Opening header goes here If there is one thing that drives designer Stefan Sagmeister it is happiness. He has spent years researching, studying, exploring, practicing, designing and exhibiting the concept of happiness. It is a common drive. People spend millions of dollars every year, in every way they can think of, trying to be happy. We are obsessed with being happy. In a stroke of genius, Sagmeister has broken beyond that initial obsession and has discovered a way to structure his practice and life around happiness. Born in 1962 in Bregenz, Austria he studied design at the University of Applied Ar ts Vienna and then later the Pratt Institute. After moving around from city to city working for different agencies, Sagmeister decided to start his own company in 1994. He experienced great success in the first few years, winning several awards for his designs. Despite his success and growing popularity he began to feel dissatisfied with the work that his office was putting out and began to lose vision. He had toyed with the idea of taking some time off to allow himself the freedom to pursue some personal experiments, but had not considered it a reality. It was upon visiting Cranbrook (for which he did his infamous “body typography� poster) and seeing the students there spending their days experimenting and playing, followed by a visit from designer Ed Fella and seeing the freedom of his recent work, that he finally decided to go on sabbatical. After six years of his office’s operation he notified his clients and closed down for a year, refusing any work requests and focused on reigniting his creativity.
Postcard announcement sent out to clients when he opened his office in 1994.
All quotes by Sagmeister
“I made the decision and I put it into my daily planner. Then I told as many many people as I could about it, so that there was no way I could chicken out later.”
“Body typography” poster he did/had done for an AIGA lecture that he was giving at Cranbrook Academy of Art. 1995.
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From the outside, he could not have picked a worse time to close the office. Their work had won several awards and the economy was booming. However, it was something that he felt he needed to do, both for his work and his well-being. He began to lose the sense of calling on his work and increasingly felt that his work was becoming a 9-5 job. For his first sabbatical, Sagmeister chose to stay in New York. Originally, he kept the time open-ended, expecting his creative juices to take over and that ideas would magically start flowing. They did not. He began to get frustrated so he made a daily schedule in which he blocked his day into chunks of time and assigned tasks to each block. Perhaps a bit disillusioned, he was not totally satisfied with his first attempt at taking a sabbatical. Regardless of how he felt about its success, the fruits of that year are still being seen and continue to fuel his work and vision. It also went well enough that he decided to take more sabbaticals in the future. The years following his first sabbatical saw the realization of an exhibition and a book in 2008 titled “Things I Have Learned in My Life So Far”, based on the self-reflections he jotted down in his diary that would become the maxims of his life and inspire years of work and projects. The first of these projects came when Viennese magazine editor Christian Zillner approached Sagmeister to design a series of six magazine spreads.The content was open for Sagmeister to create and the deadline was generous. Sagmeister jumped at the offer and designed the first of his maxims everything I do always comes back to me of which many would follow.
The first of his maxims Sagmeister designed that appeared as six spreads in an Austrian magazine.
Nine of the fifteen covers of his book “Things I Have Learned in My Life so Far”. 2008.
“I had thought that I should do this without any plan. That this vacuum of time, somehow would be wonderful and enticing for idea generatoin. It was not.”
From the show “Things I Have Learned in My Life so Far”. 2008. Above: Wall made of bananas that faded as the bananas aged. Left: Two of the original six monkeys that declared “Everybody Always Thinks They Are Right”, overlooking the show.
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Another Header Since then, many of his maxims have come to visual realization. These designs have made their way, strategically placed around the world for specific purposes. The city of Amsterdam contacted Sagmeister’s office asking them to do something with a plaza. Again, they could do whatever they wanted. They went to the central bank, got 250,000 coins of varying age/color and, using the tile as a grid, made a very beautiful typographic deisgn that read obsessions make my life worse and my work better. It was left open to the public in order to engage the viewer with the decision of leaving the design in-tact or taking advantage of the monetary opportunity. On the first night of it’s completion, someone decided that it was more important for them to have the money than to keep the deisgn intact. and bagged up as much as they could carry. Inevitably the police became invloved. “The Amsterdam Police, in all their wisdom came, saw and they wanted to protect the art work and they sweeped it all up and put it into custody at Police Headquarters.”
“Obsessions Make My Life Worse And My Work Better” Typography using coins done in Amsterdam. 2008.
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“Money Does Not Make Me Happy” design that appeared in .copy magazine.
At this point, word had begun to travel about this new practice that Sagmeister was exploring, and demand began to increase for the design of his sentiments. For exampe, the design for his maxim Money does not make me happy found itself wrapped around the outside of the largest casino in Linz, Austria after it appeared incorrectly in .copy magazine. Another example was a billboard that read Complaining is silly, either act or forget. It was made out of newsprint that had the design stenciled onto it using sunlight. It was then shipped to Lisbon, Spain, and placed in a very sunny spot so that in a week’s time the phrase was completely washed out.
“The Printer lost the file and didn’t tell is. When I got the subscription it read: ‘Money / Does / Does / Make / Me / Happy’.” “A Friend of mine in Austria felt so sorry for me that he talked the largest casino owner in Linz, into letting us wrap his buidling.”
As it appeared in Linz.
Opposite: Automiatic response to clients while Sagmeister was on sabbatical. “Complaining Is Silly. Either Act Or Forget.” Billboard in Lisbon.
The playful introspective nature of this series of work inspired Sagmeister to follow this thread of work further. He has spent the last 10 or so years exploring himself; specifically what happiness is, how it works and what it means to him. His second sabbatical took him to Bali, Indonesia. “I knew New York and Europe too well to generate much excitement and I didn’t know South America and Africa well enough, so Asia it was. The most beautiful landscapes I had seen were in Bali so my decision fell there.” He spent the year in Bali exploring the idea of happiness and began working on multiple projects focused on the subject. One of the projects is a full-length documentary—which he is co-directing— about his happiness in which he experiments with therapy, pharmaceuticals and meditation. The film is set to release late 2013.
Film titles for “The Happy Film” set to come out late 2013.
“I realize how boring it is to hear about other people’s happinesses.”
Another project that came out of his second sabbatical was another exhibition called “The Happy Show” which exhibited in the ICA at the University of Philadelphia in 2012 and again in Toronto in early 2013. In it, the viewer gets a glimpse into Sagmeister’s mind and thinking about happiness.The entire exhibit, even the bathrooms, are used to communicate his process and exploration into what makes him happy. When asked if he was happy: Yes, quite.
Title ambigram for “The Happy Show”.
His quest is certainly not over and the future looks bright for Sagmeister. He is still working on The Happy Film and his work continues to gain traction. He also restructured his company, making designer Jessica Walsch a partner. Perhaps this will allow him more freedom to explore deeper into himself and create a new wave of self-directed design. And, if he keeps to his seven year regimen, he is set to go back on sabbatical in 2014. Who knows what we will see from him in the future? One thing is certain, we won’t see it unless it has already made him happy.
Hallway entering “The Happy Show”. Every space of the gallery was considered and integrated into the show. 2012. Anything that is written, not known by everyone came from: www.sagmeisterwalsh.com Made You Look, Stefan Sagmeister, 2001. Things I Have Learned in My Life so Far, Stefan Sagmeister, 2008.
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