Portrait by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders The phone rang ... - Lou Reed

Portrait by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders The phone rang: “Hey this is Lou Reed. I saw 

your CD covers. Can I come over?” When Sagmeister received the call on a warm 

September day in 1995, he was afraid it might be a joke. The friendship between these 

two artists, who in their own way have made both music and type rock, has pro d u c e d 

some of the most arresting graphics in music: from CD packaging for Set the Tw i l i g h t 

R e e l i n g and E c s t a s y to Pass Thru Fire—a book of collected lyrics—and The Modern 

D a n c e music video. ■ A passion for rock and roll is obviously their common gro u n d , 

but they also share similar work processes and philosophies. Since he opened his 

New York studio in 1993, Sagmeister (featured in G r a p h i s Issue 303) has gained the 

reputation of an agitator while still being granted official accolades from the design 

c o m m u n i t y. His most provocative posters for the A.I.G.A. conferences, with body 

parts and decapitated animal heads will remain in the annals of graphic design history. 

■ While the Austrian-born designer has created successful music graphics for such 

g roups as The Rolling Stones, Aerosmith and David Byrne, Lou Reed hardly needs 

i n t roduction. The protégé of Andy Warhol and founder of The Velvet Underground has 

since collected many honors, while “always staying on the outside,” as he puts it. 

Tu rning into a reflective poet-ro c k e r, Reed has expanded his creative endeavors to 

recent collaborations with director Robert Wilson and his partner in life, Laurie 

Anderson. ■ Reflecting on Stefan Sagmeister’s year without clients, and discussing 

his most recent book Made You Look, the two luminaries met at Reed’s West Vi l l a g e

Lou Reed: Where did you study? Did you go to school? 

Sagmeister: In Vienna, at the University for Applied Arts. That’s 

also the same school that wouldn’t take Hitler. You know, Hitler was 

an art student and wanted to become a painter. 

Lou Reed: And they rejected him? So you went to one place in 

Austria where one could just say, ‘Good for you, Stefan!’ 

Sagmeister: Well, of course. If they had taken him, maybe it would 

have saved us World War II, who knows? Instead, we would just 

have another mediocre artist, that’s all. 

Lou Reed: You mean graphic artist! [laugh] Honestly, I never 

thought of the graphic arts as something that could save the world 

of politics, maybe you do… When did you start? 

Sagmeister: I was 19-20. In Austria, you finish high school at 18. 

The first time around they wouldn’t take me either. In the art 

school, there were about 300 applicants for 10 places. It takes 4 

years to complete university, if you do it fast. Although since universities 

are free, nobody’s really graduating in the minimum 

amount of time. 

Lou Reed: How does the selection happen? Do they go by grades? 

Do you have to submit work? 

Sagmeister: No, you go for a three-day examination. You bring 

your portfolio and then on Day 1 you draw your hand for 3 hours. 

Then for the next 3 hours, you draw your neighbor who is also there 

drawing. And then for the next 3 hours you draw a chair set on a 

table. It goes on for 3 days like that. 

Lou Reed: So draftsmanship is essential to your training? 

Sagmeister: We had a very old-fashioned professor. His focus was 

on the ability to draw objects. It was the foundation course and he 

wouldn’t let anybody in without that particular skill. In the year in 

between I was accepted, I did nature studies everyday. It’s a learnable 

skill. 

Lou Reed: Oh, not for me, it wouldn’t be! My partner Laurie 

Anderson told me I could draw. Because I’ve always admired R. 

Crumb—he’s a terrific draftsman, when he wants to be. Laurie is 

too. She said, ‘You can draw, draw an airplane.’ So I drew this 

pathetic airplane. And she said, ‘There you go! Now just practice it.’ 

Believe me, when they say ‘He can’t draw a straight line,’ they’re 

talking about me. I’m made for computer art, where you can disguise 

all of that. 

Sagmeister: But, I think that if you had the desire to draw, you 

could learn it. 

Lou Reed: Well, it’s like in music. If you had a desire to learn to 

play, you sure could, up to a point. You could certainly learn three 

chords and do a pop song. It’s a great democracy. About that, I feel 

the way that you feel about drawing. But at a certain point, desire 

won’t get you there. 

