Things I Have Learned in My Life So Far
Stefan Sagmeister is a renowned Austrian graphic designer, storyteller and typographer based in New York City. It has to be said: he's not from the make-things-pretty school of design. He designs experiences, feelings and provocations.
He also knows how to live. Since the early 2000s, Stefan has taken extended sabbaticals once every seven years, closing his New York studio for a full year. No client work. No branding campaigns. Just space to think, experiment and reset. “I learned,” he says, “that everything that we designed in the seven years following the first sabbatical had come out of thinking done during that year off.”
One of the most powerful creations born of this approach was a deeply personal and oddly universal project titled: Things I Have Learned in My Life So Far.
During his second sabbatical in Bali, Stefan began collecting his own thoughts – simple truths gleaned from lived experience (general trial-and-error), disappointments and joys. Later, he transformed these reflections into a series of elaborate typographic installations, many crafted from unlikely materials and placed in ephemeral locations: ripening bananas on a wall, sausages on a plate, words written in the sky, sugar cubes stacked in a gallery, copper coins on a public pavement, etc.
It wasn’t design as message so much as it was message as moment in time. Part personal diary, part public meditation. Eventually compiled into a book and exhibited around the world, the project invites you not just to look, but to feel.
Here are the life lessons that Stefan chose to share with the world:
- Helping other people helps me.
- Having guts always works out for me.
- Thinking life will be better in the future is stupid. I have to live now.
- Starting a charity is surprisingly easy.
- Being not truthful always works against me.
- Everything I do always comes back to me.
- Drugs feel great in the beginning, and become a drag later on.
- Over time I get used to everything and start taking it for granted.
- Money does not make me happy.
- Travelling alone is helpful for a new perspective on life.
- Assuming is stifling.
- Keeping a diary supports personal development.
- Trying to look good limits my life.
- Worrying solves nothing.
- Complaining is silly. Either act or forget.
- Material luxuries are best enjoyed in small doses.
- If I want to explore a new direction professionally, it is helpful to try it out for myself first.
- My dreams have no meaning.
- Actually doing the things I set out to do increases my overall level of satisfaction.
- Don’t expect people to change.
- There is no moral reason to have children. [Ed: Outlier!]
- Self confidence produces fine results.
- Obsessions make my life worse and my work better.
- Everybody always thinks they are right.
- Everybody who is honest is interesting.
- Low expectations are a good strategy.
Individually, they read like fortune cookies [RR3:29]. [Ed: Sorry Stefan … ChatGPT made me say that.] Together, they form a kind of personal operating system – one that’s humble, earned and disarmingly honest.
What’s striking isn’t just what Stefan says, but how he says it. In his hands, typography isn’t decoration. It’s medium, message and metaphor rolled into one. Whether spelling out “Worrying solves nothing” in flaming letters across a grassy field, or positioning thousands of coins to spell out the words “Obsessions make my life worse and my work better." his visuals force you to pause – and absorb.
In a world addicted to output and possibly wary of sabbaticals, Stefan’s greatest contribution might not be what he’s made (and that's quite a lot) – but what he paused to discover and learn.
See also: Reg Mombassa on Art and Artists [RR2:61]
___________________________________
References
sagmeister.com
wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan_Sagmeister
themarginalian.org/2014/02/06/things-i-have-learned-in-my-life-so-far-stefan-sagmeister-updated
Images
1. "Self-confidence produces fine results" in bananas of varying ripeness, Deitch Projects, Banana Wall, SoHo NY, 2008
2. Stefan Sagmeister, 2024. Photo credit: Norman Posselt
3, 4, 5. Banana Wall, Deitch Projects, SoHo NY, 2008
6. "Obsessions make my life worse and my work better", Amsterdam, 2008
7. "Trying to look good limits my life." Paris, 2005
8. "Having guts always works out for me." COPY magazine, Austria, 2007
9. "Starting a charity is surprisingly easy." COPY magazine, Austria, 2005
10. "Drugs feel great in the beginning and become a drag later on." COPY, 2006
11. Book: Things I Have Learned in My Life So Far. Stefan Sagmeister, 2013
12. Video: "Everything I've Learned In My Life So Far | Stefan Sagmeister | Flipthrough", Bibliografik, 2019
All images copyright © 2013 Stefan Sagmeister courtesy of Abrams
