Born in 1962 in Austria, Stefan Sagmeister is a New York based designer and typographer. Owning his own design firm, Sagmeister Inc in New York City, he has designed album covers for Lou Reed, OK Go, The Rolling Stones, David Byrne, Aerosmith and Pat Metheny.
When asked to design a poster for an AIGA lecture, Sagmeister carved the details into his chest with an X-acto knife and photographed the result. The 1999 AIGA Detroit poster typifies Stefan Sagmeister’s style, the mixture of simplicity presented through the rough handwriting contrasting with the shock element of the text being carved into his skin. "The strength of his work lies in his ability to conceptualise: to come up with potent, original, stunningly appropriate ideas".
Orginally having chose to study engineering after high school, Sagmeister switched to graphic design after working on illustrations and lay-outs for Alphorn, a left-wing magazine. Applying to study graphics at the city’s prestigious University of Applied Arts, Sagmeister was orginially rejected – "just about everybody was better at drawing than I was".
Humour having always been an integral theme in Stefan's work, his work has been described to "mix sexuality with wit and a whiff of the sinister". His goal was always to design music graphics. With no record labels showing any interest in working with him, Sagmeister turned to designing a CD cover for a friend’s album, H.P. Zinker’s Mountains of Madness. This work led to Sagmeister winning the first of his four Grammy nominations, also opening up his oppurtunites as music graphic designer. Then being invited by Lou Reed to design his 1996 album Set the Twilight Reeling.
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