BLEEDING FOR DESIGN
In 1999, a leading designer with an international reputation was invited to a give a lecture near Detroit on behalf of AIGA, the professional association of design in America. He was also asked to design the poster for the event. How could he visualise for people the pain and suffering he put into every single design project, the kind of effort he believes to be part and parcel of the creative process? Simple: he got his assistant to carve the lecture details into his skin with a knife.
Such is the life of Stefan Sagmeister...
Stefan Sagmeister is now one of the world’s leading graphic designers, with a small studio - kept deliberately so since its inception in 1993 - operating out of New York. He hails from Vienna, though, and it was there that he trained as a designer. Similarly, it was on Austrian streets that he began to experiment with the possibilities and objectives of design in the public sphere. A friend once came over from New York to visit him, he recalls, complaining that no girls in America paid him any attention whatsoever; he may as well have been invisible for all they cared. Sympathising with his friend’s plight, Sagmeister pasted the walls of his neighbourhood with posters containing a photo of his friend with copy beneath saying: “DEAR GIRLS! PLEASE BE NICE TO REINI!” Oh, to have friends like that!
Even today his work retains that kind of “do it yourself” handcrafted quality. He admits this is perhaps the one thing resembling a common thread in his work, even if he did spend years trying not to be defined by any particular style: “For a long time we prided ourselves on not having a style, but to uphold that became impossible. That’s because if you really switch your stylistic approach from project to project then it becomes impossible to come up with a new one on a weekly or monthly basis without ripping off either historical styles or a particular designers' style.” So, yes, many of his great works can be characterised by that handmade quality, and it often makes them all the more engaging.
He took a year off in 2000 and put together the excellent Things I Have Learned book-come-collection-of-pullouts charting the good and the bad from a life spent in design. If you’re a fan of good design and powerful ideas, then you could do a lot worse than buy it and take a look. He seems to have a knack of applying interesting and personal ideas into work that he can actually get paid for, like the ‘COMPLAINING IS SILLY. EITHER ACT OR FORGET’ idea. Fed up of overhearing people moaning about life in cafes and bars - an epidemic he believed to be particularly prevalent in Vienna - he felt obliged to do something about. How could he encourage people to look around them and see the positive side of things rather than the negative; how could he tire people’s incessant moans? Well, taking advantage of the fact that newsprint yellows significantly in the sun, he and his small team built giant billboard stencils in the sun and left them in the sunlight on the roof of their New York studio. When they removed the stencils, the areas beneath remained completely white. And then, commissioned by a Portuguese beer brand presumably hellbent on promoting a more optimistic approach to life, the newsprint was rolled up and mounted in Lisbon. In the blazing sun the message was simple yet effective: stop complaining. A week later, though, completely faded, the message was clearer still: stop complaining and do something about it, or else you’ll fade away, forgotten, erased. Nice.
Even today his work retains that kind of “do it yourself” handcrafted quality. He admits this is perhaps the one thing resembling a common thread in his work, even if he did spend years trying not to be defined by any particular style: “For a long time we prided ourselves on not having a style, but to uphold that became impossible. That’s because if you really switch your stylistic approach from project to project then it becomes impossible to come up with a new one on a weekly or monthly basis without ripping off either historical styles or a particular designers' style.” So, yes, many of his great works can be characterised by that handmade quality, and it often makes them all the more engaging.
He took a year off in 2000 and put together the excellent Things I Have Learned book-come-collection-of-pullouts charting the good and the bad from a life spent in design. If you’re a fan of good design and powerful ideas, then you could do a lot worse than buy it and take a look. He seems to have a knack of applying interesting and personal ideas into work that he can actually get paid for, like the ‘COMPLAINING IS SILLY. EITHER ACT OR FORGET’ idea. Fed up of overhearing people moaning about life in cafes and bars - an epidemic he believed to be particularly prevalent in Vienna - he felt obliged to do something about. How could he encourage people to look around them and see the positive side of things rather than the negative; how could he tire people’s incessant moans? Well, taking advantage of the fact that newsprint yellows significantly in the sun, he and his small team built giant billboard stencils in the sun and left them in the sunlight on the roof of their New York studio. When they removed the stencils, the areas beneath remained completely white. And then, commissioned by a Portuguese beer brand presumably hellbent on promoting a more optimistic approach to life, the newsprint was rolled up and mounted in Lisbon. In the blazing sun the message was simple yet effective: stop complaining. A week later, though, completely faded, the message was clearer still: stop complaining and do something about it, or else you’ll fade away, forgotten, erased. Nice.
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