A graphic designer creates the graphics primarily for published, ...

, storyteller, and typographer based in New York City. In 1993, Sagmeister founded his company, Sagmeister Inc., to create designs for the music industry. He has designed album covers for

Lou Reed Lewis Allan Reed (March 2, 1942October 27, 2013) was an American musician, songwriter, and poet. He was the guitarist, singer, and principal songwriter for the rock band the Velvet Underground and had a solo career that spanned five decades. ...

OK Go OK Go is an American rock band originally from Chicago, Illinois, now based in Los Angeles, California. The band is composed of Damian Kulash (lead vocals, guitar), Tim Nordwind (bass guitar and vocals), Dan Konopka (drums and percussion), and ...

, The Rolling Stones,

David Byrne David Byrne (; born 14 May 1952) is a Scottish-American singer, songwriter, record producer, actor, writer, music theorist, visual artist and filmmaker. He was a founding member and the principal songwriter, lead singer, and guitarist of ...

Jay Z Shawn Corey Carter (born December 4, 1969), known professionally as Jay-Z, is an American rapper, record producer, entrepreneur, and founder of Manhattan-based conglomerate talent and entertainment agency Roc Nation. He is regarded as one of ...

Aerosmith Aerosmith is an American Rock music, rock band formed in Boston in 1970. The group consists of Steven Tyler (lead vocals), Joe Perry (musician), Joe Perry (guitar), Tom Hamilton (musician), Tom Hamilton (bass), Joey Kramer (drums) and Brad Whi ...

, Talking Heads,

Brian Eno Brian Peter George St John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno (; born Brian Peter George Eno, 15 May 1948) is a British musician, composer, record producer and visual artist best known for his contributions to ambient music and work in rock, pop an ...

and Pat Metheny. From 2011 until 2019 he partnered with Jessica Walsh under the name Sagmeister & Walsh Inc. OFFF 2009 Oeiras (3689487617)

Early life and education

He began his design career at the age of 15 at "Alphorn", an Austrian Youth magazine, which is named after the traditional Alpine musical instrument. Sagmeister studied graphic design at the Hochschule fuer Angewandte Kunst, Vienna, graduating in 1986. He later won a

Fulbright scholarship The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright–Hays Program, is one of several United States Cultural Exchange Programs with the goal of improving intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the people of ...

to study at the

Pratt Institute Pratt Institute is a private university with its main campus in Brooklyn, New York (state), New York. It has a satellite campus in Manhattan and an extension campus in Utica, New York at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute. The school was ...

in New York, where he received a

Master of Fine Arts A Master of Fine Arts (MFA or M.F.A.) is a terminal degree in fine arts, including visual arts, creative writing, graphic design, photography, filmmaking, dance, theatre, other performing arts and in some cases, theatre management or arts admini ...

degree.

Design career

In 1991, worked with Leo Burnett's Hong Kong Design Group. In 1993, he returned to New York to work with Tibor Kalman's

M&Co M&Co Trading Limited, previously Mackays Stores Limited until its 2020 administration, (previously trading as Mackays, now trading as M&Co.) is a Scottish chain store selling women's, men's, and children's clothes, as well as small homeware p ...

design company. In 1993, he set up his company Sagmeister Inc in New York. He has since designed branding, graphics, and packaging for clients as diverse as the

Rolling Stones The Rolling Stones are an English Rock music, rock band formed in London in 1962. Active for six decades, they are one of the most popular and enduring bands of the album era, rock era. In the early 1960s, the Rolling Stones pioneered the g ...

HBO Home Box Office (HBO) is an American premium television network, which is the flagship property of namesake parent subsidiary Home Box Office, Inc., itself a unit owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. The overall Home Box Office business unit is ba ...

, the Guggenheim Museum and Time Warner. He is the author of the design monograph "Made You Look" which was published by Booth-Clibborn editions. He teaches in the graduate design department of the School of Visual Arts in New York and has been appointed as the Frank Stanton Chair at the

Cooper Union School of Art The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art (Cooper Union) is a private college at Cooper Square in New York City. Peter Cooper founded the institution in 1859 after learning about the government-supported École Polytechnique in ...

