Stefan Sagmeister
Product and Communication Designer
Stefan Sagmeister runs a prolific design studio from "lovely 14th Street" in Manhattan. His brand new publication Things I have learned in my life so far.

Of course machines and computers are involved in many ways but still, every decision is a human decision and I think that can be brought to the forefront and can be used to reconnect to an audience more efficiently.

In general we take the situation that our viewer will encounter quite seriously and work within those limitation. As designers or, specifically, as communication designers we are in a situation where we have the attention of the viewer only for a very short while. So whatever there is has to be communicated in that time in an interesting, efficient and hopefully
pleasing manner.
 
Stefan Sagmeister was born in 1962 in Bregenz. He started his design career at the age of 15 at an Austrian Youth magazine called "Alphorn," named after the traditional Alpine musical instrument. Fifteen years ago Sagmeister moved to New York, where he runs a design and typography studio from "lovely 14th Street" in Manhattan. Sagmeister's motto—"Design that needed guts from the creator and still carries the ghost of these guts in the final execution"—is particularly evident in the lecture poster he designed in 1999 for AIGA Detroit. To visualize the pain that accompanies his projects he had an intern cut the event details into his skin. Sagmeister officially entered the pop cultural consciousness with his announcement poster to Lou Reed's "Set the Twilight Reeling" and the CD cover for the Rolling Stones's "Bridges to Babylon." In the past few years he has worked with the artist Douglas Gordon, the Guggenheim Museum, HBO and Copy Magazine, among others. He also designed the famous pig vehicles for the group True Majority, which are being driven through the US to promote budget cuts in the Pentagon. He won a Grammy for the Talking Heads boxed set and teaches at the School of Visual Arts in New York.