On may 17 Stefan Sagmeister performed “Design and Happiness” at the Kasemattenbühne / Schloßberg Graz. Invited by our departments and in cooperation with the Designmonat Graz & the canadian viagrapringfestival.at/springfestival-2012″>springfestival Sagmeisters lecture was an important event for the Graz design scene.

Stefan Sagmeister formed the New York based Sagmeister Inc. in 1993 and has since designed for clients as diverse as the Rolling Stones, HBO, and the Guggenheim Museum. Having been nominated eight times, he finally won two Grammies for Talking Heads and Brian Eno & David Byrne package designs. He also earned practically every important international design award. In 2008, a comprehensive book titled „Things I have Learned in my Life so far“ was published by Abrams. Solo shows on Sagmeister Inc‘s work have been mounted in Zurich, Vienna, New York, Berlin, Tokyo, Osaka, Prague, Cologne, Seoul and Miami. He teaches in the graduate department of the School of Visual Art in New York and gives lectures on all continents.

Before his lecture he visited our departments and met with students for intensive discussions in a workshop. The lecture “Design and Happiness” was remarkable in several aspects: with a certain wink, Sagmeister discussed virulent problems of designing & design by means of this philosophical meta topic, expertly mixing the most different disciplines and last but not least offering entertainment in the best of senses. To that effect, nearly 1000 people listened attentively to his explanations in the bitter cold, nobody left the inhospitable venue prematurely, and a look at the pictures confirms that “happiness” quite took hold of the auditorium.

Photography: 1-3 Karl Stocker, 4-13 Jorj Konstantinov © ciscommunity