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The Right Questions with James Victore
Episode 41: Stefan Sagmeister
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What if the secret to sustaining a lifetime of creative brilliance isn't working harder, but stepping away completely?
Stefan Sagmeister, the visionary designer behind album covers for Lou Reed, The Rolling Stones, and Jay-Z, reveals how his revolutionary sabbatical approach—taking one year off every seven—has been the source of his most groundbreaking work.
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DJ Khaled. Stefan Sagmeister has designed for clients as diverse as the Rolling Stones, hbo and the Guggenheim Museum. He's a two-time Grammy winner and also earned practically every important international design award. Stefan frequently speaks on the TED stage about how the big subjects of our lives, like happiness or beauty, and how they connect to design and what that actually means to our everyday lives. His books sell in the hundreds of thousands and his exhibitions have been mounted in museums around the world. Around the world, his exhibit, the Happy Show, attracted over half a million visitors worldwide and became the most visited graphic design show in history.
Speaker 1:A few years ago, I was asked to introduce Stefan to the stage in Switzerland, as a matter of fact, and I thought about it for a moment how to introduce Stefan Sagmeister, because he and I have been pals for practically 30 years. So what I did is I got up on stage and I said ladies and gentlemen, if you could do me a favor and help introduce Stefan Sagmeister, and I basically got them all to do the the clapping and stomping from the Queen's song, right? And while they were doing that, I said Ladies and gentlemen, mesdames et messieurs, dames et messieurs, je présente Stefan Segmeister, because I felt a talent as big as his needed a proper introduction. So, without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, stefan Sagmeister, but I'd like to start with what I love to ask everybody, which is Stefan, what made you weird as a kid?
Speaker 2:Well, I was very tall, you know, I basically got to be pretty much my height, which is six foot four or six foot five, when I was, I think, 13. When I was, I think, 13,. In every class picture there was like this one guy in the back room, left hand side, just heads taller than everybody else and, of course, like I think, like most kids, I would have loved to be the same height as everybody else. You know, I think you just don't want to really stick out. You know, I think you just don't want to really stick out. I think by the time I was 18, 19, I didn't really mind anymore. Also, I was going to a lot of live concerts where, of course, that turned out to be a real advantage.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, correct me. I remember once years ago you told me the story of, I think I think of you getting caught writing graffiti, and it was. It's also strange how that changes. We actually wrote the graffiti on a on a on the house of fest, like the festival house kind of thing, that protesting how much money was being spent for elite culture when there was nothing left for youth culture and, of course, the local cops considering I also had put posters with my name on it that had A's in the circle. That was also like for anarchy. That was also sprayed by other people. I don't think that we sprayed A's in the circle. That was also like for anarchy. That was also sprayed by other people. I don't think that we sprayed A's in a circle, but that's how they got, you know, onto the idea that it could be me, because it was sprayed so high up, because I was so stupid. They were rather convinced it was me. I, you know, of course, said it was not me and I don't think that they had a witness. So that was that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, if I can go back very quickly to that, uh, spring incident, it's also for me. It's always super interesting how my opinion on, things also changes. Now I'm very happily going to that exact cultural center that we protested against. As you know, 15, 16-year-olds and you know we just participated in an outfair that was in there.
Speaker 2:I happily watch concerts and opera in this thing, so it's just, it's always super mind boggling to me that I could have been so convinced at one time that this is the right thing and have a totally different opinion on it, meaning, at the same time, we also went on to the street, made demonstrations for Daniel Notiega in Nicaragua, which now turned out to be pretty much in the running for the worst government in all of South America. You know, I think between Venezuela and Nicaragua, those truly are the two countries that are the poorest, where the people do the least. Well, and as a 16, 15-year-old, I thought that this was the shit, that this was where, that this was there. You know how can. We should be run. In any case, let's go to your question.
Speaker 1:Sorry, no, no, it's quite all right. Based on the work you were doing early on, can I use the term vis-a-vis you as a child I imagine you as a kid interested in science and magic, because I see there are motifs that you used early on that have this kind of like playfulness about, and curiosity about science and magic.
