STEFAN SAGMEISTER is among today’s most important

graphic designers. Born in Austria, he now lives and works in

New York. His long-standing collaborators include the AIGA and
musicians, David Byrne and Lou Reed.
Born in Bregenz, a quiet town in the Austrian Alps, in 1962,
Sagmeister studied engineering after high school, but switched to
graphic design after working on illustrations and lay-outs for Alphorn,
a left-wing magazine.

The first of his D-I-Y graphic exercises was a poster publicizing

Alphorn’s Anarchy issue for which he persuaded fellow students to lie
down in the playground in the shape of the letter A and photographed
them from the school roof.
At 19, Sagmeister moved to Vienna hoping to study graphics at the
city’s prestigious University of Applied Arts. After his first
application was rejected – "just about everybody was better at
drawing than I was" – he enrolled in a private art school and was
accepted on his second attempt.

Through his sister’s boyfriend, the rock musician, Alexander

Goebel, Sagmeister was introduced to the Schauspielhaus theatre
group and designed posters for them as part of the Gruppe Gut
collective.

Many of the posters parodied traditionally twee theatrical imagery

and offset it with roughly printed text in the grungey typefaces of
punk albums and 1970s anarchist graphics.
 was to
design music graphics, but only for music he liked.
To have the freedom to do so, Sagmeister decided
to follow Kalman’s advice by keeping his company
small with a team of three: himself, a designer
(since 1996, the Icelander, Hjalti Karlsson) and an
intern. Sagmeister Inc’s first project was its own
business card, which came in an acrylic slipcase.
When the card is inside the case, all you see is an S
in a circle. Once outside, the company’s name and
contract details appear.

The second commission came from Sagmeister’s

brother, Martin who was opening Blue, a chain of
jeans stores in Austria. Sagmeister devised an
identity consisting of the word blue in black type on
an orange background.
• 1962 Born in Bregenz, Austria. His parents own a fashion retailing business. Educated at a
local engineering school, then at a college in nearby Dornbirn.

•1981 Moves to Vienna. Accepted on his second attempt to study graphic design at the
Vienna University of Applied Arts.

•1984 Having designed posters for Vienna’s Schauspielhaus theatre with the Gruppe Gut
collective, creates the posters for a successful campaign to save the Ronacher music hall
from demolition.

•1985 Graduates with a first class degree and a $1,000 prize from the City of Vienna.

•1987 Arrives in New York with a Fulbright scholarship to study at the Pratt Institute.

•1990 Returns to Vienna for community service as an alternative to military conscription.

Works in a refugee centre. Posters for Nickelsdorf jazz festival.

•1991 Moves to Hong Kong and lands a job with ad agency, Leo Burnett.

•1992 Controversy over Sagmeister’s bum-bearing 4As awards poster.

•1993 Returns to New York (via Sri Lanka) to work for Tibor Kalman at M&Co. Six months
later, Kalman closes M&Co and Sagmeister opens his own studio.

•1994 Creates identity for his brother, Martin’s jeans stores, Blue. Nominated for a
Grammy Award for the cover for H. P. Zinker’s Mountains of Madness.

•1995 Starts collaboration with David Byrne by designing the cover of his Afropea
compilation album.

•1996 First project with Lou Reed: Set the Twilight Reeling album cover. Emblazons a pair
of tongues on poster for AIGA’s Fresh Dialogue talks

•1997 Creates Headless Chicken poster for AIGA biennial conference in New Orleans and
designs graphics for David Byrne’s Feelings and Rolling Stones’ Bridges to Babylon.

•1999 Sagmeister carves the text of a poster for an AIGA lecture at Cranbrook near
Detroit into his own torso.

•2000 Takes a year off to work on experimental projects.

•2001 Reopens studio and publishes the book, Sagmeister: Made You Look.

•2003 Designs Once in a Lifetime boxed set for Talking Heads.

•2004 Visiting professor in Berlin and unveils Trying to look good limits my life, series of
typographic billboards.
Call for Entries poster for 4As advertising awards, Hong Kong,
1992
Poster for the AIGA’s Fresh Dialogue talks in New York, 1996
Poster for Lou Reed’s Set the Twilight Reeling, 1996
Poster for AIGA lecture in Cranbrook, Michigan, 1999