Stefan Sagmeister

1. What it is — a poster (99 × 68 cm) and CD-booklet cover for Lou Reed's seventeenth studio album, Warner Bros., February 1996. Photography by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders; design by Sagmeister and Veronica Oh; song lyrics handwritten across the face. CD: a deep blue-toned jewel case combined with a very light portrait; the back, the disc and the tray card together build an eclipse diagram — "twilight". Typefaces on the cover: Bank Gothic, ITC Franklin Gothic, Shelley Script, ITC Kabel — but on the poster there is no typeface at all, it's all hand-lettering.
2. Composition — the face fills the format edge to edge: cropped at the hairline above and below the chin, no shoulders. The eyes sit at y ≈ 28–33%, in the top third, and are the only area clear of text — everything else is written over. The text doesn't follow the format but the face: across the forehead it runs in arcs that repeat the eyebrows, down the cheeks in vertical columns, around the mouth in short lines, gathering into a funnel below the chin. The album title in handwritten italic lies right at the top of the forehead (y ≈ 22%); "LOU REED" in outline capitals at bottom right (x 60–80%, y 78–90%); "the NEW ALBUM" at bottom left; the title repeated vertically along the right edge. The eye enters at the eyes, descends over the text as over a topography, and stops on the name — the only element with an outline.
3. Colour — the poster (Chisholm scan) is black and white: grey photograph, black handwriting, black background swallowing the bottom (y > 88%); a photograph of the same poster on a wall from the PGDA archive is distinctly blue. The CD is blue (toned case). There are at least two versions of the tone — black-and-white and blue-toned; which is original hasn't been established. The effect is the same: a single tonal image, no second colour, so the handwriting remains the only contrast.
4. Typography — the entire poster is handwriting, fast, uneven, capitals and lowercase mixed; key words from the songs (HEART, SEX, INSIDE, SKIN, "SEEMS TO CRY", "SET THE TWILIGHT REELING") are 2–3× larger than the rest and scattered across the face like accents — hierarchy by size, not by position. The source is Shirin Neshat: text on skin. The difference from Neshat — hers is calligraphy, this is scrawl; it's precisely that carelessness that makes the text read as "his own," not as decoration.
5. Message — the singer IS the text; the lyrics aren't next to the portrait but on it. Three-second test: face + name = a poster for a musician, it passes. Five-metre test: only the face, the eyes and "LOU REED" read — everything else is texture; the handwriting doesn't have to be read to work (it works as skin).
6. Why exactly this way — with this album Reed was moving out of a "dark" image toward renewal; the design had to solve how to show the change without illustration. The answer: the singer himself carries his own words, literally. The constraint of the format (a portrait is mandatory for music promotion) is turned into a carrier for text.
7. What would kill it — setting the lyrics as a neat block next to the face. The moment the text steps off the skin onto the format, the poster becomes an ordinary ad with a portrait and a quote. Second: colouring the words — a single colour of handwriting is the condition for the face to remain a face.

Principles: Type on tonal mass, not format (a second author after David Carson — here the cleanest case: the text doesn't sit on any edge of the format, only on the masses of the face) The process is the message (the hand on skin is the content, not a style) To verify against the image: who physically wrote on the face (Sagmeister on the photograph or on the skin?) — no source says; the tone of the original poster (b/w or blue) has not been established.