Speaker 2:I think that came a little later. Like as a real child, I neither was particularly interested in science nor in magic. I think at one time I had a magic kit, but it was not something that was super, super close to my. It literally all came later. I wound up very, very young doing the layout for a magazine left-wing magazine. That was the time of the spring. I did posters for that magazines, both some a little political, some also just music festival things like that.
Speaker 2:And then I think during while I studied and it became clear that engaging the viewer would be a big deal, I became much more interested in science, big deal. I became much more interested in science. And then I think I saw some sort of like magic tricks that could be involved in design that you could kind of use to to again involve the viewer. And then ultimately for my graduation thesis at Pratt I went to grad school at Pratt because I had gotten a scholarship and it was a possibility to elongate another two years of basically doing whatever I wanted. And for my graduation thesis at Pratt I did a written thesis, very properly researched I think it was 400 pages and it was called the title.
Speaker 2:I kind of forgot, but something like incredible, surprising magic gimmicks in graphic design, surprising magic gimmicks in graphic designs, and I literally looked at every single thing that wasn't really straightforward for color printing. You know anything from scratch and sniff to. You know things like moving devices, like things that animated without needing a camera, yeah, 3d stuff, stuff that grew like plenty, things like basically everything that has been used historically in this direction and stuff that I thought could be used in that direction and that, of course, having researched that properly and having been quite relentless in interviewing designers who had done stuff in this direction, then I think was quite influential. For when, you know, later on I opened the studio and some of these things just were waiting to be used.
Speaker 1:Early on, before Pratt, before coming to the States, or even as a kid, was your creativity nurtured, like by family or school?
Speaker 2:Not particularly. I mean, we had, of course, drawing classes, meaning art classes, in school, but as a child I wasn't particularly good or particularly interested. I had a classmate who was I had a classmate who was like I had a classmate who could draw a you know a spaceship from memory that looked so good that classmates would give him their you know their lunch in exchange for one of those drawings. You know which was high. This was, you know, very, very valid forms of payments, so the drawings must have been really, really good. This was not me and I actually was not a particularly good drawer. I'm now an okay drawer because the university that basically the university that I wanted to attend in Vienna, had a conservative professor and he wouldn't take anybody without real drawing skills. So for a year before that university I did nature studies, hands chairs, hands chairs, plans, portraits, and it turned out that you can learn it. You know meaning. I probably would never be a fantastic drawer, but you can definitely become a decent drawer by doing it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, you can get good at at practice. You can practice and get good at anything, Are there? What are the best or most interesting lessons you've learned from your parents?
Speaker 2:I think my parents were ultimately very passionate about what they did, specifically my mom, which was, in her case, having a store.
Speaker 2:My parents had the big store in the tiny town and she was a salesperson through and through and I think that passion made the store successful and it gave her a real I don't know line to live that she followed. It also came in the small town with quite some status because she was first art master and, considering that pretty much if you needed clothing you went to that store. So pretty much the whole small town you know this is 25,000 people knew her, or half of them, which you know, to me as a kid was a pain in the ass because you couldn't walk through town with my mom without being stopped every 10 meters to say hello and chat a little bit with this person and that person they were. I think that they treated they had about 10 employees in that store and I think they treated them well, not because that was good for business but, I think, because this is how you live the life and, in addition, they never really became friends with them.
Speaker 2:And in addition they never really became friends with them. So they literally like basically this was very much a respectful professional relationship and I think I, without really being conscious of it, behave in my studio very similar Like I became very good friends with many of people who had worked with us. Once they stopped working with us and then we went out drinking and sometimes now, I mean, we even have holidays together. But while we worked together it was quite a professional relationship. I think that's sort of like the first thing that would come to my mind.
Speaker 1:Okay, well, it's funny because you yourself are what I think of as a very personable, very generous with your time, very generous with your time. I've seen you in crowds and I've seen you, you know, when fans come up and you are very generous and a very open person. So I think there's a big influence of your mom. Yeah, do you? Do you consider yourself spiritual?
