Anatomy of Design

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ANATOMY OF DESIGN

Stefan Sagmeister is a cut-up. Not in the side-splittingly funny sense—although

he is quite a witty fellow—but in the self-inflicted-wound sense. When asked to

create an AIGA lecture poster in 1998, he became curiously possessed with the

idea of using himself as the canvas. Of course, this wasn’t a new notion;

tattoos have long been employed as graphic design motifs (see the movie

poster for Ray Bradbury’s

Illustrated Man), and body art in many forms not only

dates to prehistory but also during the late twentieth century was a frequently

used design conceit for psychedelic posters and record sleeves (especially on

nude women, although ...