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Stefan Sagmeister is the author of six books and honestly one of the most influential designers in the world. I can't believe it.
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He's won multiple Grammy Awards for his designs cuz he's designed album covers for people like Jay-Z and David Byrne, The Rolling Stones.
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But he's a writer and what does he write about?
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Well, design, beauty, how to find good ideas.
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And you'll notice when you pick up one of his books that the form, the style, the vibe, the typography is every bit as important as [music] the content.
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This is really about design, beauty, and why our world looks the way it does.
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And this conversation starts with a strategy for finding good ideas.
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Tell me about this Edward de Bono method of when you're starting to think of some new idea and you're looking for a venturing off point, you start off with a very random point of departure.
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>> let's say I have to design a glass. Yeah.
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And uh my usual way or normal way would be is okay, like I look at the existing glasses. I try them out.
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I see what everybody else uh has done.
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I look at the history of glasses and uh starting with that, I probably would design a glass that's very similar to the existing glasses.
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Now, if I want to design a glass that's new, my chance of designing something new are better if I don't start with a glass but with something random.
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Let's say I design I start designing with your sock because I just see them. Yeah. So, okay.
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So, then we already have Do we have fabric around the glass?
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Do we have something that is maybe elastic?
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Do we have Is there a possibility for a drinking container that's actually elastic?
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Is there Is there something that could be nice?
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That is hard here but can we make something that is hard here but soft here?
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So, when I put it down, it doesn't make the noise but it kind of stands and it could could stand in all things. Not even bad. Took me 10 seconds. >> pretty good.
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And I think we could possibly prototype this specifically now where we can injection mold different materials together so that we have a hard thing up here and a soft mold.
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Let's say if it if we do it out of some sort of artificial material, this could be injection molded so that this thing is much much much more rubbery and this thing is super super hard, much more plasticky.
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So, that when we put it down, it can stand in all directions.
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Maybe for camping, this could be a very nice thing.
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So, specifically, if you put it down on an uneven ground, like you know, on grassy or there's stones, that this just takes on the form. Mhm. We're getting somewhere.
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Would have never thought it if I wouldn't have started with your sock. Never. It's a good answer.
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And uh of course, de Bono explains why this works because our brain is lazy and it's very difficult for the brain It's very energy heavy for the brain to think.
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So, it doesn't want to think.
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So, when we're just looking at other glasses, it those are the synapses that it already has a connection.
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Doesn't have to make a new one.
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When I force it to start with your sock, it has to make new connections.
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Now, suddenly it has to think. It cannot just go.
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At the end, we'll wind up with a glass.
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The end result the end base with but I forced the brain to go through some other things and form new synapses or semi-new synapses.
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And that's of course also the reason why so many designers constantly repeat themselves because that's the strongest connection between the synapses.
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It's like when they try to do something new, they're doing something that they did two years ago because that synapse in their brain is already connected. Yeah.
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Well, one of the reasons I'm really excited to talk to you is that you've built such a coherent, cohesive worldview and I feel like a lot of that has been born out of your practice writing diaries. You are correct. Yeah.
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>> Uh I started writing diaries as many young people do with like 10 or 12.
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And I think I found them really to be helpful strangely once I switched to doing them on the computer.
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Because my handwriting was so sloppy specifically in the most interesting times when I'm doing really badly or doing really well that I could never read it again.
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So, it was never something that I could recheck and I found the rechecking super interesting because you know, sometimes there's a situation where I wanted to change something in my life eight years ago Mhm.
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and I still haven't changed it. And I'm like, wow.
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I'm I already wanted to do something about this eight years ago and I'm still I'm still suffering on on on this particular issue.
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So, and then I think as design was more close to my to my heart, the diary writing by itself really influenced the design.
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Then in the design world, the diary started to impact what we were doing significantly.
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Uh There was a time in the after the first sabbatical where we gotten clients in the studio that had open briefs, meaning there was a client in France, a billboard company.
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They had billboards and they said, "Do something." Yeah. Whatever.
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So, I could have I don't know, take a photo of this water glass and they actually would have run it. That literally was open.
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And this turned out to be super difficult for me because I was not used to work that way.
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Like, you know, No enough constraints.
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Yeah, there's no there's zero restraints.
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And when it came to what should we do, I went back into the diary and there was a list that said, "Things I've learned in my life so far." Oh, wow.
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And it was had like 15 things on it.
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And I thought, "Well, I'll pick one of those and I'll make very complicated typography out of it because at least I know, because I wrote it for myself in the diary, I know this to be true for me."
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So, tell me about the process of writing the diary because you've just you've such refined views about many of the core things that would go through a designer's head about beauty, about utility, about function, about the world that we live in.
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And the context here is when you go on your website, there's a whole answers page and there's probably answers to a hundred different questions that you've really thought through.
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And I'm very curious about the process of how you arrived at such clean thinking cuz I know that clean thinking always has a messy process that leads up to it.
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Sometimes in the design world but very heavily in the art world, there is this notion of speaking in tongues, meaning in artspeak.
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You know, it's meaning I sometimes make you know, like I take the pictures at the of the the entry text in an exhibition. Yeah.
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Academia is the same way. >> It's so ridiculous.
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I mean it like I have I probably have a hundred picture of dot dot dot is among the most important artists working today. >> Right.
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That's how That's the first sentence.
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And then it goes on and I'm now versed well enough in artspeak that I can translate it. >> Mhm.
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And we have a an exhibition going on right now at a museum called MASS in Mexico.
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And the entry text is in artspeak. Mhm.
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And it's crossed out and then in handwriting is the same text in like three sentences.
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>> It's exactly the same content.
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Here it's 15 sentences in in artspeak and here it's in four sentences in in very clear speak.
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And I can tell you, for example, in the beauty show Mhm.
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I worked my ass off to make the in the exhibition on beauty, I worked my ass off to make the text as short and as precise as possible because I know if you're standing in a museum, you don't want to read 15 sentences. You might do two. Right?
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And you want to get them immediately because uh there is so much stuff in museums that are not gettable or or where people kind of feel stupid, which I think is a terrible thing to do to a person.
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In any way, but the result was that I should have kept one or two in artspeak. Mhm.
