STEFAN SAGMEISTER

Awards & Recognition

Two-time Grammy Award winner for album design, including Everything That Happens Will Happen Today (David Byrne & Brian Eno).

National Design Award (Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian).

Multiple Tokyo Type Directors Club Awards.

33rd Annual Masters Series Award with career retrospective.

AIGA Medalist.

Four-time TED speaker.

Stefan Sagmeister doesn’t just design, he disrupts, provokes, and redefines the boundaries of visual storytelling.

Emotionally charged storytelling runs through his projects. Merging typography, emotion, and conceptual depth, his work isn’t just seen; it’s felt.

Known for his daring, often controversial approach, he has shaped branding, album covers, and experiential design in ways that continue to influence the industry. His ability to balance intellect with instinct, philosophy with playfulness, and the deeply personal with the universal has made him one of the most influential designers of the past three decades.

Austrian-born and New York-based, Sagmeister founded his design firm, Sagmeister Inc., in 1993, later evolving it into Sagmeister & Walsh with Jessica Walsh. His portfolio spans album covers, exhibitions, and public installations, all defined by an eagerness to challenge conventional design norms. His work engages deeply with human experience, often blurring the lines between graphic design, performance, and psychology. Whether it’s typography carved into skin, words arranged from bananas, or letters formed with bodily fluids, his designs transform the written word into visceral experiences.

The Happiness Project

A major shift in Sagmeister’s career was his deep dive into happiness, personal growth, and self-exploration through design. His renowned year-long sabbaticals, taken every seven years, allow him to step away from commercial work and pursue creative ideas without constraints. This exploration led to his highly acclaimed The Happy Show exhibition and the documentary The Happy Film, in which he conducted personal experiments to understand what truly brings happiness. Through these projects, Sagmeister has evolved from being just a designer to a philosopher of visual culture, using design as a tool to explore the human condition.

Album Covers & Music Industry Influence

Sagmeister gained mainstream recognition for his album cover designs, working with legendary artists such as The Rolling Stones, Lou Reed, David Byrne, and OK Go. His 1996 album cover for Lou Reed’s Set the Twilight Reeling was a pivotal moment, setting the tone for his highly conceptual, often surrealistic approach to music branding. His work for the Talking Heads and Brian Eno/David Byrne’s Everything That Happens Will Happen Today (2008) is another example of his ability to translate sound into striking visual narratives.

Selected Press links: Fast Company, Wallpaper, Cool Hunting, Print Magazine, The Talks