The last twenty years of graphic design have seen its share of amazing work. Time will have to tell as to who will emerge as the new Paul Rand and who will be left by the visual roadside as the fad of the day, but one honor is already wrapped up with absolute certainty: the greatest salesman of this era. Anyone in this profession knows how difficult it is to actually have a breakthrough “idea,” much less a more rarified “concept.” If you have any honest appraisal of your abilities, you know you will be lucky to polish someone else’s brass ring, much less grab one of your own. Should you have one of these mythical “concepts,” you will then find that, in soul-sapping fashion, it is nearly impossible to convince a client to actually see it through.

Only one man regularly has these blasts of inspirations, and somehow sweet talks his benefactors into going forward (the silver-tongued devil – must be the accent!) Creating a portfolio of jaw-dropping intensity, that man is Stefan Sagmeister.

He is wonderful. He is inspiring. He is speaking here in DC tonight. He is tall. He is answering my rapid fire inane questions:

JF: Every time I talk to you, you have just returned from somewhere else – what are the last five cities you have been in?

SS: In the last 3 weeks: Istanbul (Turkey), Barcelona (Spain), Lausanne (Switzerland), Bregenz (Austria), Beirut (Lebanon).

JF: Favorite meal of all-time?

SS: Tiny Bow, a Shanghai soup dumpling, incorporating a small ball of crab and pork meat and steaming hot soup inside the dumpling.

JF: What has been the biggest surprise when building one of your typographical constructions?

SS: That the smell bananas release as they ripen makes all of the bananas in their immediate surrounding ripe faster.

JF: What has been the hardest physical matter to create letters from?

SS: Cacti.

JF: For your “Keeping A Diary” project in Singapore, what was the biggest challenge in taking what had been a static exercise into the realm of film?

SS: Location scouting. We had planned the entire little film out in New York and discovered when we arrived in Singapore that not a single location we had chosen was what it promised to be. We had to delay the shoot and look for new locations, which, at the end we were MUCH happier with then the originally proposed ones.

JF: How much work had you seen from Martin Woodtli before letting him carve into your body?

SS: Tons. When he interned at our studio he already had a full body of work (even though he had just graduated). He is doing fantastic projects now. (This is very true. You can see a wonderful collection of Martin’s work in my New Masters of Poster Design – JF.)

JF: Describe in seven words or less how you felt after ingesting all of that food for your binge poster?

SS: Spongy. Heavy. Full.

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JF: How do you relate to american designers vs european designers working in America?

SS: The same. Like them both.

JF: Favorite piece by a designer other than yourself:

SS: Sticky Fingers, for the Rolling Stones, by Andy Warhol and Craig Braun. (Longtime column readers will know I quickly concur – JF.)

JF: How difficult has it been at times to stay “small” as a studio? (As you often have 1-2 incredibly talented designers working with you, but far from a large staff.)

SS: Not very – once I learned to say no to new projects, it all became rather easy.

JF: What would you say is the most important thing you learned from Tibor Kalman?

SS: That being a good salesman is more important than being able to kern type nicely.

JF: Which attribute do you think makes the design groupies go wild – your height, your hair, your accent, or some combination of all three?

SS: I have yet to see design groupies go wild.

JF: Which recording artist fought the hardest for or against your production additions for their packaging? (It is a business where every penny added is scrutinized after all.)

SS: Pat Metheny fought very hard that “Imaginary Day” would appear in a cardboard packaging (which was, at the very high number of copies it would run, quite a feat). David Byrne always is on our side when it comes to extra wishes.

JF: How much of your career has been the result of planning and how much has been by chance?

SS: Until I was 28 I pretty much floated along, and let the chips fall where they did. After that I thought more about what I actually wanted to do and for whom I might want to do it for.

JF: If Anni (Kuan – whose fashion line has been the subject matter of Sagmeister’s wonderous work via one color newsprint magic) had a limitless budget for her pieces – what do you think you would have changed?

SS: They would be completely, totally different, likely big photo shoots printed in 5-color or whatnot…

JF: Stolen ipod shuffle game – go to your ipod/itunes and list the first five songs that come up on random shuffle. No cheating.

SS: NOFX, Together on the Sand
Catpower, Where is My Love
Wilco, Impossible Germany
The Submarines, Brighter Discontent
Lykke Li, Everybody But Me

JF: I almost forgot to ask – what was your reaction to the Absolut commercial? (Widely accepted as heavily indebted to Sagmeister’s personal work. And by saying “heavily indebted” I mean clearly a full on lift. It also features a soul sucking Joy Division cover by Broken Social Scene. The entire thing drips with sadness.)

SS: They had asked us. We said no. They did it anyway. Not nice.

(I replied later to Stefan that the portion of his response where he mentioned that they asked managed to shine a tiny little light in to the deep recess of my cold cold heart – and the portion where they went ahead and ripped off his style and process managed to plunge it back into eternal darkness – JF.)

How many current designers are worth a global agency going to great lengths to emulate their thinking? It should be a compliment – but of course it isn’t. If anything can be taken away from this it is that Sagmeister is inspiring at his very core. His work makes you scream out – but not the words “why didn’t I think of that?” Rather it is “I could NEVER have thought of that!” And that my friends, is greatness.

See it up close and in person tonight at the Corcoran (I hope you have tickets, as it is sold out) and spend a few hours with one of the most important designers of our generation. He is wonderful. He is inspiring. He is tall.

He is Sagmeister.

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