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I Later on heard a interview of an astronomer and he said He uh he worked so hard to make his first book very transparent and then some people, specifically colleagues, thought that it was for children.
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So, now he always includes at least one chapter that's quite opaque so that people uh appreciate the clarity more. >> Yeah.
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Well, one of the things that you've have a keen understanding of is how typography can enhance content.
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And when I look through your work, oh my goodness, it's like a zoo of typography.
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It's just all these different forms from oh my goodness, I didn't know that style existed, that shape existed.
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And it's not just, you know, most people think of typography of you're going to go on, you're going to look at 74,000 different fonts, and then you're going to choose one.
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A lot of your typography is stuff that you literally hand drew and created yourself.
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And I'm curious to hear, and I'm sorry for how broad this is, but I don't have a better way to ask the question.
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I'm curious to hear about how you think of the relationship between the form of the type and the content of it.
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>> [snorts] >> Well, um I think early on or I would say I came of age and I became a designer. Mhm.
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Then modernism was maybe 60, 70 years old.
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You know, let's say starting at 19 1900 1910 and then going on.
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>> And so by that point it has sort of become the dialect of the corporate world. Sure.
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And with that unbelievably boring and machine-made and cold and not really something that I felt was good in communicating anything. Mhm.
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So very early in the studio we tried to make things very obviously human-made. Right.
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From an idea that if you call a company and you have This is commercial world work now that we're talking.
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So if you call a company and you're getting an answering machine, it's just not as nice as if you get a human being. Of course.
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And I thought the same would be true online and in print.
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If you're doing If you're making something that's very clearly has been made by a human, it's just going to be already a little bit more interesting than if it's something like almost all work that came out of modernism, that in 1910 was very proud to be machine-made.
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You know, this was sort of the idea like, you know, oh, it's a sitting machine.
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It's a It's a place It's a machine for living.
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It's, you know, all of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's all of that stuff.
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Which 1910 was super interesting because you had to get rid of all that crap from the 19th century, all of that ornamental [ __ ] Thinking of the Bauhaus, yeah.
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So but by the 1980s when I came when I came of age, this was super boring. This has run its course.
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This was like and you still had these most the most conservative of designers and architects clinging to that crap.
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My view is out of pure laziness because they all thought functionality, that's where it's at.
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But functionality is so unbelievably easy.
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If I have to set a type typography so that it's good well readable, Easy.
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I mean, it's like I could, you know, I can do >> [laughter] >> thousands of it in an afternoon.
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It's super easy once you know the rules.
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I mean, you know, give me a break.
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And the same is true for a chair.
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I mean, if I have to design a chair that all it has to be is functional, meaning like reasonably comfortable, I can do 50 of them in an afternoon.
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It's like it's nothing because you know the ideal sitting height and the ideal angles, and you know the materials, and then that's that.
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But if you need to design a chair that is functional, but also beautiful, and then let's put also on make sense in 2025. Mhm.
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This is one of the biggest design problems in the world because now suddenly you're fighting 5,000 years of chair history. Right.
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And this is a completely different deal.
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And all these lazy functionalists just say, well, all I need to do is make it, you know, ergonomically fine. Yeah.
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Yeah, that's, you know, it's just it's just stupidity and laziness.
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Well, a lot of what you did with typography was actually make things by hand, and it got me thinking, I don't know why it does take some skill, but it would be really interesting to for authors to think about designing their book covers by hand.
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It's just not something that people do.
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I have a friend in town who runs a restaurant called Jean's, and he just designed the logo by just doing a bunch of handwritten drawings, and then he took the handwriting and then put that into the computer.
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And to say that he designed his own fonts is way overstating the case, but he was able to make that digital.
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And in this world, especially with AI, jeez, where things are going to become more of that sort of machine, computerized, synthetic, whatever it is, it just seems like having these strategies to communicate, hey, hey, hey, this is handmade, this was made with care by a human being, is an important thing to consider.
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And I think it goes beyond the form.
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You know, let's say I mean, there was a time when handwriting became so ubiquitous that, you know, you had IBM ads Yeah.
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being in quickset Fraktur Huh. uh headlines.
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I think the form is one thing, but then also the content, like the way you communicate, the way you say or or the way you design the book cover, you know, can be that clearly this is a crafted piece.
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That could be that could go all the way, which, you know, is possible that there really is something handmade on the cover, which is possible if you figure out the system and the and how to to get that done.
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Uh ultimately I think in all of this in in this entire world, be it's the the logo for your friend's restaurant or the book cover, >> [snorts] >> is we feel as viewers if something has been done with love and care. Yes.
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Then we are quite generous.
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Meaning like I've recently stayed a hotel in Milano in Italy, which was really not my style. Mhm.
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It was kitschy, it had butterflies.
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It was really not my thing.
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But I felt pretty comfortable there anyway.
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I mean, probably wouldn't if I would have if I would stay there a month, but for a week and it was totally fine because the person who put this together, the organization who put this hotel together, they did it with love and care.
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There was clearly they uh they felt that this was something that was beautiful. Yes. And that was good. That was fine.
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Good enough for me, even though I would never decorate my place in that way.
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But I think we all don't go on holiday in the places where you have discount furniture stores, gas stations, and and fast food places.
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That you very rarely see a hotel in those places.
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You might see a motel because there's also a factory there that needs something, but you very rarely see a hotel there because we well, we go there if we need our cars gassed up or we need cheap furniture, but we will not want to stay longer out of our free will there.
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Because And the reason is because these places have been created without love and care. Yeah.
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Somebody needed a discount furniture store.
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Well, they said, well, let's put a a box there, put our logo on it, and that's good enough. Mhm.
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Yeah, they've been created for convenience and efficiency and utility without any regard for the aesthetics.
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And even deeper, there's a kind of one of the questions that you answer on your page is basically to the effect of does beauty matter?
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And you basically say, of course it does.
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People feel better, they feel different in beautiful places, but it's this weird modern moment that we're in right now where we've come to doubt that very obvious and intuitive truth.
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I would say it goes even beyond that.
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They feel better and they behave better. Oh, really? Yes.
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And, you know, meaning we are now on 26th Street, a couple of blocks away from the High Line. Yeah.