Sagmeister: In my case I have to admit that I was never really interested 

in drawing per se. It was always just a means to an end. At 

school, I was one of the very few among our students who really 

wanted to do graphics. 

Lou Reed: See, I think that the earlier you know, the bigger jump 

you have on absolutely everybody else. It’s a big advantage. 

Because, you do pick up things along the way. If you have a five-year 

jump on somebody, that’s a five-year jump. What’s an all-purpose 

microphone? What’s an automatic level control? What headphones 

aren’t going to dissolve in front of you? What machine won’t blow 

up? You see, I didn’t study music, I just learned in a bar. I started out 

on classical piano but I dropped. On the day I heard rock, that was 

the end of it. I made my first record when I was 14. I lived in bars, 

all through high school, all through college. I was always the 

youngest then. So none of this other stuff is any big deal to me. So 

that’s my background, even though I have a B.A. in English. But I 

was just a guitar player. I didn’t move to the front for a while. That 

took conniving. To get to the front, I had to write the stuff. That 

was the only way I would get up there, because it wouldn’t be the 

was pop. I was hired as a staff song writer—“hired” is barely the 

word—for a label that produced records sold for $1. Long-playing 

records, whatever was popular, if songs were popular about cars, we 

would have an album of songs by make-believe groups about cars. 

That was it. They would sell for 99 cents in department stores. 

Sagmeister: So they just asked, ‘Write me three songs about cars?’ 

Lou Reed: Yes, write four death songs; write some surfing songs. 

That’s what I did. [laugh] I did it for almost a year, I was learning 

how to use this studio, because you had to record immediately. 

Boom! In/Out. We’re talking about junk! But some of this has since 

been released on bootlegs. 

Sagmeister: Were you credited for these songs? 

Lou Reed: As one of the writers, yes. And I sang some of them. But 

it would all be made-up groups like The Beach Nuts. Or Wave 

Bunnies or Sand Demons. You know, just trying to cash in. 

Sagmeister: It sounds like something that you could also learn a lot 

from, isn’t it? 

Lou Reed: Well, I learned to write quickly, that’s for sure. ‘What are 

you doing? Write another song! Okay boom! There you go.’ It was 

easy. One day a guy there showed me a trick: he tuned all the strings 

on the guitar to one note. He was kidding around but I thought it 

was amazing. So I did it and then I turned the amplifier loud, it was 

feeding back and it had to be in key because it’s all one note. And 

then one day, while we were there recording our 20 surfing or death 

songs, I made up a song called The Ostrich. And they thought that 

this one could actually be a real record. They needed other members 

to say it was a group and that’s when we found John Cale. Then 

I ran into Sterling Morrison on the subway—we needed a drummer—and 

his friend Jim Tucker had a sister named Maureen who 

loved to play drums and had a car, and that was it: The Velvet 

Underground. It’s weird the way things work. Was there any plan? 

Was there any goal? Not really, just playing. And 3 out of 4 of us 

were college graduates, of all things. One of us was even here on the 

Leonard Bernstein Scholarship. So, it’s a weird conglomeration. 

Sterling was going for his M.A. in Classical English Literature. And 

there we were. We played these dives like no one else. While I was 

writing this crappy stuff, I was also writing my own stuff. Why? I 

don’t know why. Did I hope to get recorded? No. I was just writing. 

That’s what I have been doing since I was 9. I had read somewhere 

that ostrich feathers were supposed to be popular, so I wrote a song 

called The Ostrich—the feedback made the people at radio stations 

think the record was defective and they sent it back. That was the 

end of it, but by then we had become a “band” called The Velvet 

Underground. We couldn’t get jobs anywhere, but we had this 

material, and eventually we played a dive. Once, somebody brought 

Andy Warhol in, and the next thing you know, he said, ‘I have a 

week at the Cinémathèque (which is now the Anthology Film 

Archives on Second Street). Oh, I don’t know what to do. I have a 

week. What shall I do…?’ (This is Andy) ‘Oh, I know. You’ll play, 

and I’ll show movies. We’ll get lights.’ So I said, ‘Okay, fine.’ Then 

it went from there. Andy adopted us. Did this happen to you, has 

anyone ever adopted you? 

