Sagmeister Inc.

Dedicated to design

Sagmeister Inc. continues to push the limits using Adobe InDesign software

Austrian-born Stefan Sagmeister has a knack for the unconventional. He once cut type into his own skin to create a poster for an American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) event where he was a featured speaker. His book, Sagmeister: Made You Look, is packaged in a red transparent slipcase and includes a double image of a dog, an optical illusion that transforms the dog from friendly to killer. The book title isn't printed on the spine, but instead it's on the edges of the pages and can be seen only when bent one way or the other. With his enjoyment of optical tricks and enthusiasm about improving the design world, it is certain that Sagmeister will make you look — and listen.

Sagmeister has designed graphics and packaging for the Rolling Stones, David Byrne, Lou Reed, Aerosmith, and Pat Metheny. His work has been nominated four times for Grammy Awards and has won most international design awards. Sagmeister now runs a small design firm in New York City, Sagmeister Inc., and his work continues to garner worldwide acclaim.

Although Sagmeister's design philosophy has changed little over the years — he believes design should become more humanistic and less shallow — the tools he uses have changed for the better. A move to Adobe InDesign software has enabled the firm's designers to execute creative concepts with fewer limitations. "There are so many amazing features in InDesign that are not available in other programs," says Matthias Ernstberger, Sagmeister designer. "Best of all, when you bring Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop files into your layouts they remain completely editable, so there's much more of a creative flow."

This unique project was exactly the type of design challenge Sagmeister relishes. "We wanted to document Wave UFO and also create an object that somehow represents the work," explains Sagmeister. When he presented his ideas to Mori, she fell in love with one featuring the book itself hovering within an injection-molded slipcase.

Effects extraordinaire

Having decided on the design with the unusual packaging, Sagmeister and Ernstberger set to work designing the book contents. Filled with beautiful imagery, the book describes Wave UFO in detail, from the project's Buddhist philosophical underpinnings to the actual manufacturing of the sculpture by Masarati in Italy.

While the layout is clean, the project also called for some extraordinary effects. Type within the book — both headlines and body text — is set on a wave. Using text on a path in InDesign, the process was seamless. Without InDesign, the designers would have had to create paths within Illustrator and set the type there, and then bring the Illustrator file into QuarkXPress, where the text would no longer be editable. Any changes to the copy would entail a laborious process of resetting type within Illustrator, and then bringing it back into QuarkXPress. "We wouldn't have even attempted this without InDesign," says Ernstberger.

"We wouldn't have even attempted this without InDesign."

—Matthias Ernstberger
Sagmeister designer

Ernstberger used transparency and blending modes to lend effects to pieces of text and images. In one instance, he drew attention to a single segment of a pie chart showing the brain waves of one participant by overlaying transparent white onto the remaining pie chart segments. He gave photos of the sculpture and other elements within the layout a varnished, shimmering appearance to make them appear as they do in person.

Wave of the future

Ernstberger used master pages in InDesign to coordinate different sections of the book, making the book-building process more efficient. "Even if you have five different sections for one book, InDesign gives you a broad overview of the entire project," says Ernstberger. "You can stay more organized and worry less about the logistics of book assembly."

"For the kind of breakthrough concepts were dedicated to communicating, InDesign is really the only viable option."

—Stefan Sagmeister
Sagmeister designer

Sagmeister sent the InDesign files for the book to Systems Design Limited in Hong Kong for printing. "Systems Design Limited readily accepts InDesign files, so printing was never an issue," says Ernstberger.

For Sagmeister Inc., InDesign is the wave of the future. While learning InDesign was "no big deal," the impact of the switch has been enormous. "InDesign, Illustrator, and Photoshop are an integrated design environment in which everything stays fluid and editable, so we never have to think about what kind of file we're working with," says Sagmeister. "For the kind of breakthrough concepts we're dedicated to communicating, InDesign is really the only viable option."