Gallery  July 31, 2024  Carlota Gamboa

Designer Behind Popular Album Covers Gets a New York Retrospective

Wikipedia, Virgin and Stefan Sagmeister

Rolling Stones, "Bridges To Babylon," 1997. License

Lauded Austrian graphic designer and longtime music scene collaborator Stefan Sagmeister is receiving a retrospective in his honor after many years of being an instrumental figure within his community. There’s a chance you’re more familiar with Sagmeister than you might realize, as his work may sit on your shelf in a beloved vinyl collection or on the cover of your Lou Reed lyric book.

Sagmeister, who arrived in New York City as a Fulbright Scholar in the late 80s, quickly became revolutionary in his approach to graphic design and typography. By 1993, he had founded the eponymous company which would eventually go on to reach great lengths, but it wasn’t until he got the opportunity to design Zinker’s Mountains of Madness CD cover that his provocative designs would land on broader radars. 

Wikipedia, Luaka Bop/Warner Bros.

David Byrne, "Feelings," 1997. License

The Mountains of Madness cover, which depicts the close up of a man's affronting expression, is tinted in dark hypnotic hues of red and green. 

In 1996, Lou Reed commissioned Sagmeister for the cover art of Set the Twilight Reeling, followed by David Byrne’s 1997 album Feelings. Byrne’s G.I. Joe style look-a-like doll would not be the final time both artists collaborated, and Sagmeister would go on to receive a Grammy for art directing the Once in a Lifetime Talking Heads box set in 2005. 

A second Grammy was awarded to him five years later for his design of David Byrne’s and Brian Eno’s album Everything That Happens Will Happen Today in 2010. 

“Even though our work is often shown in art museums,” Sagmeister tells Artnet, “I see everything we do as design, simply because all of it needs to have some functionality. Pure art can just be and is not dragged down into the gutter by something as lowly as function.” Sagmeister has lived a long career of dedicating himself to the aesthetics of function

In the past couple of years, he has been considering how to better grapple with a contemporary relationship to history. His goal with the series Beautiful Numbers, asks viewers to consider that though times aren’t perfect, the present has more benefits to offer than the past. 

Described as “propaganda for the living room” against rapid-fire media saturation, Sagmeister hopes that the pieces will live as functioning beings that remind people of society's incremental improvement. 

Wikimedia Commons, Norman Posselt

A portrait of Stefan Sagmeister at Beyond Tellerrand in Hamburg; photographed on May 19, 2022. License

His book of maxims, Things I Have Learned In My Life So Far, also reflects these kinds of personal reminders. Refrains like "worrying solves nothing" and "trying to look good limits my life" call to mind Barbra Kruger-esque typographic works. The book, which includes 15 interchangeable covers, features essays by design historian Steven Heller, Guggenheim chief curator Nancy Spector, and Sagmeister himself.  

Sagmeister’s work has been featured as cover art for OK Go, The Rolling Stones, Jay Z, Aerosmith, and Pat Metheny. The retrospective entitled “The Masters Series: Stefan Sagmeister,” will be hosted by the School of Visual Arts in New York, where he was a professor for many years. It will run from August 29th to October 12th and follows his numerous contributions to the field of design.

About the Author

Carlota Gamboa

Carlota Gamboa is an art writer based in Los Angeles.

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