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If you look at the High Line, you almost never see a piece of paper, a a cup thrown away on the High Line. Basically never.
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You leave the High Line, you go into the Meatpacking District, it's everywhere. Yeah.
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In the gutter it's all over the place.
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Be or I can tell you I'll tell you this, when I was in college, I went to a beautiful school called Elon University, and you wouldn't dare litter if you were walking.
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Like if you littered and someone saw that you threw threw down a Tootsie Roll wrapper or something like that, you would get the eyes of Sauron on you from all the other from all the other students.
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And there was just a self-policing that was embedded in the culture because of how beautiful it was. Yeah.
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That's uh I can tell you that if I'm at a mall here and in in a similar mall in Europe, >> [snorts] >> I would say people behave very similarly.
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If I'm at an airport here and at an airport in Europe, people behave much better in Europe.
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And the reason is the shitty architecture. >> Yeah. If I mean, really is.
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Even if you meaning it's there should have been a study and I'm sure they didn't, but I would have loved to see a study of aggressive behavior at uh at LaGuardia 5 years ago and now.
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I bet you anything that people calm down. After the remodel. Yes. Yeah. 100%.
20:12
I same thing with Grand Central and Penn Station.
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I thought it was so interesting what you said about how the average photo at Penn Station had a negative vibe to it, whereas the average photo Grand Central a positive.
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>> Well, then average the the it was at the was a institute in Boston did a very it's it's actually live.
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You can look at it all the time. Mhm.
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Yeah, they did a the big study on this this Twitter or X now that basically is geographically based and you they can measure how many they can measure up if if a tweet is positive or negative. >> The sentiment. Yeah.
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And basically and then color the map of Manhattan in green but it's more positive than negative and red when it's more negative than positive and Grand's Grand Central is always green 24 hours a day and Penn Station is always red 24 hours a day. Mhm.
21:10
Tell me about how you went from listening to the emotional tenor of a song to translating that into visuals.
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I mean, you're doing this for Brian Eno, David Byrne, Talking Heads, The Rolling Stones.
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How How did you go about that process?
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Well, I think it's you basically already mentioned that it that's the that was the interesting part.
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You're picking something I mean, if I go a second back, we usually were asked by the band to design the cover when during while they were in the studio. Okay.
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And so, I would go to the studio.
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They would depending on how famous the band is, they would give me 10 songs half finished, not finished or uh if when it became too big of people like Jay-Z or the Stones, they wouldn't give you the songs.
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You had to listen to them while you were there because they were afraid of leaks and things like that.
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But in general, you listen to the songs.
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Almost always we could get some songs.
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And uh we played that in the studio and tried to talk to the band only about why they're making a new album, where does it come from, what they think it is about or and not about the cover at all because I felt that that translation of that sort of emotion in the music into so and that we loved the fact that music by design is not visual Right.
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and translating that into a visual is still I think a super interesting endeavor. Yeah. And that was the job.
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Translating this emotion and in some cases if the band had a lot of history like the Stones or so, that whole brouhaha of information and baggage into something that would work and then of course also listen to what the band thought about in general like in the case of the Stones, it was very like it was very commercially oriented like Mick Jagger wanted something that looked good embroidered on a baseball cap. Right.
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Because the Stones actually make more money with this merch than they do with the music. Right.
23:40
Is there a story from one of those album covers that really stands out to you?
23:46
Well, if we stick I mean, there's many stories obviously. I'm sure, yeah.
23:48
With the Stones with the Stones, one I think one of my favorite moments there was when I met them first in Los Angeles.
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This was just Mick Jagger and Charlie Watts.
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And I asked Jagger what his favorite Stones covers would be. Mhm.
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He said Exile on Main Street, Some Girls and Sticky Fingers. Okay.
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And I said, well, that's fantastic.
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These are my favorite three Stones covers.
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I would have said them in a different order.
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I would have said Sticky Fingers, Some Girls and Exile on Main Street. >> Okay.
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And then I see Charlie Watts leaning over to Jagger and asking, What's on Sticky Fingers? He didn't know. He had no idea.
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And and uh Jagger explained it to him, you know, it's the one with the zipper.
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It's the one that ended it.
24:40
Andy of course being Andy Warhol.
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Uh and like to me that was just so amazing that every Stones fan would know Sticky Fingers. Right.
24:53
But that somebody who's in the band that has been in that band forever >> [laughter] >> would be [clears throat] so incredibly uninterested in anything but the drumming or the the core music that uh he would not be aware of that was amazing because for many other people, you know, including me, Sticky Fingers is one of the best covers of all time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
25:24
How do you go about refining your visual palette and sense of taste?
25:31
You're doing more and you're seeing more.
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I think our taste including our view on beauty depends very much on how much we've seen already. Mhm.
25:42
And obviously then the context we've seen it and how we feel while we when we're seeing it.
25:51
But you know, that's a that's also a big problem between an audience, let's say an audience or curator or a critic because an audience by definition will have seen much less than the critic.
26:08
So, their tastes can be very very different and it becomes a huge problem when it becomes to let's say public art Mhm.
26:14
which by definition because it's called public art, should be for the public. Yeah. Critics hate public art.
26:21
You know, if you listen to Jerry Saltz, he's saying like 99.
26:24
9% of all public art is crap.
26:28
Yeah, from a critic point of view, that's very much likely true because you've seen so much that everything to you looks lame.
26:35
But if you're working 9:00 to 5:00 and you take the subway and you see some mural on the subway wall, you probably want it to be pretty.
26:46
You definitely have a very very different point of view of of that mural wall than if you are thinking and dealing with art 16 hours a day. Mhm.
27:00
Uh and in that way, it's almost irrelevant what the critic thinks about public art because it's really is for the public.
27:09
And I think I'm thinking that way because I'm coming from design and in design, it is paramount.
27:18
It's in the center of of the profession that you take the public seriously. Of course.
27:24
Well, in art, it's very different.
27:26
And I've talked to many artists who couldn't give a [ __ ] about the public. Mhm.
27:31
Which becomes difficult and sometimes odd if you then exhibit, let's say, in a very popular museum like MoMA where you have a gigantic percentage of the audience being tourists that might visit a museum every 3 years. Mhm.