Speaker 2:No, no, not particularly. I'm not religious. I love religious architecture, so I'm in churches all the time, but I'm there for the architecture, the beauty, the form, the time and effort and love spent on building these things and love spent on building these things. This is true for Buddhist temples or Jewish temples, or meaning, or for Japanese temples. So, but yeah, I love the form and I don't really consider myself particularly spiritual.
Speaker 1:Okay, it's funny because I have not asked anyone else that question, but it came up to me with you for some reason.
Speaker 2:Oh, it was interesting. Let's say, in Bali, of course you are around a lot of Buddhists and I remember a guy who was very deep into Buddhism and he somehow found the book like things I've learned in my life so far, and he was convinced that this was deeply Buddhist. And I have to say I was sort of flattered by that, because I came up with these things without knowing pretty much anything at the time about Buddhism, but I definitely took it more as a compliment also. But I myself would, yeah, meaning I think of course you are influenced by various religious directions on how to live, meaning you know, even from the Ten Commandments I mean you know even from the Ten Commandments, most of them are absolutely fine in. This is how you should live.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and obviously he thought that many of the things that I had come up by myself, of what I've learned, I could have also found in Buddhism. And I of course found that to be super true for almost anything that the big directions, be it stories or rules to live by, have been pretty much set for ages, for ages and it really what we can do is somehow find a new version of this or a version that works for us Meaning in the things I've learned. Like you know, I had a thing. I had one line that says everything I do always comes back to me, and I had written that down in my diary because I found it to be true. But a year or two later I discovered that what goes around comes around. It's pretty much exactly the same thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, or karma, yeah, karma is a bitch.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so they all pretty much say the same thing. But what goes around comes around. I had heard so often that it became meaningless to me and simply expressing that very same thing differently became meaningful. And, of course, now that I've seen hundreds of reprints of that thing that we had done and it was published in magazines and all of those thingsimes carved out of teak wood and I have a whole ceiling in my bedroom that's gorgeous and beautiful, that basically has some of those things carved into the ceiling, with the expectation that I would lie in bed, look up the ceiling and be reminded of some of these things, look up the ceiling and will be reminded of some of these things. But they have been so much part of my life and I know them so well that the ceiling really makes no difference, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So, like I said earlier, thank you for taking the time, because I know you're on sabbatical, one of your years off, and that's one of the things I would like to just touch on a little bit the idea of regeneration, taking the time to figure out what you know. Can you talk about that a little bit?
Speaker 2:Sure, well meaning. I took the first sabbatical seven years after opening the studio out of a reason because I felt that the work was getting repetitive, both from a process point of view we were doing album covers at the time and realizing that album cover number 42 just wasn't as much fun as the first one. I wasn't that engaged and I felt if I'm getting less and less engaged the whole thing will kind of go down the drain. It will be like you know, I'll enter a vicious circle. So I felt I needed to do something to stop this and the best thing I could come up with was doing a sabbatical. And that first one was very scary because I thought it will be forgotten, it will look unprofessional, because I just started a design studio that actually I was able to put it there where it was successful, like we did the kind of things that I wanted to do. You know we started out. The idea was to do design for the music industry. In those first seven years we did work for the Stones and the Talking Heads and Lou Reed, like the people that I really loved. So it had worked and now to go a year close to studio was scary and it probably was the biggest hurdle I had to jump over that I remember. But I felt the alternative of just going on without a change seemed not delightful and so I did it and I enjoyed the year very, very much. It was a great year.
Speaker 2:In that year, in that first year, I almost did nothing but sort of ideas, explorations. I did not produce a single thing really and I was at the end of the year quite happy to reopen the studio, to go back into really producing things where you would see what you've done and looking back on it. I mean specifically now that I'm in my fourth sabbatical and I have three completed sabbaticals. They were crazy successful. The work that we produced in the last 30 odd years. The majority of the pieces that I really think were worthwhile doing that I find it was good that we did them came out of thinking of the sabbaticals, and which means really that if I wouldn't have had the guts at the time to do the sabbatical, most of the pieces that I now love would have never seen the light of day day-to-day of a design studio. There's deadlines and there are things and there's problems with this and problems with that. It's very difficult to really step back and look at the big picture. So it's possible. I'm not sure it's possible that we would still be doing CD covers and would be wondering why business would be so bad if I would have done the sabbaticals. I'm not quite sure I probably would have changed, but in any case it's so. There is that.
