Graphics

Stefan Sagmeister

Stefan Sagmeister is a New York based Graphic Designer who gained recognition for his unique visual explorations. He has his own design firm Sagmeister & Walsh Inc. in New York and has designed album covers for artists such as The Rolling Stones, Aerosmith and Lou Reed.

The above is his poster for his AIGA detroit lecture in which he asked his intern to cut the lettering onto his skin. According to his website the purpose of this was to try and visualise the pain that goes into his design projects. This is a great example of his unusual approach to design. The poster itself is really very striking but also quite disturbing. It makes you wince a little bit thinking about the process behind it, which obviously must have been painful. But I do quite like how it is quite powerful and it has strong meaning behind it to do with his work personal, so it obviously has some relevance and isn't supposed to be just a shock tactic.

The second design which I really liked by Stefan Sagmeister was his Button Fly. I really like this design because it's clever and looks visually really quite nice. The piece is a regular looking fly but when you look closer you can see it's made from several Levi buttons. When I first saw the piece I thought the fly was just simply linking to the fact we call the zips on our jeans "fly" but then I realised the advert was for Levi's button fly jeans... hence the button and fly combo! Which I just thought was really quite clever and quite humorous as well. The piece is printed, and the buttons are foil stamped with rainbow foil. 

This is a personal project done by Stefan. I think this really shows his work varies a lot. His concepts and materials are never the same. This like real-life typography I really like. It looks great brought together in a series of photos and this piece is one inspired by his grandpa. That again has loads of meaning behind it and is really quite inspirational.