Biography
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.
© Design Museum
Bibliography
Peter Hall, Stefan Sagmeister, Chee Pearlman, Sagmeister: Made You Look, Booth-Clibborn Editions, 2001
Stefan Sagmeister, Visible Music: CD Jacket Graphics, Gingko Press
Donald Albrecht, Ellen Lpton, Steven Skov Holt, Design Culture Now, Princeton Architectural Press, 2000
Stefan Sagmeister, Postcard Graphics: The Best Advertising and Promotion Design
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