Kaikasen Talks: Chat with Stefan Sagmeister

​Stefan Sagmeister has run his design studio in New York since 1993. His clients have ranged from the Rolling Stones to HBO to the Guggenheim Museum, and he's designed album covers for Lou Reed, Talking Heads, David Byrne, Jay-Z, and OK Go. He's won two Grammys for album packaging, an AIGA Medal, and a Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award. His work is in the collections of MoMA, SFMOMA, and the Art Institute of Chicago. From 2011 to 2019 he ran the studio as Sagmeister & Walsh with Jessica Walsh; today it's Sagmeister Inc. again.

​Alongside the client work, he's spent years on long, self-initiated projects. The Happy Show, a thematic exhibition, came out of a decade of trying to make himself happier and documenting what did and didn't work. Beauty, with Walsh, made the case that aesthetics are functional, not decorative. Now Is Better overlays long-run data — life expectancy, literacy, homicide rates — onto old European paintings, arguing that most things are getting better and that our daily media diet obscures it.

​This is an open conversation. No deck, no agenda — just Stefan in conversation with the Kaikasen community.

​Bring your curiosity — and whatever you want to ask Stefan about.

​Online and free, as always.