Monday, December 28, 2009

My Christmas gift

I hope that you've all had a wonderful Christmas/holiday and received/gave some thoughtful gifts to those who you love and love you. I received a copy of Stefan Sagmeister's - Made you look. I've been wanting this book for months and just never seemed to pick it up. Well, I almost burst into tears when I unraveled this gift! I haven't got into reading it yet, but am planning to do so tonight! When you slide on the red cover the dog is somber and cute, and when you slide it off he gets ferocious. I couldn't find any other pictures of the back or pages for some reason. But overall, it really is beautiful.

Another self-indulgent design monograph (practically everything we have ever designed including the bad stuff) is Stefan Sagmeister's hand-scrawled subtitle for the first book about his work, Made You Look. This, and the book's clear red case and silver-gilded pages, seem contrary to the raw, handwritten style he is known for, already setting us up for a wild and very personal ride through almost the entire corpus of the 39-year-old designer's work. Sagmeister once scratched words into his skin for his own lecture poster at Cranbrook, and this is the book version--sometimes enlightening, sometimes embarrassing, always self-conscious, and ultimately touching. The story is a conversation between Peter Hall's text and Sagmeister's handwritten commentary, a perfect and believable device for an absorbing dialogue. Self-indulgent as Made You Look may be, Sagmeister lays himself open with idealism, irony, and humor, creating one of the most moving books about design.








Has anyone read this book yet? Does anyone like/dislike Sagmeister?

2 comments:

  1. i dont think i like it...though hes quite the famous artist, lets be honest.

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  2. designer.. not artist. and although i'm not a huge fan of most of his work, i can appreciate why he is so famous for what he does. He's done some pretty crazy stuff..and gotten away with it.

    What is it you don't like? the book cover idea or him in general?

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