Speaker 2:There is a second big deal that came out of the sabbatical, which is that because I had a whole year to think about stuff, a lot of the stuff that I thought I would love to be doing if I would only have the time turned out. I didn't want to do at all. It was just an assumption in my brain. An example would be during the busy studio times I thought that I would love to read much more but didn't have the time. I didn't read a single book more in my sabbaticals than I did in busy studio times. I'm now on sabbatical, I'm more than halfway through and I've probably read four or five books, which is pretty much on par with what I do when the studio is super busy.
Speaker 2:And probably most important is that if I look at my students I taught until last year at the graduate program at SVA Many of them, when they come, see design as a calling, like they're really into it. And when I meet them four or five years later at a conference or on the street and I talk to them, I feel that many of them now see this world, see this as a job, the kind of thing that you look forward to, the weekend on Wednesday to the weekend on Wednesday, and I think that the sabbaticals were by far the best strategy that I know to keep this whole thing as a calling, yeah, and not deteriorating into a career. You know, where you constantly have to ask yourself is all this hard work really work it? Or worse, when it's a job? And you know, I remember a friend of mine who works for a very famous new york fashion design company famous New York fashion design company and they have the whole building and she told me that basically on Wednesday, the conversations in the elevator are well, only two more days, yeah, so that's not a way to live, yeah, and I know specific.
Speaker 2:Well, if you have a choice, you know, I mean obviously if you're, there's a lot of people who don't really have a choice. But I think that if you're on a level where you started design and you're a grown up, I think there is some agency studied design and you're a grown-up. I think there is some agency within you that you can say I want to do this or I want to do that, and it's scary. I totally see that. This is the first sabbatical where my partner also goes on sabbatical.
Speaker 2:It's her first and it's her first and she's now because we are seven, eight months in quite settled and the work that she's doing on sabbatical is fantastic, but it was scary. I mean she definitely had to go. She had to jump a big hurdle.
Speaker 1:And I think.
Speaker 2:One last thing is I did a talk about sabbaticals on TED, and you know, tedcom is super, super popular, so it has millions of views. So sometimes people at a conference come up to me and say I saw your talk and I'm doing this, I did a sabbatical too, which of course makes me ask them so how was it, and James? There was not a single person who didn't have glossy eyes when they responded.
Speaker 1:Super, super, yeah. No, I think there's nothing worse, especially especially in in the creative field, to ask somebody you know how's work, and they go eh, it's work. And I'm like, oh my God, you fucking lose. You lose If you can't figure that out, if you can't understand that that is a choice, so bravo, so bravo. I want to go back a little bit to the early work, which is music. Why music? I mean, I understand. When I was a kid I used to draw album covers and read just redraw, kiss and Elton John and Pink Floyd. Why music?
Speaker 2:I mean, that's a very easy answer, Not that I was aware of at the time, but specifically now, looking back, I think out of all of the arts, music is the most emotional. I don't think that there is another art form that can change my mood in such a direct way just by consuming it.
Speaker 2:And I was a terrible musician. I was in a prog rock band that was not very good, we composed far too difficult music for our abilities to play it. But being connected to it, or I would say, following those two passions the music and at the time, you know, I opened the studio when I was just about 30, my music was still very central to my life. It's less central now, but it was very central then seemed like a no-brainer combining those two. And of course I think I definitely expected that it would be more fun to meet David Bruin or Mick Jagger than it would be to sit in meetings with marketing managers.
