Stefan Sagmeister

Stefan Sagmeister is an Austrian graphic designer, storyteller, and typographer.

Biography of Stefan Sagmeister

Stefan Sagmeister was born in 1962 in Bregenz, Austria. He studied graphic design at the Hochschule für Angewandte Kunst in Vienna, graduating in 1986. He later won a Fulbright scholarship to study at the Pratt Institute in New York, where he received a Master of Fine Arts degree.

In 1991, Sagmeister worked with Leo Burnett's Hong Kong Design Group. In 1993, he returned to New York to work with Tibor Kalman's design company. The same year, he founded his own company, Sagmeister Inc., to create designs primarily for the music industry. He has designed album covers for notable artists such as Lou Reed, OK Go, The Rolling Stones, David Byrne, Jay Z, Aerosmith, and many others.

From 2011 until 2019, he partnered with Jessica Walsh under the name Sagmeister & Walsh Inc. Sagmeister has authored the design monograph "Made You Look" and teaches in the graduate design department of the School of Visual Arts in New York. He has also been appointed as the Frank Stanton Chair at the Cooper Union School of Art, New York.

His contributions to the field have earned him multiple accolades, including two Grammy Awards and the National Design Award for Communications from the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. In 2013, he was awarded the Golden Medal of Honor of the Republic of Austria and was voted Austrian of the Year by Die Presse in 2018.