1. What it is — a poster for the AIGA New York lecture series "Fresh Dialogue", 1996; lithograph, 61 × 99.1 cm, landscape format. Photographer Tom Schierlitz shot two beef tongues from a nearby market with a large-format camera (MoMA). MoMA describes "the somewhat obscene effect of the elongated wagging tongues"; the studio accepted that effect, some AIGA members didn't.
2. Composition — a white plane; two tongues enter from the left and right and almost touch tips at the centre (x ≈ 48–52%, y ≈ 55%) — that's the only point of tension. Across the full width, behind the tongues, large outline letters FRESH DIALOGUE drawn with marker (y ≈ 30–75%), so the tongues cover the middle of the letters. Small handwriting (date, place, speakers' names) in the top-left and bottom-left corners, like notes in the margins. The eye travels: tongues → the gap between them → the title completed in the head.
3. Colour — two: pinkish-red of the meat and black marker on white. No third; the white is the paper, not print. The meat gives the only saturated colour and that's why it holds the centre.
4. Typography — outline capital letters drawn by hand, uneven heights, like a quick sign on cardboard; the small text is plain handwriting. Not one letter comes from a font. An opposing register: technically perfect large-format photography against deliberately clumsy marker — Hand gesture against the cut.
5. Message — "dialogue" = two tongues; "fresh" = raw meat. A rebus literal to the point of discomfort. Three seconds: two tongues, the word DIALOGUE — the message passes, even from five metres. Up close: the unease (obscenity) is deliberate and documented (MoMA).
6. Why exactly this way — low budget and pro bono work (MoMA notes the pro bono AIGA series); one photograph, one marker, white paper. MoMA formulates the method of the whole body of work precisely on this piece: "compelling concept … executed with a raw and straightforward technique".
7. What would kill it — setting FRESH DIALOGUE in a clean grotesque; then the tongues would be an illustration next to the title, not the title itself. Or: spacing the tongues apart — the tension lies in them almost touching.

Principles: Found object as a word (tongue = dialogue, cut out on white without background) Hand gesture against the cut The process is the message To verify against the image: the speakers' names in the small text haven't been read, resolution insufficient.

1. What it is — poster for the national (biennial) AIGA conference in New Orleans, 1997; lithograph, 67.3 × 95.3 cm, landscape format, double-sided (programme on the back — MoMA holds both sides). Design, illustration and lettering Sagmeister. Eye 41 calls it the "'headless chicken' poster / programme".
2. Composition — a large white headless chicken occupies the left two-thirds and the full height, running to the right; its legs stand on a brick wall that forms the bottom third (y ≈ 65–100%), above the wall grass and a dark sky. A small brown chicken in the field to the left (x ≈ 15%, y ≈ 45%) gives scale — the large one reads as monstrous. Text is crammed into the top right quadrant (x 60–98%, y 5–45%): "HURRY!" in red, "Jambalaya", the dates "NOV 13–16" and small handwritten questions. The eye travels: chicken → headless neck → HURRY! → small text.
3. Colour — photographic: white feathers, red legs and a red cut at the neck, ochre brick, green grass, dark blue sky; text red and black. Red links the wound and the word HURRY — the only colour that appears in both the image and the text.
4. Typography — felt-tip scribbles, capitals and lowercase mixed with no order; MoMA describes "Sagmeister's signature scribbly type", and the author himself: "telephone scribbles and turn of the century Art Brut". No letter comes from a typeface.
5. Message — MoMA lists four readings the work offers at once: a metaphor for the profession (we run around headless), a call to stop running and come to the conference, a voodoo symbol tied to the city, and "a statement against the abuse of technology and the over-sleek graphics of the 1990s". The poster spells these questions out literally, in small text ("Is it a metaphor for the profession? …") — the image poses the question, the text doesn't resolve it but repeats it. At three seconds, what remains is the headless chicken. At five metres, what remains is a white mass on brick and HURRY!.
6. Why exactly this way — 1997 is the peak of digital slickness in graphic design, and the poster deliberately looks like a scissors-and-marker photomontage — the brick, the grass and the chicken don't share the same light. The job is pro bono, built from a single image and one hand.
7. What would kill it — giving the chicken a head. Or setting "Jambalaya" in a nice script — the joke would become decoration. Or removing the small chicken — the large one would lose its scale and turn into an ordinary photograph.

Principles: Analogy instead of illustration (the headless chicken stands for the profession, it doesn't depict the conference) Hand gesture against the cut Image as a question (the work spells out possible readings itself and leaves them open) To verify against the image: the back side with the programme has not been reviewed. Not confirmed whether the chicken was photographed in a single shot or composited from two photographs.

