“Social Marketing is the use of marketing principles and techniques to influence a target audience to voluntarily accept, reject, modify, or abandon a behavior for the benefit of individuals, groups, or society as a whole.” - Social Marketing: Improving the Quality of Life (via Engaged Consumer)

It seems almost hauntingly appropriate to kick off this blog with a post about Stephan Sagmeister and his new show at Deitch Project (up through Feb 23rd so catch it if your sleeping).

Stephan has had a profound influence on my life both directly and indirectly. Personally, he helped me bridge the design gap between the end of the Deconstructivist era and our current dichotomy of illustrator-driven design vs. big-box neo-modernism. He was also the reason I went to school where I did and, when locked out of his Senior Seminar class, caused me to have one of my all-too frequent outbursts at the Parsons’ Administration (sorry guys.)

But when Stephan was not jet setting to Hong Kong to print his first book Made You Look, he taught one good design lesson… follow your heart. His work reflects a true design need… to visually communicate an idea… and does so with the designer’s heart on it’s sleeve. He also taught me that “modernism is really really hard to do and not be boring” which he was also spot-on about. These are lessons that I still carry with me today in a world where clients make the major design decisions and “I want something more like the Apple website” is heard all too often.

Stephan’s latest exhibit, Things I have Learned So Far In My Life is in celebration of his new book by the same name. The work reflexts on his now-four+ year exploration of creating typographic phrasing from vernacular objects. The resulting photographs fuse the iconic values of flowers, trees, and rotting bananas in with the typographic message giving the form of the letters am incredible strength in the message (and well beyond the usual Helvetica Thin = Fancy convention.) This is a resurgence of the deconstruction of design to a place where the design holds emotion and communicates slower in exchange for communication with more vigor. Something that would be a hard sell at the business table but makes a powerful statement in the gallery.

Visit The Exhibit’s Website
Watch Hillman Curtis’ interview with Stephan Sagmeister.
Visit Sagmeister Inc. website.