Sagmeister-Type Artist

Stefan Sagmeister is a brilliant designer living and operating in New York for his joint company Sagmeister and Walsh. Born in Brengenz Austria in 1962 he started design early at the age of 15. He later went to the University of Applied Arts Vienna and then finished his education at Pratt University.
Although he may not have designed official typefaces, his use of type and text in images is completely original and has been my inspiration for the final project in the class. Sagmeister creates text in unique ways that some would not think of and others would be terrified of. His placement of text is well thought out and original while still staying modern and of a strong characteristic style of his work. The piece that originally brought me to him was a cover of a Lou Reed Album in which he photographed and edited Lou Reeds face and then hand wrote lyrics and styling notes about Lou Reed's album on the face of the image. This raw and natural view of text is something that attracts me in artwork and design and made me want to see more.
The next piece that showed his use of natural text in images was an advertisement for an AIDA conference he would be presenting in. What I believed to have been a pen handwritten advertisements on his skin was instead carved into his Skin. The picture is of his torso and he had an assistant cut the advert for the show into his skin. The striking brilliance of the angular cuts creates a font that is graphic and raw. While still maintaining that design aesthetic it is also extremely disturbing and causes the viewer to question the nature of design and pain.
The artwork that inspired my pieces was more of his modern Sagmeister and Walsh compilations in which live models had text painted on to their skin and then were photographed. This use of hand made text on a human form intrigued me and got me into body painting my friend Ryan who has been nothing but happy to be a human canvas. The few examples given on his website show some in cursive font and one text block font. This use of wrapping around the human form shows how text can be edited outside of a computer and made into something truly original. For the same advertisement of Aizone he also created text out of unique elements such as Air, Fabric bubbles, paint, powder and light creating original fonts with each of the designs. It is for these reasons that Stefan Sagmeister is one of my favorite type creators and artists.