Sagmeister: Yes, in Vienna there was this theater director Hans 

Gratzer who took me under his wings. He commissioned a bunch of 

students to design posters for an excellent modern theater. At the 

very end of my studies in Vienna, I saw this ad about an application 

for a Fulbright Scholarship. Initially I thought I was too busy to sign 

up for it. Then I sent the form off anyway and I eventually got it! 

Lou Reed: You must’ve been really good to get a Fulbright. 

Sagmeister: Well, I was really, really lucky. When it came down to 

the most important interviews, it turned out that the Fulbright 

Commissioners in Vienna were all big theater-goers. So they all 

knew my posters. 

Lou Reed: Did you know that beforehand? 

Sagmeister: No, I did not. [laugh]

kind of attitude. Sometimes you have to be able to read the lay of the 

land when it’s time to claw and fight and bite. And then other times 

it’s time to take a hike. 

Sagmeister: Talking about things falling in your lap: when you called 

and said, ‘Do you want to do the video for my next single?’ From my 

perspective, that for sure fell in my lap. 

Lou Reed: From our point of view, trying to find someone creative 

who would be fun to work with and not the same old sh… is very difficult. 

There are a lot of people out there, but not many you could get 

along with who are really good and fun. We’re not worried about 

things being seen here anyway, it’s Europe that we’re interested in, it 

seems that there’s a bigger market for creative and interesting ideas. 

That narrows the gap a lot. Of course, I didn’t know I’d be wearing a 

25-pound chicken outfit. That was a bitch! [laugh] 

Lou Reed: [Looking at Sagmeister’s Made you Look, Booth-Clibborn 

Editions, 2001] Tell me about your friend, Reini. He’s mentioned in 

your book Made You Look: a friend of yours who was afraid to come to 

the United States because the women here are arrogant and would 

never talk to him? And you had a solution for him: the poster says 

‘Dear girls, please be nice to Reini.’ [laugh] 

Sagmeister: Yes. We had plastered those posters all over the Lower 

East Side to prove to him that his bad opinion about the New York 

women was wrong. 

Lou Reed: Actually, I think his opinion is pretty on the money, except 

the extraordinary creatures we both work and live with. [laugh] 

Sagmeister: We actually gave a party for him. And the poster turned 

out to be the conversation piece of the night. He talked to a very nice 

woman and they did go out afterwards. Sometimes in lectures, I refer 

to this project as my one successful advertising campaign. 

Lou Reed: What is “Call for Entry”? For the Four A’s. Assholes, you 

mean? [laugh] 

Sagmeister: It’s the Asian Advertising Agencies Association, the Four 

A’s. 

Lou Reed: That’s hilarious! Did they appreciate this? 

Sagmeister: Actually, they did sign off on it. But then Hong Kong 

really hated this poster. It actually wound up on the cover of The South 

China Morning Post, which is sort of The New York Times of Hong 

Kong. It created this big controversial debate. 

Lou Reed: What happens when you have a controversy? Do you get 

paid? Or do you become like a black-market item? 

Sagmeister: In this case, it was a pro-bono job I did when I was 

working at Leo Burnett Hong Kong. So payment didn’t really matter. 

Lou Reed: Let’s step back one second: What did you do with the 

Fulbright? 

Sagmeister: I was here in New York for three years studying communication 

design at Pratt. After that I went back one year to Austria 

and then two years to Hong Kong. 

Lou Reed: Jeez-us! That’s a global background! Didn’t you go to 

India or Brazil, something to balance it out? 

Sagmeister: I love big cities. I grew up in a tiny town in the Austrian 

Alps, so… 

Lou Reed: [Referring to Move Our Money logo, featured on pg. 169 

in Made you Look] And what’s this, it’s very beautiful 

Sagmeister: It’s a little pin that’s also a logo for an organization of 

about 500 businessmen and retired military people, called Move Our 

Money. The guy behind it is Ben Cohen from Ben & Jerry’s fame. 

Lou Reed: Nice move, Stefan! Ice cream for life! High cholesterol 

guaranteed! I know what I should’ve done: I should’ve said I’d do this 

interview if you design a logo for me, as good as your trademark “S” 

for Sagmeister. Because it’s so easy for you. 

