“They’re all from Düsseldorf? I had no idea!”

In May 2024, Stefan Sagmeister was a guest at the Beyond Tellerrand design conference. This was the first visit to Düsseldorf by the Austrian communication designer who now lives in New York. He has won pretty much every major design award going, and has also created covers for the Rolling Stones, Jay-Z and Talking Heads. In 2006, Sagmeister went to Bali for a sabbatical. That break changed his entire outlook. He began to shift his work away from commercial assignments to conveying socially relevant messages. In this interview, Sagmeister reveals how he counters a pessimistic worldview, why he needs an urban environment to be creative and which Düsseldorf bands he rates most highly.

You often speak at conferences and you’ve been invited to give a number of TED Talks. You also review designs on Instagram free of charge. What motivates you to travel the world to share your knowledge and experience?
That’s partly to do with my age. I think that evolution has arranged things so that we have our best ideas while our brains are still growing. That’s until we’re about 30. At my age  (editor's note: Sagmeister was born in 1962) I seem to have a natural instinct to pass on my knowledge. I taught at the School of Visual Arts in New York for 25 years, I visit lots of universities and, as you say, I also offer my support on Instagram. In that way I’m reaching a relatively large number of people. It seems that’s how I can be effective.

Have you been a guest at Beyond Tellerrand before?
Yes, it’s my fourth time. I’ve been at ones in Munich, Hamburg and Berlin. But this is the first time I’ve ever been to Düsseldorf at all.

Your themes revolve around happiness and beauty. And you also argue that, contrary to generally held beliefs, our world isn’t getting worse and becoming more violent, but that it is actually improving steadily. A view that you share with Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker.
Steven Pinker was a big influence on me. In his 2011 book, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, he points out that violence has been gradually decreasing over the course of our civilisation. I was first introduced to long-term thinking as a concept by the Long Now Foundation. (Editor’s note: This US non-profit organisation promotes long-term thinking and is working on a clock that is designed to keep time for the next 10,000 years. I was immediately fascinated. In many areas of our lives, in politics, but also in business, we complain that there is too much short-termism, for example when quarterly results are seen as more important than the question of where a company is going to be in five years’ time. I believe that we lack long-term thinking in many areas. Even retrospectively, we need to be looking at the last five or even the last 50 years. Surprisingly, as Pinker demonstrates, this leads us to a completely different perspective on the world. Since the focus of news both on social media and in the more traditional channels is very short-term and the core message is largely negative, many of us have a distorted view of the world.

Your own exploration of the subject began with the posters that you created after your first sabbatical, right?
My mentor and great role model was the graphic designer Tibor Kalman. He always saw design as a language. When I’d headed the studio for seven years, having previously studied at two different universities, I thought: “Okay, I have mastered this language. Now what do I want to use it for?” Like most graphic designers, I had essentially only been using a commercial language up to that point. After my sabbatical, I was approached by two clients who gave me a great deal of freedom. One was an Austrian magazine, that was about designing some double-page spreads. The other client was a French poster company, who’d put up billboards in a park. The brief was: “Do anything you like!” That was surprisingly difficult to begin with.

So you came up with the idea of turning insights from your notebook "Things I Have Learned In My Life So Far" into pictures?
Yes, and there was an amazing response. The posters were often reproduced and they were shown worldwide, in newspapers, magazines and on billboards in pedestrian zones. Then I started to communicate things that I don't think are said often enough.

What are you working on at the moment?
There’s a major exhibition at a museum in Shanghai called ‘It’s Getting Better’. The exhibition ‘Besser’ (better) opened on Lake Constance in Austria in May. They represent two different approaches. The Chinese exhibition aims to reflect the subject, the Austrian one is also intended to sell the exhibits. Unlike my exhibition project Beauty or the Happy Show, the exhibition in Austria offers the opportunity to acquire works and take them home to hang over your sofa. As a reminder that whatever you’ve just been reading on social media, it’s not necessarily the end of the world. But I’m thinking of changing the name. Perhaps to ‘Boring’. People still tend to be put off by a positive title.

In the 1990s you were celebrated for your record cover designs. Your clients included the Rolling Stones, Lou Reed, Aerosmith, Jay Z and Talking Heads, to name but a few. But in 2000 you stopped doing them.
For many things in life, the 50th time you do them is not as good as the first one. It’s just not as much fun. One of the definite advantages of my profession is that you can try out different directions and still call yourself a designer. The processes of making a chair and making a film, say, are really nothing like each other.

Düsseldorf is a hotbed of punk and electronic music, the cradle of Krautrock and home to many influential bands. This is where the album ‘Monarchie und Alltag. by Fehlfarben was made, as well as Kraftwerk’s ‘Die Mensch-Maschine’, ‘Autobahn’, ’Trans Europa Express’ and ’Computerwelt’. And also ‘Ein kleines bisschen Horrorshow’ by Die Toten Hosen.
They're all from Düsseldorf? I had no idea!

For which of those bands would you have most liked to design a cover?
For Kraftwerk. But that would have been very difficult, because they were already world class back then. Not only musically, but also intellectually and above all visually. I would say that Kraftwerk’s visual presentation – and I don’t just mean the covers, but also the videos and the stage shows – was something that you just didn’t get anywhere else in Germany or Austria.

For many years, you have been living in New York, a place regarded as the benchmark for the zeitgeist. How has the city changed over that time?
New York has grown up. When I arrived in 1986, it was pretty wild – and also cheap! I was able to rent a room in an apartment on the Lower East Side for 400 dollars. Just the thing for a design student. And luckily, as I slowly established myself over the years, the city has also settled down. If it was still as dangerous today as it was back in 1986 I wouldn’t be living in New York now.

As a creative person, do you need that sort of urban environment?
That’s probably true in my case. During my first sabbatical I was in Bali for a year. It would have been much cheaper to rent a house out in the sticks. But I preferred to live 15 minutes from Ubud, with access to people, restaurants and shops. On my last sabbatical I spent four months in Schwarzenberg, a little town in the Bregenzerwald region, not far from where I grew up. It was interesting, but I wouldn’t do it again. I found Mexico City more fruitful.

Every seven years you close down your design studio in New York and take a sabbatical for a year, a ritual that you call the 7-year itch. Your next sabbatical starts this autumn. Where will it take you?
Madrid, Buenos Aires and Guadalajara in Mexico. Mexican towns and cities, and some South American ones, are not that tightly packed, so you can still find workshops and small factories near the centre. There is space for art, but also for skilled craftspeople. I find it very agreeable to have a carpenter or a ceramics manufactory just around the corner.

You describe the graphic designer Tibor Kalman, who died in 1999, as an important early influence. Is there a living person who inspires you at the moment?
Yes, my older sister Christine. Her life is full of kindness, she supports other people. That provides her with meaning and happiness. I’d be glad for some of that to rub off on me.

sagmeister.com

Information

Beyond Tellerrand
Beyond Tellerrand was first held in Düsseldorf in 2011. It is a conference that covers a wide range of topics related to technology and creativity. Beyond Tellerrand was started by Marc Thiele, and now takes place annually in Düsseldorf and Berlin. Thiele invites experts from around the world, including Stefan Sagmeister in May 2024.
beyondtellerrand.com

Text: Ilona Marx
Photos: Kristina Hellhake
Other photos of exhibitions and with kind permission of Stefan Sagmeister.