Speaker 2:It is, I think at the time that turned out to be not true, but at the time I thought it would be true. It was kind of the only packaging that wouldn't be thrown away. You know that it really lived in people's living rooms. I think that is true for vinyl now again. But it definitely wasn't true for CD covers where people, including myself, disposed of entire collections because they weren't really necessary anymore. I love the fact that you could be, that you weren't talking to other designers but to a very big mass audience. You know we did an album for Jay-Z where the first print run was 5 million copies, so it was really mass, but you could still at the same time go, you know, I think, out of many of the, let's say, commercial graphic design endeavors.
Speaker 1:Right now you're thinking oh man, I wish James Victoria could be my mentor, my guru. Hell, I wish he was my coach. Well, you can make that happen. Go to yourworkisagiftcom. There's a questionnaire that will probably help you out, but it'll also give you access to a free call. So let's talk. Let's free you from overwhelm and creative frustration. Let's build your business and help you get paid to do what you love. Again, go to yourworkisagiftcom, let's talk.
Speaker 2:Music was definitely, on the more artistic side, designed for music, you know. Or if we'd say I think there's a fantastic saying by Adorno, the philosopher, who I normally am not in the habit of quoting, but he basically says that there is nothing that is completely 100% functional and there is nothing that is completely 100% non-functional, because even the most non-functional things, even if it was designed to be completely non-functional, has some function in it. Let's say, even if Donald Judd says he wants his pieces to not function at all, I can stand in front of it, make a selfie and give it some function. I can stand in front of it, make a selfie and give it some function, while, let's say, even the most functional thing like a cog is somehow informed by issues of transparency or that might come from the non-functional world. So the whole thing is basically just on a level where you have non-function here and function here. And so if you look at it from a design perspective, okay, like a text form is very close maybe to pure function, while an album cover is much closer to non-function.
Speaker 2:And we as an audience, I think we love non-function. We celebrate non-functional things more, like you know, we celebrate the designer, the architect of a cathedral or a museum that doesn't have a lot of function, much more than the designer of a factory which has many, many more functions. And we celebrate, let's say, in the tiny world of graphic design, the designer of the album cover more than the designer of the tax form of the album cover, more than the designer of the text form, even though that's very debatable which of these two designs are actually more helpful to the public at large? Yeah, it would probably be difficult to be a known designer within the graphics industry as a designer of text forms, while my studio got quite well known doing album covers yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Um, back when I was in new york and hanging out with my new york designer pals, I used to always enjoy asking you know, especially when we're in a group asking the table, do you consider yourselves artists? And I was amazed at the amount of resistance to admit to that. No, no, no, no, no, I'm a designer. Stefan, are you an artist?
Speaker 2:I'm not, so I'm on that New York table. I know you are, and here is my reasoning. I would say that, as a viewer, I don't give a shit. As a viewer, it does not matter to me at all if a piece has been designed by an artist or a designer. As a viewer, it matters. Does it touch me, is it good, is it innovative? Is it something that's close to my heart? Can I relate to it as a doer, as a designer, as a person who makes things? I'm, of course, asked about this all the time, and there I would say I simply follow the terminology.
Speaker 2:That has been part of my life, which means that I went to design school. I ran a design studio all my life, design school. I ran a design studio all my life, Even now that we really don't have clients you know, in the last six years we didn't really have any client whatsoever and so it's we do. Most of the most of my time really is spent creating exhibitions, and those exhibitions often take place in museums that are clearly art museums, but I still say it's design, simply because I want it to have a function, simply because I wanted to have a function and I think my favorite quick definition between the two is one from Donald Jutt that says design has to work, art does not, which really is a difference of functionality. And when you really go into the detail that doesn't really work anymore.
Speaker 2:Because you know, we take the example of Andy Warhol. He started out as a commercial illustrator, won many commercial illustrator trophies, changed into being a designer later in his life and, sorry, we have a little bit of noise in the back, but I think we'll be fine, it's okay. And while he was working as an artist did many of his portraits to finance his graphic design project, interview Magazine. While he was being an artist he did arguably much better work as a graphic designer for albums, covers for the Stones and Velvet Underground yeah, meaning the Velvet Underground banana cover is demonstrably a better piece of work than the portrait he did of some wife for a German industrialist that he literally only did to make some money to and admitted that that's what he did. That's what he did. He made some money to finance interviews. So it becomes some of his functional work is clearly better than some of his non-functional work.
