Internationally renowned Art Director and Graphic Designer Stefan Sagmeister (born 1962 in Bregenz, Austria) is as celebrated for his commercial work as he is for his provocative public art installations.

Sagmeister studied graphic design at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. He later received a Fulbright scholarship to study at the Pratt Institute in New York. He began his design career at the age of 15 at "Alphorn", an Austrian Youth magazine. In 1991, he moved to Hong Kong to work with Leo Burnett's Hong Kong Design Group. In 1993, he returned to New York to work with Tibor Kalman's M&Co design company.

Stefan Sagmeister proceeded to form the New York based Sagmeister Inc. in 1993 (renomated Sagmeister & Walsch in 2012 with the addition of Jessica Walsh as a partner) and has since designed branding, graphics, and packaging for clients as diverse as HBO, the Guggenheim Museum and Time Warner.
He is a long-standing artistic collaborator with musicians David Byrne and Lou Reed. He is the author of the design monograph "Made You Look" which was published by Booth-Clibborn editions. He has also designed album covers for OK Go, The Rolling Stones, Aerosmith and Pat Metheny.

Sagmeister has been exploring the subject of happiness in his life for many years. In 2004, he appeared on TED with the talk "Happiness by design" where he talked about things and moments of his life that made him happy. Last year, his explorations resulted in the first exhibition The Happy Show in Philadelphia. Now, the exhibition takes place at the Design Exchange (DX) in Toronto from January 9 to March 3, 2013.

His motto is "Design that needed guts from the creator and still carries the ghost of these guts in the final execution." Sagmeister goes on a year-long sabbatical around every seven years, where he does not take work from clients.

Cover's image: Stefan Sagmeister's "Trying To Look Good Limits My Life" from the "Things I have Learned In My Life So Far" Series.