1. What it is — CD cover, 1997; creative direction Sagmeister, art direction David Byrne, design Sagmeister and Hjalti Karlsson, photography Tom Schierlitz; doll clothing by Adelle Lutz with Michael Daube (Cooper Hewitt). Printed paper and plastic, jewel case, 6-page booklet; produced in the USA. Cooper Hewitt: "The type was made as an actual model and then photographed."
2. Composition — front: head and shoulders of a David Byrne doll (plastic face, straight hair) centred on a blue field, looking straight ahead; the title "Feelings" arcs across the top fifth, below it small text DAVID BYRNE; the image has rounded corners like a card (Cooper Hewitt: "rounded corners"). Back: the whole doll on a pink field with a mood colour next to each song. Inside: a smiling doll on a yellow field; on and beneath the disc, "David Byrne Mood Computer" — a circle with a pointer across coloured fields.
3. Colour — blue (front), yellow (inside), pink (back) — three solid fields, one per side; plus a mood scale "from blue through green and red to yellow" (Cooper Hewitt). Here colour isn't decoration but content: each song has a mood colour, and that code is read off the disc.
4. Typography — the title is a physical model of lettering (three-dimensional, with cast shadow, as if made of vinyl or rubber), photographed — not a typeface; other lettering is small, not read.
5. Message — the album is called Feelings, so the cover is a device for measuring feelings: four dolls (happy, angry, sad, content) and a mood computer — the listener turns the disc and "reads off" how they feel. Three seconds: plastic Byrne, it passes. Interaction requires holding it in your hand — this is a cover that can't be reduced to a thumbnail without losing half its meaning.
6. Why exactly this way — Byrne is art director (sagmeister.com), the theme is emotional, and Sagmeister's answer is a cold, mechanical colour code (creativepro notes that personal content was deliberately brought into "cold typography"). The jewel case and disc are taken as a moving part, not as packaging.
7. What would kill it — the real Byrne instead of the doll. The doll allows four faces of the same man without acting; a photograph would turn it into a portrait of the singer.

Principles: The letter is built, then photographed (documented, Cooper Hewitt) Program instead of artefact (the sixth author — the colour code per song + the mood computer are a rule the listener carries out; a borderline case, the system is small) To verify against the image: the arrangement of colours per song on the back; how the disc turns relative to the scale beneath it. The mechanics aren't described in the source.

1. What it is — CD cover, 1997 (Virgin); creative direction Sagmeister, design Hjalti Karlsson, photography Max Vadukul. sagmeister.com: "an Assyrian lion embedded into a special manufactured filigree slipcase"; the interior with a desert band that follows the tour set design. Not in MoMA or Cooper Hewitt. Membership of the Cooper Hewitt collection not verified.
2. Composition — slipcase: metallic silver with a die-cut filigree ornament across the whole surface; in the centre a rearing lion in profile, facing left, blue-grey metallic (x 30–70%, y 15–85%); the band's name in a small dark plate (tablet) bottom left, the title bottom right. Inside: a digipak that unfolds into a continuous desert — orange dunes, blue sky, the lion in the same pose; the disc at the centre with the lion. Eye path: ornament → lion → name plate.
3. Colour — monochrome metal outside (silver + blue-grey); inside two saturated complementary fields (orange desert, blue sky). The contrast between outside and inside is both thermal and material: cold metal → warm sand.
4. Typography — the band's name in capitals within the plate, like an inscription on a relief; the typeface isn't named. The typography is small and subordinate to the ornament — the opposite of 01–03.
5. Message — Babylon (Assyrian lion, filigree) + "bridges" (desert that unfolds into a band). Three seconds: lion in silver — luxury, antiquity. Five metres: metallic shine; the name isn't legible — it doesn't need to be, the Stones sell on shine. A rare piece without handwriting and without a joke.
6. Why exactly this way — the budget of a stadium tour allows for manufactured packaging (the filigree slipcase is "special manufactured"); the brief was to connect the cover with the stage, not to express the songs. Hence packaging, not image.
7. What would kill it — printing the filigree instead of cutting it. The whole argument lies in seeing through the holes to what's underneath; as a printed image, the cover would be kitsch.

Principles: Historical quote as building material (Assyrian relief + Arabic filigree + desert — unconnected sources into one object; seventh instance, closest to Borrowed vocabulary of the author since all citations are „Babylonian“) The sleeve continues the scene (packaging is part of the tour's stage design) To verify against the image: exact material of the slipcase (plastic with metallisation or metal?); dimensions; whether the lion is Vadukul's photograph of a sculpture or a drawing.