Speaker 2:But in general I think that Donald Judd's thing is standing and therefore I'd say, even though almost all of the work that we're doing now doesn't really have clients. I still want it to function. I still want it to function. If I have other strands of their ambitions and don't want anything, they really don't care. This would be a disaster for me. If people come out of the exhibitions that we do and they say I haven't understood anything and it didn't touch me and it didn't move me and it didn't change my mind on everything, I think I would say that I failed, that the functionality part of this exhibition did not work and there is a functionality part part of this exhibition did not work and there is a function.
Speaker 1:Is your intention still to touch someone's heart with your work?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely Meaning. I think that the shortest way I could explain it would be that I think a piece of good design has to help somebody and it has to delight somebody. If it's just helping, if it's only function, it might as well be a piece of engineering. I mean, you know, a functional doorknob helps somebody opening the door and it's perfectly fine as that. An engineer can create that doorknob. A designer, hopefully, creates that doorknob in a way that it is beautiful, that it's a delightful piece, and so I think that's really what makes it into a piece of design.
Speaker 2:So all those that I sometimes hear at conferences who oh, I'm not really about making things pretty, I'm not about aesthetics, I'm a problem solver. Pretty, I'm not about aesthetics, I'm a problem solver I think if they really look into their heart might have to agree if they have health awareness that there is a big portion of laziness in that statement that the problems that we usually need to solve are so unbelievably easy that if you think you're a problem solver, you're really lazy, Because solving most of the problems that we need to solve is almost nothing. Like you know, if you design a chair and all it needs to do is to be comfortable well, I can do 50 of those in an afternoon, but if it needs to be beautiful and relevant in 2025, it's one of the hardest design problems there is Fighting against 5,000 years of human chair history, and you'll need to come up with something that is better than what has been produced in the last 5,000 years, and that's unbelievably difficult because there have been a number of geniuses throughout the ages.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I often think of the Buckminster Fuller quote where he says I never think about beauty when I'm working on the project, but at the end of the project, if it's not beautiful, I've done something wrong.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, you um yes, that beauty is basically built into his working process.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah. A lot of designers bitch and moan about convincing clients. You know that that process of getting them to, to see your idea, getting your, you know you're getting your way through, seeing your work, envisioning your work, you know, um, um, the way you, the way you want, um, what's it like when you're working with Lou Reed, the Rolling Stones, david Byrne, whomever? Is that process, the same? Reed, the Rolling Stones, David Byrne, whomever?
Speaker 2:Is that process the same? Yeah, I mean, in some ways it's similar. I mean, obviously there are some differences. One of the difficult things working in the music industry was that in some cases there was always a danger that you had three clients, meaning the band, the management of the band and the record company, which inherently have slightly different goals, and that can become quite difficult. But of course you have to present it and I think that maybe the best thing that I've learned at Pratt was from a headhunter that came in and she said stop, think when you're, when you're presenting something to a, to a. She talked about it, it was in a job interview. She said stop thinking about it from your point of view, think about it from their point of view. Think about what their needs are, how you can help them, how you think about what it is if you would be in their shoes that would make you want to be part of their team. And I really somehow she said it that I could really hear it and also apply it to clients.
Speaker 2:So when we did client presentations no matter if it was for Lou Reed or if it was for, you know, a commercial company we really first, we really talk to them what it is they need to achieve, not about how they want to achieve it. But what is it like if? In Lou Reed's case, why are you doing a new album? What's the story behind the album? What is it that you want to say in the album? Where do the songs come from? In what state of mind were you when you wrote them? He didn't talk about the cover itself. Or, if it was a commercial company, what is it that you want to achieve? Do you want to sell more of this or change the whatever? What is it that you want to achieve? And then it was our job to really do the things that would achieve this.
