A couple of weeks ago, if you'd said to me 'Stefan Sagmeister', I'd have thought 'razor blade nutjob'. That's the trouble when one piece of an artist's work is inevitably picked to represent them - like if you hear a Van Halen track it's usually 'Jump'. Everyone gets typecast.
Then I read 'Things I have learned in my life so far' and 'Made you look'. Now I know better.
He does MAD things. Like hanging out of a window of the Empire State Building so he could be filmed waving a sign, and almost being arrested as a jumper. Or making words out of tape wrapped round fences or trees. Or swimming in the Hudson river with letters on his back. Or using photos of Lou Reed at the point of orgasm to illustrate his album sleeve. He's not shy about getting his kit off and having his scrawny body become part of the message. either.
In short, he's a performer.
I have no desire, never mind ability, to stare at a Mac for days at a time. It's not healthy, for one thing - the screen gives me migraines, and there's nothing worse for your health than sitting at a desk shoving crap into your gob for twelve hours at a stretch. But that's the lot of most Mac monkeys.
Sagmeister has shown me that there's a market for designers who DO stuff, who make mad things out in the open. That's more the sort of life I want to lead than being chained to a desk all day.
Before I started this course, I thought I was crap at the hands-on stuff. But when I was photographing the pinball table, and I was fiddling with the mirrors to line up the laser, Graham Holt said "Were you an engineer in a former life?" So, maybe, I'm not crap at it after all.
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