1. What it is — Poster for Sagmeister's lecture for AIGA Detroit at Cranbrook Academy of Art, 25. 2. 1999. Offset lithograph (SFMOMA; MoMA lists lithograph), 99.1 × 69.9 cm. Art direction Sagmeister, designer Martin Woodtli, photography Tom Schierlitz (Cooper Hewitt). The text is cut with a scalpel (X-Acto) into Sagmeister's torso; according to sagmeister.com it was cut by the intern Martin. Cooper Hewitt describes the figure shown from the mouth down, holding a pack of Duane Reade plasters, against red fabric; a real plaster sits below the right nipple.
2. Composition — The torso fills the frame; the head is cut off at mouth height (y ≈ 0%), arms at the sides, hands down. One hand (lower right in the image) holds a blue pack of plasters (x 68–85%, y 85–98%). The text follows the anatomy: the name "SA·GMEISTER" across the chest (y 20–32%), "AIGA DETROIT & CRANBROOK ACADEMY OF ART" below it, "Style = Fart" in an ellipse on the left ribs (x 45–70%, y 45–52%), the date and time around the navel (y 55–68%), small conditions running vertically down the left arm ("AIGA MEMBERS FREE, NON-MEMBERS $5"). The background is a red curtain, darker at the top. The eye moves: name → Style=Fart → plaster → pack.
3. Colour — The skin is a warm ochre-pink, against dark red fabric. The text is red because it's a cut — the same colour as the background, so the letters read as a wound, not as a label. The blue pack of plasters is the only cool colour and the only printed object, so it's the last stop for the eye.
4. Typography — Carved capitals, shaky, uneven heights, with lowercase in the date. There's no typeface and no "designer's" hand — the hand is the intern's, the body is the author's. The photograph is clinically sharp, the letters are swelling — that's where the contrast lies.
5. Message — The subject of the lecture is the pain of the design process; the poster shows that pain, doesn't talk about it. "Style = Fart" sums up a stance AIGA repeats in 2013 as his programme. At three seconds you see a naked body with text — a shock that sticks. At five metres the torso and the red colour read as a body, the text doesn't read; up close the text reads and only then does it become clear it's carved.
6. Why exactly this way — It's an invitation for a single lecture, the audience is designers; the only way for the poster to talk about process is to show the process. Sagmeister himself says: "we tried to visualize the pain that seems to accompany most of our design projects".
7. What would kill it — Photoshop. If the viewer suspects the cut isn't real, the work is a lie; that's why the plaster and the pack of plasters are there — proof that the cut is a wound. The other thing that would kill it: putting it on a shirt — text on a shirt is merch.

Principles: The process is the message (benchmark of the principle) The letter is built, then photographed The designer writes the headline (third author after Herb Lubalin and Barbara Kruger — "Style = Fart" is his own sentence; different title = different poster) To verify against the image: How much of the text was actually carved versus later enhanced with colour has not been verified — no source states this; Cooper Hewitt records "inscribed with an X-acto knife".