Sagmeister: [whispering] It’s not easy at all. 

Lou Reed: You mean, It doesn’t fax well? [laugh] 

Sagmeister: Move Our Money is an organization that wants to cut 

15 percent of the Pentagon budget and move it over to healthcare and 

education. Everything that’s red in the pie chart is the Pentagon’s 

here was to make these unbelievable numbers that are associated with 

military spending into an identity, into a logo. Ben Cohen originally 

wanted a logo based on some sort of mascot. 

Lou Reed: You mean like a giant dog? 

Sagmeister: For example. And in the same meeting, when he mentioned 

the fact that half of the United States budget goes to the 

Pentagon, I just couldn’t believe it. Then, when we were trying to 

design the logo and all these mascots, none of them seemed as strong 

as those numbers that he had mentioned. 

Lou Reed: So the power of what he said with numbers wasn’t translating 

through the design. 

Sagmeister: Exactly. And then the idea just came up. Why don’t we 

just make the numbers into the logo? 

Lou Reed: The thing is, though, so pretty, it’s almost like a little sun. 

Sagmeister: As you wear it, it’s definitely question-inducing. 

Whenever I have it on, people immediately ask, ‘So what’s this all 

about?’ And then of course that gives you the possibility to talk about 

it for a couple of minutes. 

Lou Reed: Hopefully to women. [laugh] 

Sagmeister: Exactly. 

Lou Reed: [Turning to pg. 238-239 in Made you Look] Ah, well, here 

we are. My finest hour! This is my chicken video which we were talking 

about. Twenty-five pounds of latex and feathers, some heavy suit! 

There was ice under my shirt because it was so hot under this costume. 

I was very proud of it. Under the theory of: if we like it, there 

must be somebody else out there who likes it. We’re not from another 

planet, we’re just in a minority, but that’s okay. It’s such a beautiful 

video, were you happy with it too? 

Sagmeister: I was scared shitless during the whole shot. But yes 

absolutely, it was such a sweet combination of you being in a chicken 

suit and by contrast, the elegant execution which was very similar to 

a pretty old cabaret scene. 

Lou Reed: It’s amazing what you can do with pretty much no money 

and in 10 or 11 hours with a 25-pound chicken suit out of the bowels 

of Brooklyn. Have you done any more videos since then? 

Sagmeister: This was pretty much the last job before this whole year 

without clients? 

Lou Reed: You took a year off. Are you back in? Is this the beginning 

of “back into the fray”? 

Sagmeister: October 1st, 2001, was the first day. 

Lou Reed: Why did you take time off? 

Sagmeister: For one thing, the work was becoming repetitive. We 

were starting to redo ideas we had done before, and in retrospect, 

having worked in many different cities, I was missing this gap in 

between that allows for re-orientation. I also had led a workshop at 

Cranbrook where these mature students created a two-year space for 

themselves just for free-thinking experimentation, and I got really 

jealous. So I told all my clients a year in advance I would be taking a 

year off. 

Lou Reed: But weren’t you worried that they’d forget you? It’s so 

competitive out there, that right when you come back, it’s like you 

disappeared? 

Sagmeister: I think there was a little bit of that worry, however the 

reaction I got from my clients was pretty encouraging. “Good for 

you, I wish I could do the same,” they’d say. Whenever I do things 

that feel right, they turn out alright. 

Lou Reed: Well, that’s what I find, that’s called instinct. Even if it may 

take a little while to see the results. Something really flops into your 

lap like a giant bird with a golden egg. 

Sagmeister: Whenever I do something that needs a little bit of my 

guts, it turns out fine and whenever I go the wimpy way, it doesn’t. In 

the beginning I was very happy to have all this empty time space in 

front of me but I found very quickly that all I did was returning 

emails, laundry and videos. From the seven previous years, I had a little 

list of things I wanted to do but always thought I was too busy to

language that I knew, graphic design, and to spend my time figuring out if I had anything else to say.”—Stefan Sagmeister 

“On Pass Thru Fire, the book of my lyrics, I wanted Stefan Sagmeister to do the book because he’s the only person who would

Portrait by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders The phone rang ... - Lou Reed

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