27:51
And goes into that place kind of not understanding anything. Mhm.
27:59
And ultimately having well, at least they can see, you know, Starry Sky by by Van Gogh or you know, a couple of others.
28:08
So, they probably get at least a little bit of a fill, but it's there is a an odd thing going on where you have a significant percentage of the audience not being talked to, not being communicated.
28:23
>> Well, what comes to mind, this is a slight diversion from what you're saying, but what came to mind is where things can frankly be over intellectualized to the point where the intellect can see something as good that is actually the opposite of maybe what your intuitive sense thinks is really good.
28:43
You know, we're joking at dinner the other night that the ugliest building on many college campuses is the architecture building.
28:49
And if you look at the preferences that architects have versus the preferences of ordinary people, they're exactly the opposite, you know?
28:58
And you see the same thing in we're talking about bad writing earlier.
29:02
You see the same thing where in order to fit into some club, people will spice up fluff up their writing in some sort of fancy schmancy way, but like no, people don't people don't want that.
29:12
And because of that, I think it's important to have some sort of hall of heroes in your head of people who are popular and good. Popular and good.
29:22
I think that's also by far the hardest thing to do. Popular and good, yeah.
29:27
Like if you can if you can make a film, if you can write a book, if you can do anything that is really good, but it actually talks to a mass audience, that's my highest Highest bar.
29:42
That's that's the by far the most difficult thing to to And there's people out there who think that you're selling out when you do that.
29:50
But no, like, you know, I think that's uh and there's examples in all of that.
29:53
I mean, there's there's examples in books, there's examples in movies uh that actually were able to achieve that. Yeah. Yeah.
30:04
I mean, there's totally people who do sell out in order to reach the mass market. >> sure.
30:08
But the problem is if you think that everyone who's successful is just a sellout, then what does that mean?
30:13
If you become successful, are you going to be like, "Well, I sold out?" No, no, no, no, no, no.
30:19
That's not the way it always works.
30:21
And I think that a lot of this just comes down to people over intellectualizing, especially architects, especially writers. Oh my goodness.
30:30
>> you have that same gap that we just talked about that if you are an architect, you if specifically if you're good architect, >> Yeah.
30:38
you're breathing this 16 hours a day.
30:40
And of course, your taste but you what you what you feel is beautiful is very different from somebody who doesn't think about architecture at all. Mhm.
30:51
And I'm meaning there was a case maybe a year, maybe 2 years ago where you had 10 experts or a dozen experts uh in the New York Times electing their whatever it was, 20 or 50 favorite buildings.
31:05
Oh my god, you should have seen the comments afterwards.
31:09
It was like, you know, everybody was like, "You guys are nuts. THIS IS ALL SHIT."
31:13
And they said, "It's terrible."
31:15
Like and and it was it was very odd because the majority of these buildings were important boxes.
31:25
You know, it was all rectangular, boxy, by the Bauhausy buildings.
31:31
Of course, many of them early, many of them were quite new when they were done, but the audience did not appreciate that at all.
31:41
And I'd say it was very it there was almost no living architect among them.
31:49
I also felt it was kind of pissy. Mhm.
31:52
You know, like nobody wanted to have a colleague on the list. Huh.
31:56
>> It was safer to have the dead the dead people on there.
31:58
It and yeah, it was not I like I also didn't I know more about architecture than I guess the usual commentator in the New York Times, but uh I also thought it was a little bit unfortunate.
32:12
Tell me more about that process of refining taste.
32:14
You were talking about consuming a lot and basically having a broad palette, but what else have you done?
32:22
When it comes to the a taste of beauty, Mhm.
32:26
I think a lot of it is just a lot of it is just the desire to make it beautiful.
32:33
But I would say between the 1950s and the year 2000 roughly, there was a concentration on functionalism. Mhm.
32:46
That completely left beauty aside.
32:46
When I started, which was in the '80s in art school, you couldn't mention beauty.
32:51
You would be laughed out of the classroom.
32:55
It was you were thought of as either conservative or surface related or uh maybe totally commercial like in the beauty industry or uh possibly a Nazi. Mhm.
33:11
Or in any case, you were if you talked about beauty in the '80s in my art school, you were not considered a serious person.
33:20
Because it was not something that a serious person would waste their time on.
33:26
And so there was no thought given to making it beautiful.
33:30
It was just not something that was in the air, in definitely not in design, but also in architecture, definitely in art.
33:39
It was a a term non grata for sure.
33:46
And I think we are in the process now definitely of that changing.
33:51
Uh where very fantastic architects like Herzog and de Meuron or a good number of others top architects very openly talk about the need and the desire for for beauty.
34:06
What I took from that is is this.
34:10
When you did your beauty show, the main sentence was basically this.
34:16
Beauty is a combination of shape, form, color, composition, material, and texture to please the aesthetic senses, especially the sight.
34:25
And what I took from that is part of what you're doing when you look at the world is you're looking at what is the shape of this, what is the form, what is the color, the composition, the material, and the texture.
34:35
What are all those things?
34:36
Looking at every single part and then asking, "How do I elevate that?"
34:41
I think it was Enzo Ferrari was once asked, "How did you make such a beautiful car?"
34:45
And he said something to the effect of, "I just looked at a normal car and at every single thing I saw, I asked, "How do I make this thing better?" >> Yeah. Yeah.
34:53
It it would be the exactly the same technique.
34:55
I mean, it would be all that same sort of thinking. Yeah, exactly the same. Yeah. Yeah.
34:59
If it is that constant questioning.
35:01
And I think that's a very important felt sense that one needs to have whenever they work on a project is when you have just tweaked a thousand things to make them better, and it's the ensemble of all of those things that makes the feng shui or whatever it is perfect. You know what I mean?
35:24
Or at least really of quality because I think that what you don't get a sense of until you make something is that excellence is really just a byproduct of 10,000 things that are thought of consciously and tweaked and refined. >> Yeah. Yeah, 100%.
35:42
I mean, you just made a film though.
35:44
So that's >> [laughter] >> that's at the very I'm meaning there this is like truer than almost anywhere else.