1. What it is — Poster for the School of Visual Arts, New York, 2004 (the SVA poster series creatively directed by Silas Rhodes); lithograph, 116.8 × 76.2 cm, portrait. Design Sagmeister, Irina Thaler, Paul Rustand; retouching Steve West (sagmeister.com). The sentence is from Sagmeister's diary — one of the maxims from the series Things I Have Learned in My Life So Far. The letters are twigs; caterpillars, pupae and butterflies live on them — "the whole life cycle" (sagmeister.com).
2. Composition — Six horizontal branches function as lines of text (y ≈ 8, 20, 32, 45, 58, 70%), each carrying two to three words made of twigs; words grow toward the centre: THINKING LIFE / WILL BE BETTER / in the FUTURE IS / STUPID / I HAVE TO LIVE / NOW — "STUPID" and "NOW" are the largest. Below, "SCHOOL OF VISUAL ARTS" sits on two branches (y 75–85%), and small handwritten programme text fills the bottom tenth. Butterflies and caterpillars are distributed along the branches like punctuation (x 10, 40, 70%). The eye reads top to bottom, line by line, because the branches are lines.
3. Colour — One plane: warm sienna/orange-brown with scattered yellow patches (lichen?); the branches are dark brown to black; the butterflies orange and white. Practically monochrome in a warm key; the contrast is tonal (dark branch on light brown), not chromatic.
4. Typography — Capitals made of twigs, with lowercase in "in the"; the letters read because the branches are straight and the twigs short; no typeface is used. This is "a letter made of things" in its purest form — a sentence about time written in material that grows and rots.
5. Message — The maxim is literal and personal; the image adds meaning to it: a butterfly lives briefly, the whole cycle is visible — "live now". At three seconds the sentence reads through to NOW (the largest words are at the end) and passes. At five metres STUPID and NOW pass, the branches, the orange colour; SVA isn't seen, and that's fine — the school is buying the attitude, not the logo.
6. Why exactly this way — SVA posters in the New York subway are a tradition where each designer gets the whole surface and a brief; Sagmeister doesn't advertise the school but publishes his own sentence and signs the school underneath — the client accepts this because the audience is young and wants attitude.
7. What would kill it — If the sentence were set in a typeface, and the branches and butterflies left as illustration, the poster would become a scene with a natural motif, not a sentence that is itself nature. Equal-size words would also kill it — without growth toward STUPID and NOW the sentence loses its rhythm.

Principles: The designer writes the headline (sentence from the diary) The letter is built, then photographed The process is the message (slow building of letters from twigs = "live now") To verify against the image: Whether the branches and insects were photographed or painted (retouching by Steve West suggests photography, but this is not confirmed); the exact text of the programme in the lower section has not been verified.

1. What it is — Visual identity for the concert hall Casa da Música in Porto (building by Rem Koolhaas / OMA), 2007; creative direction Sagmeister, design Matthias Ernstberger, Ralph Ammer, Quentin Walesch. In 2011 MoMA acquired the software itself — the "Logo Generator" — as a work (medium: Software). Applications: posters, programmes, business cards, cakes, flags.
2. Composition — The logotype is the building: an irregular polyhedron with 17 faces shown in six rotations, each as a flat silhouette with white edges; next to each, the lowercase inscription "casa da música" in a light rounded grotesque, always to the right of the mark, at the same height. The mark is never the same twice, the inscription always is. In applications: portrait (Beethoven, Philip Glass, Lou Reed) → a palette of six samples → the faces of the polyhedron coloured with these samples. The eye recognises the shape of the building first, then the colour, then only the name.
3. Colour — There's no house colour. The software samples colours from the image the logo is paired with (a performer's photograph, a concert poster) and distributes them across the faces — the algorithm derives a palette from any image by sampling. For institutional use the mark is black. The palette is therefore a PROCESS, not a list.
4. Typography — One grotesque, lowercase, light, rounded terminals; it doesn't change. Typography is the only constant in the system — the opposite of David Carson, where the typeface changes and the placement stays fixed; here the MARK changes, the typeface is fixed.
5. Message — sagmeister.com: "the building itself is a logo"; the system "transforms itself like a chameleon from application to application", "dice-like by displaying different views and facets of music". Three seconds: the building is recognised, if known — and Porto knows it. Five metres: a solid black shape — it reads as a mark. The risk: outside Porto the shape is nothing; that's why the inscription is never missing.
6. Why exactly this way — The architecture was more recognisable than any mark that could be drawn, and it covered every genre (classical, rock, electronic) because it's an empty form. Colour taken from the image solves how one mark can serve Beethoven and Lou Reed without clashing with their own imagery.
7. What would kill it — A single fixed rotation and one house colour. Then it becomes a logo shaped like a building — boring, and in conflict with every performer photograph. The argument lies in the generating.

Principles: Program instead of artefact (fifth author — the software IS the work, MoMA holds it as such; the most literal case after Karl Gerstner) Identity is behaviour, not a mark (third author after Neville Brody and Paula Scher — the mark rotates and recolours, the rule is a list of what's allowed) Palette sampled from the image (colour isn't chosen but taken from the content) To verify against the image: MoMA 378.2011 (2nd anniversary poster) has no image online — no printed application has been examined in the museum record; the number of faces (17) is not confirmed by a source.