, New York.

Controversy

Sagmeister became the subject of controversy after his performance of a lewd joke about animal fellatio at the annual web conference Webstock in Wellington, New Zealand, in February 2017, embarrassing a sign language interpreter and upsetting some in the audience. The organizers apologized to the interpreter in person, and to attendees following the incident, and on Twitter. Webstock organizers also followed this apology up with a longer statement on their blog. The joke, according to Fast Company, involved having a sign language interpreter assigned to his talk "interpret a story about a manatee giving itself a blowjob", with repeated requirements to the interpreter to use gestures to indicate the sex act. Sagmeister later apologized through the Sagmeister & Walsh Twitter account, and from his personal Instagram account.

Awards

Sagmeister received a Grammy Award in 2005 in the

Best Boxed or Special Limited Edition Package The Grammy Award for Best Boxed or Special Limited Edition Package has been presented since 1995 to an album's art director Art director is the title for a variety of similar job functions in theater, advertising, marketing, publishing, fashion, ...

category for art directing Once in a Lifetime box set by Talking Heads. He received a second Grammy Award for his design of the

and

album Everything That Happens Will Happen Today in the Grammy Award for Best Recording Package category on January 31, 2010. In 2005, Sagmeister won the

National Design Award The American National Design Awards, founded in 2000, are funded and awarded by Cooper-Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum is a design museum housed within the Andrew Carnegie Mansion in Manhattan, New Y ...

for Communications from the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. In 2013 Sagmeister was awarded the Golden Medal of Honor of the Republic of Austria. In 2018 he was voted Austrian of the Year by the Austrian newspaper Die Presse.

Exhibitions

2000 ''Design Biannual'', Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, New York 2001 ''Stealing Eyeballs'', Kunstlerhaus, Vienna; Solo exhibition, Gallery Frédéric Sanchez, Paris 2002 Solo exhibition, Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna 2003 Solo exhibition, Museum fur Gestaltung, Zurich, Switzerland; Solo exhibition, DDD Gallery Tokyo 2012 ''The Happy Show'', Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia 2013 ''The Happy Show'', Design Exchange, Toronto 2013 The Happy Show. MOCA, at Pacific Design Center, Los Angeles 2013 Jewish Museum, New York 2013 ''The Happy Show'', Chicago Cultural Center 2013 ''The Happy Show'', Paris, Gaite Lyrique 2015 ''The Happy Show'', Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna 2015 ''The Happy Show'', The Museum of Vancouver, Vancouver, Canada 2015 ''The Happy Show'', Museum für angewandte Kunst Frankfurt 2018/2019 ''Sagmeister & Walsh: Beauty'', Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna 2019 ''Sagmeister & Walsh: Beauty,'' Mak Frankfurt 2019 ''Sagmeister & Walsh: Beauty'' Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg 2021 ''Sagmeister & Walsh: Beauty'' Fondation d’entreprise Martell 2021 ''Beautiful Numbers''
Thomas Erben Gallery
ref name="stefan sagmeister biographie"/> 2022 ''Sagmeister & Walsh: Beauty''

Vorarlberg Museum The vorarlberg museum (former name Vorarlberger Landesmuseum) in Bregenz is the state art and cultural museum of the Austrian federal state of Vorarlberg. It was founded in 1857, and has since been a centre for collection and preservation of ...

, Bregenz, Austria

Filmography

* ''The Happy Film'' (2016, documentary)Official Website The Happy Film
/ref>

References

External links

Official websiteLondon Design Museum's entry for Sagmeister
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sagmeister, Stefan 1962 births Living people People from Bregenz Austrian graphic designers Austrian typographers and type designers Grammy Award winners Austrian expatriates in the United States Austrian poster artists National Design Award winners Austrian album-cover and concert-poster artists University of Applied Arts Vienna alumni AIGA medalists Lucky Strike Designer Award recipients