35:50
Yeah, you have 10,000 things that need tweaking. Yeah. Maybe 100,000 on a film.
35:59
Yeah, I notice so many designers, so many creatives, they just end up getting in a rut where they become a parody of themselves.
36:07
Yeah, I think that that's very, very much that.
36:11
See, when I was very young, I only liked the changers and I never liked the stay-the-samers. Huh.
36:17
So I preferred the Beatles over the Stones.
36:20
I preferred I don't know, Andy Warhol over Roy Lichtenstein.
36:23
Like I I preferred David Bowie over Bob Dylan, you know, like uh you get the idea. >> Yeah.
36:34
And as I got older, I think I appreciated some of the stay-the-samers also.
36:41
I actually quite liked the Bob Dylan state in a more narrow way because he could really go deeper there.
36:51
Or very obvious to me is uh James Turrell. He was yeah. Yeah.
36:57
>> So I'm meaning he basically not only stayed the same, but he's doing some ideas over and over again like his skyscape, you know, the space with the square uh square or oval or round hole uh in the ceiling.
37:13
I'm meaning he's done dozens of them.
37:16
And they become better and better and better.
37:17
Like to the point where I don't even I now look if a museum has a sky space, I look at the date.
37:23
If it's too old, I might go not even go and see it because the new ones are so much better than the old ones.
37:32
And I'm so glad that he stuck with it, that he was willing as a person to inc- to just make it 2% 5% better every single time he does a new one. Yeah.
37:45
I always think of Japanese craftsmanship.
37:48
That's what's just remarkable about the Japanese is their persistence.
37:56
After 40 years of making knives, we're going to do another decade, then another decade, and another decade, and it's just refining that practice.
38:02
Same thing with sushi, over and over and over.
38:05
I mean, you see them those Edo temples that are basically the whole idea is that it's been rebuilt every 20 years so that every generation can learn how to rebuild it.
38:17
And if there's Edo temples, I'm meaning it's whatever, 800 years old, but it of course, it was rebuilt whatever, dozens and dozens of times.
38:30
And it it the whole design idea is that it's being redone all the time.
38:34
And they're planting the trees to rebuild it in 40 years from now and blah blah blah. Yeah. Wow.
38:46
Let's talk about the relationship between beauty and function cuz a lot of people see them as kind of opposites.
38:55
But you have strongly rejected that. Yeah.
38:58
Well, I mean, beauty is of course a function in itself.
39:00
Uh beauty makes things work much better.
39:06
That actually was what brought us in the studio to beauty because we noticed that whenever we whenever we did a project that where we took the form very seriously, that project seemed to work much better. Mhm.
39:23
And when I looked into it, that really became clear.
39:26
And I'm meaning there's so many >> What are examples of that?
39:30
Well, one I think they have right here is a bag.
39:32
Uh I've had this bag for Well, this bag is a new bag, but I've just had that remade in in in Mexico.
39:45
But, I've had basically the same bag.
39:48
I've bought the same bag 35 years ago, and I've had it for 35 years.
39:56
And I had it for 35 years.
39:56
It was repaired maybe every 5 years. Uh because I liked it.
40:03
It doesn't really matter if other people think Many people think it's beautiful, but not probably not everybody.
40:08
But, I thought beautiful, which meant that I had it repaired all the time, which made this much much much much more sustainably proper than, you know, those jute bags or those those those cotton bags that you get under the guise of sustainability.
40:32
And I'm meaning, of course, my favorite example would be the Pantheon in Rome, you know.
40:37
The longest all the time having been used building in the world, 2,000 years old, never was broken down because every culture that occupied it thought it was beautiful and didn't want to get rid of it.
40:51
Uh that, of course, is the single most sustainable building in the world.
40:57
Uh much more sustainable than any bamboo hut or any of those places that we now think of as being sustainable.
41:07
It's crazy to me that the sustainability movement hasn't co-opted beauty as their friend. Very very odd.
41:12
We are so much of the sustainability world, you know, meaning those ugly solar panels on on houses very often, but you not so much see that here, but you see that a lot in Central Europe, where houses have been uh you know, have some added uh isolation that is just really dreadful.
41:40
Uh you And all of this stuff can be made I, of course, am a big friend of solar panels, but you needs to create them with beauty in mind, and you have to install them with beauty in mind.
41:55
And then they will be fantastic.
41:55
I am sure that if you installed solar panels gorgeously on your roof, when it comes to resell value, that will reflect in that resell value.
42:06
If that whole thing is beautiful.
42:10
Uh and the sun will be so excited to be next to the solar panels that more rays will come to you.
42:18
>> [laughter] >> Sun is our friend, for sure.
42:22
It'll be all the rays will be running there.
42:23
I want to go through some of the lessons that you shared in your book, and I just want to get your quick take on why you've chosen these.
42:32
The first one is that everyone who is honest is interesting.
42:36
Well, that actually was not even my lesson.
42:39
That was came from a guy called Grant Crisp, who came to visit my students, and >> [clears throat] >> he told the students that he used to say everybody's interesting, and then journalists said, "Well, you're wrong.
42:53
Like, people are so so many are so boring."
42:56
And then he said, "Well, everybody who is honest is interesting."
42:59
And that hit me like a lightning bolt.
43:01
Because as a designer, obviously as a writer, you want to be interesting.
43:06
Yeah, I'm meaning that's the core of it.
43:08
And uh I thought, "Wow, this is so fantastic.
43:14
All you have to do is being honest.
43:14
It will be automatically interesting."
43:17
That's it's In many ways, it's easier to be honest than to have a great than to sit down and need a needing to have a great idea.
43:24
But, the honesty is of course is also true in writing, obviously. I mean, we feel it.
43:30
Uh it's you I I spent a good amount of time at conferences speaking, and I hear other speakers.
43:41
You feel it in a second in a second if the person who speaks is not honest about it.
43:46
If it's if it's just, you know, whatever cliché or if it's something that he picked up or if it's not if it doesn't come from the heart, the audience knows immediately. Immediately.
43:58
My friend Jeremy has a great line.
44:01
He says, "The solution to writer's block is just to be more honest."
44:06
And I think that that's very often the case that a lot of times when people don't know what to say, don't know what to create, they're they're not actually tapping into what they believe to be true.