Speaker 2:If it was an unethical thing, that achievement, we said no. We grew very, very slowly. So we were in the fantastic position to pick and choose from our favorite clients because we didn't grow as fast. We didn't grow with the jobs that were offered to us. We grew much, much, much slower, and that, of course, put us into the fantastic position that we didn't have to lie, because we chose the kind of jobs that we felt were worthwhile for products that were worthwhile doing, or tell the truth, which was great, because if you can tell the truth, you can be so much more convincing than when you're lying. Yes, just like in real life. So it's just like in real life Just like in real life.
Speaker 1:So it's Just like in real life. You are someone I would consider a. Even though you limited the number of jobs that you did in a year, you had a cap on them. You know you wanted to be working on one thing at a time, still still prolific and still somewhat fantastical In that. One specific thing that always stuck out in my mind was getting people to anally retentively separate colored shades of pennies in a in a plaza and make exquisite typography out of it. Even with work like that, considering these things and the boldness and the audacity, do you have doubt?
Speaker 2:Sure, yes, I mean, there is stuff that Right now I'm working on newish things. It's the first sabbatical where I continue on the theme, so I'm still working on this idea that long-term thinking creates a totally different worldview than the short-term, like most media in the short-term. That's one reason why it's so negative, because scandals and catastrophes happen so quickly and they work brilliantly in the short-term. So I'm still working on the long-term thinking, but trying out very different, somewhat different directions, like installations or sculptures a fantastic sounding board for it.
Speaker 2:Like my partner and I have very, very much the same kind of view when it comes to other people's work. So if we go to a museum, no matter if it's design or art and one of us says so, which is your favorite piece? Here, we almost always have either the same or very close to the same piece in our mind. And so let's say, if I have doubts about a direction or a thing, I can easily run it by her, because I know that we are very much on a similar level and I trust her taste. And I think that that was something that was also the case to a large extent with Jessica that you know, in the years when I think Jessica and I were partners for eight years at Sigmund Schoenwald. I think that worked very brilliantly there and even before that there's you know people that worked with me.
Speaker 1:You know people that worked with me, like Matthias or Hjalti, or many of the other people that then went on and started their own studios and became very well-known designers in their own right Excellent.
Speaker 2:Do you think graphic design has a civic or a moral responsibility? I mean, I don't think necessarily more than other professions. I think that we all, as people, have a civic or moral responsibility how we behave to everybody, how we behave to everybody. But you have that responsibility if you are a garbage man or a I don't know the governor of a state.
Speaker 2:I think that in general we all have that as people being alive. I'm not sure if designers is just more pleasant to live is just more pleasant to live. So yeah, I think that there is. It also works and you know, I sadly can't claim to be kind all the time. I have a fantastic role model in my sister. I have three sisters and there is one in particular who is particularly kind and I try to model my life here and there after her, but I'm way not as good at it as she is.
Speaker 1:Last question, Stefan what is a beautiful future?
Speaker 2:I mean, I think, doing more my life, both my designing and the private one and of course they're intertwined, I think is on the right track. I mean, obviously, right now it's very pleasant because I'm in Guadalajara, mexico, which is a fantastic place to be. You know, it's big, it's cheap enough that all the urban crafts are still here. Our talk here I have a guy come over and we talk about casting bronze for part of a statue that I'm working on. So it's just like that sort of newness. You know, I've never done anything in bronze, so that sort of newness is exciting. It's also the fact that Guadalajara is not your typical touristy city. It's also the fact that Guadalajara is not your typical touristy city. So there is not. And you know, mexico City right now is super, super hot. I mean, you know, half of Williamsburg, brooklyn, moved to Mexico City. If you go into Roma or Condesa, parts of Mexico City, you'll see. You know guys with man buns and MacBook Pros pretty much filling up the cafes and restaurants.
Speaker 1:As my old neighborhood.
