Stefan Sagmeister...

On Wednesday afternoon there was another talk going on at FIT, it was part of the same programme that organised the Paula Scher talk I went to a few months ago.

This time it was a talk given by Stefan Sagmeister - questionable one of the most important Graphic Designers around today (and important Designers full stop). He's known for doing a lot of experimental typographic work as well as doing a lot of CD covers in the 1990's.

He has a very small studio (4 or 5 people) in Manhattan, not too far away from where the talk was taking place, and they do a mixture of work, they do corporate literature and identities, they do work for charity organisations and they do some other very creative and experimental work. One of the best things about the studio is that they close for 12 months, once every 7 years. It's all aprt of Sagmeister's plan to shave years off his retirement (when he'd just be bored) and spread them out throughout his career... I think it's a fantastic idea.

The talk he gave was very similar to the TED talks that he's done, I'd watched them both before I saw him talk and was incredibly inspired by some of his thoughts and statements. If you click on the titles below it should take you to the different talks if you fancy watching them...

Things I have learnt in my life so far...
The power of time off...

This was one of the pieces Sagmeister talked about, it's part of his 'Things I have learnt in my life so far' book, he often writes one line statements in his diary and later looks back at them and creates various pieces from them, either in scuplture, print or in animation. This particular one was created in a plaza in Amsterdam using Euro cent coins - there's a funny story about it if you watch his TED talk.

It was a great talk, and I'm incredibly glad I got to hear it first hand - I was a bit surprised no-one else in the office made the effort to go really (Abi was off sick, so I'll let her off) - but it's their loss, I always feel really inspired after hearing other designers talk about their work.

As I did after the Paula Scher talk, after the talk had finished I went across the road and enjoyed a burger from brgr - it's now become a little tradition (well maybe after a third talk it will become a tradition), a very tasty tradition.