44:18
There's like a social filter.
44:19
Either somebody is they have the filter of "What am I supposed to say?"
44:25
Or if I say this, somebody else won't like me.
44:28
And so the lack of honesty just becomes like muck in the water stream, and the water just can't move. Yeah, 100%.
44:37
Yeah, couldn't agree more.
44:42
Next one, if I want to explore a new direction professionally, it is helpful to try it out for myself first.
44:49
Trying, experimenting for myself lowers the hurdles. Mhm.
44:59
Because I can find my sea feet while there is while the stakes are very low. Mhm.
45:06
And I'm more free to try this, try that.
45:12
Because if nothing comes out at the end of the day, I might be a bit frustrated, but okay, so what?
45:17
Yeah, I think it's sort of like a a way to get me through times when my level of guts are not so high. Mhm.
45:29
Just to experiment for myself, and then when I have if something worked, then it's much easier to do it on the bigger stage.
45:37
I know on the big Yeah, 100%.
45:40
Well, that seems to be a huge theme for your career and how you structure your life is to make room for experimentation.
45:47
I have never met someone who, like you, consciously said, "I'm going to do a full year on sabbatical every 7 years."
45:57
It's uh turned out to be a very good decision. This was the year 2000? >> The year 2000.
46:01
No, it was '99, I think it was, cuz it was the dot-com boom. Exactly.
46:04
Yeah, it was dot-com boom.
46:04
Uh everybody made a lot of money.
46:07
It felt very unprofessional to close the studio now that it was running, now that it was finally happening. We had good clients.
46:17
Uh And yeah, that was scary for me.
46:19
And uh in the year I literally did not produce anything. I just did ideas.
46:27
So, at the end of the year, I had a full sketchbook.
46:31
I had a large sketchbook.
46:31
It was filled with stuff.
46:33
I had a more carefully written diary I because I had more time.
46:38
The diary was had was longer, much more often, was probably I could get into thoughts deeper a little.
46:48
Uh and at the end of the year, I was happy that to go back into a more regular studio environment.
47:01
And ultimately, this whole series of things I've learned in my life so far that became exhibitions and books came out of that because I that was part of the diary of that year.
47:14
And then the second sabbatical was super easy.
47:18
The meaning that the first one had so clearly a big impact on the studio.
47:25
And not just on the quality of the work in the of the studio, but also of how I felt in the studio because I could get rid of in the first 7 years that when you were super busy, I had all sorts of thought of, "Oh my god, I would love to do this if I would only have the time."
47:46
And some of that stuff I really loved to do when I had the time.
47:49
Some of that stuff I was delusional.
47:52
I didn't want to do that at all.
47:56
Including, for example, reading, which was a huge surprise to me.
48:00
I always thought, "My god, if I would only have more time, I would read so much more." Didn't at all.
48:08
Like, uh I I'm just coming back from a sabbatical where first 4 months in uh Madrid, and then in and then in Mexico in Guadalajara.
48:19
And I probably read 20 25 books, which is my which is what I read in the busy normal times.
48:27
So, it's that didn't increase whatsoever, but many other things, of course, I did have time for.
48:34
Uh and Well, it seems like what you do is you set up a hierarchy of what you want to learn when you go on sabbatical.
48:40
You say, "I want to learn this, this, this."
48:43
And then you basically block out your Monday through Friday 9:00 to 5:00, and you say, "I'm going to have time for this.
48:48
I'm going to have time for this.
48:49
I'm going to have time for this."
48:49
And my understanding is you did not do that the first time.
48:52
The first time it didn't work so well, so you're like, "All right, this is what I need to do.
48:54
This is what I need to do.
48:56
Okay, if I can do this, then the sabbatical will be good." Yeah.
48:59
First time I thought I should have no plan whatsoever.
49:05
And that didn't work out.
49:05
I was just busy and frustrated that I didn't really create anything.
49:09
And so I needed the plan.
49:12
But, also I by now I know that I need the plan literally only for maybe the first two or three months. How? To really get it going.
49:21
And by then, by month three, I have so many projects running that I don't need to have any plan anymore.
49:27
Then they are just running. Yeah. Tell me about this one.
49:31
Trying to look good limits my life.
49:35
Well, that harks back to this I think it's it's also there's a there's a relative in there with the honesty. Yeah.
49:45
Where uh this idea that I always have to look the way that people will like me. Yeah.
49:55
Uh there's uh do things that are likable. That is a limitation.
50:04
That uh and I definitely had that's a problem that I I think that that probably have more so than other people. >> Me too. Me too. Me too.
50:11
>> Like I definitely want to be liked. Me too. Definitely. True or false? Yeah.
50:16
And I think it my life would be richer without having to necessarily make other people's life poorer if I would sometimes care less about being liked. Yeah. Yeah.
50:35
Yeah, I'm always catch myself daydreaming if I do this thing then this person will approve, think highly of me. I'm like, "Dude, what?"
50:40
Like are you really going to make that that the telos of your life?
50:46
And all the things that it blocks me from doing and saying and standing up for. Yeah. Not proud of it.
50:52
Obsessions make my life worse and my work better.
50:56
Yeah, I mean you know, I think I'm already an obsessive personality.
51:01
Uh as in uh meaning I have I I fall easily for addictions.
51:07
I had to stop drinking alcohol.
51:10
I had definitely to stop smoking uh cigarettes. I was over that.
51:15
>> [laughter] >> First cigarettes and then for a while in the sabbaticals I said, "Well, it's a sabbatical.
51:20
I'm allowed to smoke cigars."
51:23
>> [laughter] >> The last that was still the not not in this sabbatical, but that was still the case in the sabbatical 8 years ago. How much?
51:32
And first day two cigars, second day 12.
51:36
You had 12 cigars in a day? Yeah.
51:36
And that's was and at the end of the sabbatical I was inhaling them.
51:40
So very clearly un uh you know, unsupportable, unsustainable.
51:46
And of course I had to stop. Yeah.
51:50
But in the professional life, in work it's of course extremely helpful because if you're obsessive about a certain piece and you obsessively try to make it better, try to make it more beautiful, try to push it at to the point where you can't push it anymore, where you think, "Okay, this is right now my level of pushification."