Speaker 2:Exactly that is not the case in Guadalajara, which makes us, being foreigners here that stay for the long term, kind of special, which leads to the fact that we have an easy time being invited to studios or have conversations with artists, designers here that are super interesting. Also, because it's not so expensive. A lot of the great Mexican artists have very large studios here and meaning I can show you quickly around my building environments, meaning it's surrounding here and yeah, it's lovely. And at the same time I know that coming October I won't I'll be excited to be back in New York, back into a more in a more regular routine, back to see. You know, guadalajara is fantastic for working, it's not bad for seeing out, but of course, not comparable at all of what is possible in New York. So I think that's going to be exciting again too, and I think that, if I can, well, I tell you something else. It's exciting again too, and I think that, if I can, well, I tell you something else. It's.
Speaker 2:I had lunch with with Milton Glaser at one point years ago, with the late Milton, the late, the great Milton Glaser, and I asked him what he thinks is his best piece of design, expecting, of course he's going to say the iHeartNewYork logo. Sure, simply because that's the most famous and, he said, his most successful piece of design is that he could configure his life into such a way that he's still super interested in design right now. Yeah, and I think he was in his 80s when he said that. And he also said that many of his colleagues kind of became either cynical or disinterested or kind of fell out of that.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah, that, yeah, yeah, and I'm not sure if I completely got it when he told me, but I'm definitely getting it now. Yeah, yeah, I, I experienced I. It's funny because I experienced the other side with some of his colleagues who were friends of mine, who said you know, it's all been done before and I thought, oh, that doesn't sound right, I don't want to be that. So you are living a beautiful future then, stefan.
Speaker 2:Well, let's see, let's see. But I think that in general, I know in positive psychology the best way to figure out the single this is scientific. The single best way to figure out how good your life is going to be in the future is to see how it was in the past. So if that rule turns out to be true, I'm fine.
Speaker 1:Cool and hey, by the way, having an artist come over in a little bit to talk about casting a bronze statue, that sounds like the work an artist would do. I don't know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, meaning it's going to be, we are doing it and it's going to be shown in a museum. That is an art museum. Yeah, not the design museum. Yeah, not the design museum. But that bronze that we're doing is, at the same time, when you read the little label, also a piece of data visualization and it will show you how I think the piece will be called and I shouldn't really talk about pieces that are not finished, but I think it's pretty. I mean, we're on the way to finishing it. The piece will be called You're an Atheist in Brackets to Most Religions, and it basically just shows you know, the whole statue is part of it is a historical statue, so part of it is an 18th century statue and then other parts are new bronze in different parts, and it basically shows what percentage Christianity, buddhism, muslims choose. It's so tiny that we have to put that. It's almost not doable in bronze, but in any way.
Speaker 2:It will be that piece of data visualization and I would like, and it has a purpose, so I would. So in some ways it's still a piece of design and of course, like always, I have an ulterior motive to call myself a designer Because and this is probably the last thing the history of graphic design is filled with people who were really, really good designers and in their 50s kind of got pissed at their clients and said, fuck this shit, I want to become an artist and then did terrible art. And if I can avoid that trajectory you know, if you look at the paintings that Paul Rand did late in his life, like awful versions of Paul Klee I think, if I can avoid that and just and I think that design is like, one of the wonderful things in design is that you can go into all these different directions. You know, we did furniture, we did the film, we are now doing things that are not for clients, but you still can call it design.
Speaker 2:And if we go back quickly to that sculpture that we haven't even done yet but hopefully will complete in the next weeks religions and tries to make that thing communicatable in a hopefully pretty beautiful piece of sculpture I mean, that's pretty much the definition of communication design. Yeah, you know a large thing and you make it, as a designer, communicatable. Yeah, you make it that it's, you make it as a designer communicatable, you make it understandable, and so, yeah, and at the same time, if somebody wants to call it out, please, please, be my guest, let them.
Speaker 1:Just let them. Stefan, you're a delight to speak with. Thank you for taking your time with me, and I know that my audience will really appreciate this. I've gotten until October to get to Guadalajara.
Speaker 2:Exactly, we actually do have a spare bedroom.
Speaker 1:Stefan Sagmeister. Thank you for your time.
Speaker 2:James Ciccoro, it was a pleasure.
Speaker 1:I love you, buddy, wonderful Same here.
Speaker 2:Thanks a lot, adios, bye-bye, we'll see you next time.