I know Staphan Sagmeister now

Last Monday I had the great privilege to to listen to Stephan Sagmeister speak at a Charlotte AIGA event. I walked away feeling inspired and the feeling that everything and anything is possible again. I wrote about him in a previous blog, here. Some of his work isn't for everyone; some of it makes no sense and some hits it right on the nail. Either way he is a brilliant man and I wish he had been my teacher.

He just came out with a new book called, "Things I have learned in my life so far". It's very much an autobiography of his work and how he came to it. It all started with a publication in Japan which gave him complete freedom to do whatever he wants on seven pages. Now I don't know about you but if that were me I'd just freeze up, what do you do? We concept, develop and create by limitations. Limitations help us think, helps us work because without them we don't know what to do. I distrust that statement, because there have been times in my life when I've been told that I have no limitations and by the end of it there were plenty. So it was interesting to hear that Stephan felt the same way. He told us how all his life he's writing in a journal and one day he was scanning though it and found a maxim that he wrote, "Everything I do comes back to me". A very profound statement. He decided to self indulgently use this maxim in the seven pages. Each word had a page and the content and form did not match. I wish I could show you because they were all very bizarre. But it had the right effect and people loved it. No changes, no approvals, it was right and the magazine published it. Since then the maxim has been done numerous times.

After this other organizations asked Stephan to do the same thing for them and slowly over the last eight years his maxims are everywhere around the world. I wish I could show you some examples but they aren't online, you'd have to purchase the book. By the end of it he asked each one of us to think of something they have learned and to put it up on his website, thingsihavelearnedinmylife.com. So I spent all last week and the one maxim that I think is true is my fathers maxim, "keep it simple". I'm going to submit it to his website and I'll post it when I'e completed it.

The one thing I took from listening to him is that I need to step away from my desk more and not listen to my own rules on how I can design. There are ideas everywhere and sometimes you can't force them to happen, they have to grow and I'll have to grow to find them.