52:15
Like this is where I this is where I can go.
52:18
I don't know now where to go.
52:20
I think that uh if you can go there that often is a good piece.
52:25
Man, I love that word pushification.
52:28
That is such a good word.
52:30
I know exactly what you mean by that.
52:32
So this is my interpretation of what you're saying.
52:36
When you're at a certain point in your life, there's a limit of talent and taste that you have.
52:41
And when you do work that you're proud of, you push to that limit.
52:46
It's not the best that you can do over the course of your life.
52:50
What ends up happening, which is great, is you look back at where you had pushified in the past be like, "Dude, I could have done so much better."
52:56
But in every moment, I think that the goal of whatever project you're working is to pushify as much as you can.
53:04
And I love that word which I think you've completely made up because it implies a level of progress over time while also giving yourself some grace to say at that moment in time, that was as good as I could do while also giving yourself some motivation to really pushify to the outer horizon of what you're capable of.
53:28
And that's really all you can do.
53:28
There might of course be at the same time other people who could push much further. 100%.
53:33
Totally possible and if I push to the point where I can't anymore or I don't I'm lost like, "Okay, this is I think this is where I am right now."
53:51
There's always other people who like it. Mhm. >> Yeah.
53:54
It's I think that I'm enough within the mainstream that this sort of relatability is there.
54:05
How much when you're designing, when you're writing, do you think about you yourself as a creator, I'm going to focus on my taste versus the taste, the wishes, the desires of the consumer, the audience? It depends.
54:19
Uh there's let's say in when we did the album covers Mhm.
54:27
I found it my responsibility to serve the world of that band. Mhm.
54:36
So I I would say if I did a cover for Lou Reed Yeah.
54:38
and the Lou Reed fan base thinks this is a [ __ ] cover You failed. Yeah.
54:43
Even though even if I felt it was a very good cover. Yeah.
54:48
Because I do think that within the world of design there has to be that sort of functionality.
54:54
You know, we haven't done any commercial work in years.
55:00
Uh and so a lot of the stuff that we're doing now is is design but it's distributed in museums, in galleries.
55:09
It's I there is sort of a client because the gallery or the museum you know, they sometimes have a say or they sometimes have a a thing, but of course it's not a commercial client and it's much wider.
55:26
And there I feel it's also like it runs under my name.
55:29
Like it says on the museum wall Stefan Sagmeister.
55:33
Now it says the exhibition that we are running right now is called uh finally something good. Mhm.
55:41
And like when we create a piece, I'm not thinking to serving a community necessarily. Yeah.
55:49
But I still I still want that this is by its design and not out.
55:52
I still see the exhibition has to have a functionality as in I want the people to be have a different view of the world after the exhibition than they had before the exhibition. Yeah.
56:10
What do you make of the homogeneity that has infected the design world?
56:13
You know, you talk about a font where you can tell if something's a Swiss typeface or a Norwegian typeface.
56:20
A poster, you can tell if something's a French poster or an Italian poster.
56:24
Going back, but now there's this homogeneity.
56:29
My first question is do you think that will continue?
56:30
And second of all, how do you break from that?
56:37
Well, uh war is a good place.
56:40
>> [laughter] >> Let's go to war, baby.
56:44
I I can tell you we had two exhibitions in Ukraine. Yeah.
56:48
And uh nowhere else have I seen so much designs rooted in their own history. Huh.
56:59
Because they are attacked. Oh, interesting.
57:01
So it's like the tree goes deeper into its roots once there's like heavy winds.
57:06
You know, they are in danger of losing their identity because if they would become part of Russian of Russia, of course it would all be Russian.
57:14
You know, obviously they would even forbid the language.
57:16
It would all be like the whole country has to speak Russian.
57:21
There is meaning the Russians did that already.
57:23
Of course when they when they took Ukraine after World War II.
57:30
They already, you know, got rid of the intellectuals, got had everybody speak Russian, but of course that would return.
57:35
And so there is an incredible amount of new publishers that only publish in Ukrainian.
57:41
There is uh there's an incredible amount of designy stores where everything is it's it's contemporary, but it's everything has Ukrainian roots, Ukrainian stories, uh Ukrainian patterns.
57:58
Uh it done in very very well and but if we go back to the whole world, I 100% agree with you and I think it's a huge problem.
58:07
And it's uh I think that's one of the really I mean there's some real fantastic advantages that came through globalization. Yeah.
58:17
You know, means lifted so many people worldwide out of poverty. Incredible.
58:25
And one of the real downsides is the sameification of the world.
58:27
You know, that you cannot tell in most cases what was done in London or in Helsinki or in uh whatever in Johannesburg. >> Right.
58:40
So as you think of breaking out of the sameification of the world cuz man, it really is bad in the world of design because it's not just the aesthetic sameification, but it's the templification of design.
58:53
And you can just see it all the time.
58:56
I mean I working with designers drives me nuts because there is so much generic stuff that is thrown at me and even the innovative stuff is generic. Do you know what I mean?
59:08
>> Even the stupidities everywhere.
59:08
Meaning like what happened to bathroom doors? Like to shower doors?
59:13
It's like every hotel you go to now, there's no more door on the shower.
59:19
>> [laughter] >> I recently talked an arc an architect about it.
59:22
What the [ __ ] Why do you guys hate shower doors?
59:27
And he said because they don't look good on drawings. Yeah.
59:31
Because on the drawing you have all these things then there and the drawing just looks so much cleaner without the door there.
59:38
It's like it's that stupid.
59:39
It's literally that stupid.
59:39
But for a while for a second I I thought that the design hotel might be I had some hopes in the design hotel because of course one of the significations were the were the chain hotels that they Hilton or whatever it is or the the Radisson needed to look the same everywhere because some people want to have exactly the same wherever they go.
1:00:06
And but it turned out that the design hotel with some exceptions but they look the same everywhere else.
1:00:14
Maybe it has like a little material gimmick, you know, that the box that you go into in Kuala Lumpur has some bamboo outside but it's the same [ __ ] box that you also go into in Frankfurt where it's made out of stone.
