Stefan Sagmeister is an avant-garde leader in the design field, executing projects for clients as diverse as the Rolling Stones, HBO, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Sagmeister explores the vast and illusive subjects of our lives, like happiness or beauty, how they connect to design, and what that actually means to our everyday lives.  A native of Austria, Sagmeister is a principal partner along with Jessica Walsh at the New York City design firm Sagmeister & Walsh. The firm creates brand identities, commercials, websites, apps, films, books, and objects for clients and is a full-service studio creating strategy and design across all platforms.

Exhibitions of Sagmeister’s works have been mounted in major international museums. His exhibit The Happy Show attracted almost half of a million visitors worldwide and became the most visited graphic design show in history.  In 2013 The Happy Show was on view at the Chicago Cultural Center.  Sagmeister went on to co-direct the documentary The Happy Film which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2016. Sagmeister’s books, Things I have Learned in My Life So Far and Sagmeister: Made You Look, give further insight into his compelling and diverse practice. He has spoken five times at official TED conferences, making him one of the three most frequently invited TED speakers. Sagmeister is a two-time Grammy winner, a Fulbright Scholar, and has also earned numerous important international design awards.

Presented in partnership with SAIC’s Department of Visual Communication Design. Additional support provided by the Architecture & Design Society at the Art Institute of Chicago.