1:00:30
Architects and designers seem to have to think the same way pretty much anywhere and specifically in a place in an easy thing like a hotel where you can be really outrageous because even if you would get sick of it for 3 days it would be fun to be in a space that is completely different and totally local and completely off that time.
1:00:57
And that doesn't mean that you have to go nostalgic or any way but it could it wouldn't be be great to be in Saigon and be in a room that's totally Saigon.
1:01:08
Like complete like real Saigon.
1:01:11
Like including its what that means politically, what that means historically, what that means to live in Saigon right now.
1:01:23
Get the real taste of that. Yeah.
1:01:25
As opposed to live being the same modernist thing and have the little stupid coffee shop downstairs that serves the same latte that I can get here. 20 cents.
1:01:35
Yeah, same neon sign and all that all that nonsense.
1:01:39
And and the but first coffee. Exactly.
1:01:47
You know, the entire conversation I've been thinking of this quote from Heinrich Heine.
1:01:50
So he goes to Aachen Cathedral and he says he looks at this majestic cathedral and he says people in those old times had convictions.
1:01:58
We moderns only have opinions and it needs more than a mere opinion to build a Gothic cathedral.
1:02:07
I want to end here which is one of the coolest things that you do is that you grade yourself at the beginning of years and then you pick a number of things that you want to improve and then you give yourself a weekly rating on how you're doing. Tell me about that.
1:02:22
Well, it's a you know, I was born 3 miles from the German border so I'm a list maker and when we did the happy film oh my god I had like eight lists running like this.
1:02:35
Uh all sorts of tests of how I felt, what this makes me feel, blah blah blah but I still do this.
1:02:43
Uh I think Benjamin Franklin had a very tight version of that list. That tracks.
1:02:51
That's the kind of thing he would do.
1:02:54
I used to do, you know, good intentions uh in in the beginning of the year and then of course by January 5th they're kind of gone. >> Mhm.
1:03:05
So I feel I need a reminder of what what I want to do in my life, how I want to behave, what I want to be.
1:03:14
And weekly turned out to be the hour for me.
1:03:16
I was actually in Mexico right now.
1:03:18
There was a woman who I admire who had an app that did it daily and I switched for 3 months or so to that to her app. >> enjoy it. >> too much for me.
1:03:30
It was like it was too I don't know like and I then I did it too sloppily.
1:03:34
It was just like it was bothersome. Weekly works. Weekly is fine.
1:03:39
Like it takes me no time at all.
1:03:41
Basically I have a a reminder in my now of course electronic calendar that I have to do the diary.
1:03:49
I write the diary every Saturday morning.
1:03:51
It's it comes up on my to-do list automatically. >> Okay.
1:03:56
So I I do the diary and I do do the uh and I do my list. Yeah.
1:04:00
And it's it doesn't mean like that you know, sometimes I have one thing that I get terrible marks for weeks.
1:04:13
So it's not like that that I really then have to but it's it's it's still a good reminder that no I really that's what I thought I shouldn't do. Yeah.
1:04:24
All right, one more question.
1:04:26
Out of all the buildings you've interacted with, designs you've seen, what is the one that has moved you the most that you recommend that we should engage with?
1:04:37
Buildings or buildings, artistic projects, what is something that just really moved you?
1:04:47
Oh my god, there's so much. You got to pick one.
1:04:49
>> There's so well so the one that's just maybe it it it resonates because we just talked about him but I would say the Skyscape by James Turrell or or if you can pick a new one.
1:05:01
Uh you said you're from Texas?
1:05:01
Yeah, there's one at University of Austin.
1:05:03
Uh there's Rice at Rice University.
1:05:05
There's there's a big one. At Rice in Houston. Yeah, Rice.
1:05:11
So yeah, I'm there's an there's a fantastic one at Rice. Really? >> Yeah.
1:05:15
Uh basically it's a space.
1:05:15
It's a room with a hole in the ceiling.
1:05:20
But the way the hole in the ceiling is designed is so that it's super super thin at the edges [clears throat] so you can't really see it.
1:05:29
So when you look up you kind of if let's say if it's a blue sky you just see a blue space there.
1:05:36
But the Skyscapes are by far the best at sunrise and at sundown. By far.
1:05:40
Even though you don't see the sunrise and the sundown because you're looking straight up into the sky, you see the subtle differences in the sky in the color and those subtle differences as it changes are so gorgeous and there's such a beauty in there that it's like I just had goosebumps talking about it.
1:06:04
So it's uh and for example, if you were at Rice or any at any of the many other Skyscapes and you stay long and it's basically already night it never really goes black.
1:06:18
It just goes into an extremely dark dark dark blue but it's the darkest blue you'll ever ever see because it's not you couldn't print it, you couldn't weave it, you couldn't dye it because it's the [ __ ] universe.
1:06:37
It's that makes that blue and that there is a gorgeousness in a beauty in that blue that well for lack of a better explanation you have to see to believe.
1:06:49
It is really something it is really something.
1:06:52
Well, the thing that the Skyscape did for me is it made me appreciate the way that colors are complementary and then whatever the opposite of complementary is that they when you see two colors together it actually changes both of the colors and as you watch a Skyscape you'll have a few moments where maybe you'll watch the way that orange engages with blue or pink engages with blue and you'll just see oh my goodness.
1:07:14
And there's something psychedelic isn't the right word but there is something that is extra sensory or something about a Skyscape where you've seen you're so attuned to the relationships between color and form like you never are otherwise in your life.
1:07:34
And I think it puts everybody immediately into quiet moods to talk about how beauty changes our behavior.
1:07:45
I mean there's a Skyscape in Lech in a place where we in Austria where we go skiing and you can ski up to it.
1:07:52
So people come with their boots on and they they go in there and they look up and they sit down.
1:08:02
And even though they're in their ski outfits and they have ski boots with our you know, which are noisy when they come in and stuff.
1:08:10
It's clear there's no sign don't talk, don't don't run, nothing.
1:08:13
And it's completely clear it totally demands that sort of behavior and it's great. Yeah. Yeah.
1:08:23
Well, thank you very much. It was a pleasure. Yeah, that was good fun. Thanks for coming on. Very much so. Yeah. Excellent.