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"Now is Better" - Stefan Sagmeister on optimism, trends and AI
27 Plays17 days ago
Stefan Sagmeister has designed for clients as diverse as the Rolling Stones, HBO, and the Guggenheim Museum. He’s a two time Grammies winner and also earned practically every important international design award.
Stefan talks about the large subjects of our lives like happiness or beauty, how they connect to design and what that actually means to our everyday lives. He spoke 5 times at the official TED, making him one of the three most frequently invited TED speakers.
His books sell in the hundreds of thousands and his exhibitions have been mounted in museums around the world. His exhibit ’The Happy Show' attracted way over half a million visitors worldwide and became the most visited graphic design show in history.
A native of Austria, he received his MFA from the University of Applied Arts in Vienna and, as a Fulbright Scholar, a master’s degree from Pratt Institute in New York.
About the FRICTION RELOADED podcast and your host:
I’m Florian Schleicher, a marketing strategist. This podcast focusses on my FRICTION RELOADED marketing trend report and its four subchapters.
If you want more, check out my FutureStrategies newsletter – monthly inspiration on marketing, strategy and sustainability.
And if you are looking for some inspiration on your brands marketing strategy, let me know. That’s what I do with my marketing studio FUTURESTRATEGIES.
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Transcript
Improvements in Human Development
00:00:00
Speaker
When I look at almost any direction that is important for human development, be it health, be it longevity, be it food, be it education, be it political systems like democracy, be it violence, all of these things have been measured over the past 200 years and all of them have provable, factually improved.
Introduction of Host and Podcast
00:00:27
Speaker
Welcome to Friction Reloaded, the podcast. I'm Florian Schleicher, a marketing strategist, and this is where we cut through the noise. Because everyone is talking about trends, but most of it is noise. In this podcast, I sit down with industry leaders, marketers, and strategists.
00:00:45
Speaker
And together, we don't just talk about what's coming. We uncover what it means and what you can do with it. It's all about real perspectives and actionable insights. No fluff. So let's dive in.
Meet Stefan Sargemeister
00:00:57
Speaker
My guest today is Stefan Sargemeister. He has designed for clients as diverse as the Rolling Stones, HBO, and the Guggenheim Museum. He's a two-time Grammy's winner and also earned practically every important international design award.
00:01:13
Speaker
Stefan talks about the large subjects of our lives like happiness or beauty, how they connect to design and what it actually means to our everyday lives. He spoke five times at the official TED, making him one of the three most frequently invited TED speakers.
00:01:30
Speaker
His books sell in the hundreds of thousands and his exhibitions have been mounted in museums around the world. His exhibit, The Happy Show, attracted way over half a million visitors worldwide and became the most visited graphic design show in history.
00:01:45
Speaker
A native of Austria, he received his MFA from the University of Applied Arts in Vienna and as a Fulbright Scholar, master's degree from Pratt Institute in New York.
00:01:57
Speaker
Thank you so much for coming on the show, Stefan. It's a pleasure.
Transition to Non-Commercial Work
00:02:01
Speaker
I'm very happy to be here. Thank you. So this podcast is about trends in marketing and communications, shifts in behavior and changes in culture.
00:02:09
Speaker
And I feel like there is just so much happening in marketing, but also in business life. It feels overwhelming to keep track with all the developments from AI to inflation, and shrinking budgets, social media. And I also oftentimes get overwhelmed by all of this. So I'd be curious, how do you say stay sane in such insane times?
00:02:32
Speaker
Well, for me it's easy because I'm not doing commercial work. So I basically, since many, many years now, am out of the world of marketing or out of the world of promoting or advertising.
00:02:46
Speaker
Not because I hate that world, not at all. I actually, you know, my parents were salespeople. ah My brothers took over that store in Braedens in Austria.
00:02:58
Speaker
So I come from a family where selling things, was almost in high regard and I have no reason to see this differently. I just felt that I've done quite a bit in that world.
00:03:14
Speaker
And because the world is big and the opportunities many, i want to try out different things. So this started, meaning it started in the studio or early, but I would say 15 years ago,
00:03:32
Speaker
I asked one of one of our our most talented designer to become a partner so she could do the commercial work, which would free me up to do the non-commercial work. And that worked brilliantly. I had the time to create the happy film and an exhibition and a book on beauty, which we did them together. But ultimately there was quite a strict divide within the studio And this worked so brilliantly that after eight years of that, we said, let's really divide it again because, you know, there were projects that I didn't even know she was working on.
00:04:12
Speaker
So since about seven years, six, seven years, ah Jessica is doing only commercial work and I'm doing only non-commercial
Benefits and Challenges of Non-Commercial Projects
00:04:23
Speaker
work. And of course, that would also manifest that her life is significantly more stressful than mine because, i mean, obviously also in the non-commercial book there are ups and downs and there is stuff to be upset about, but by and large, considering I'm dealing almost exclusively with museums, galleries, and if we deal with a client, it is for a
00:04:58
Speaker
more outwork-y kind of thing. And on those projects, because their functionality is lower, they have bigger freedom, but also sense-making deadlines. So I think I haven't worked on a project in many, many years where I was not very actively involved in setting the deadline.
00:05:24
Speaker
And once it's set, Of course, there can be hearing there are times when things take longer than expected, but I'm also very aware that I need a deadline. Like, I wouldn't want the project that is completely open-ended and I can work on it for years and years. Actually, I did have a project like this, the Happy Film, that because we financed it by me talking about the unfinished film and I got paid for that talks.
00:05:57
Speaker
you could say we kind of had an unlimited money spigot. You know, if if you ran out of money, i went out and did 15 more talks. At the time I got paid $5,000 for a talk. So if we had another $75,000 to film more.
00:06:13
Speaker
And that was a principal reason why it took us eight years to do it. if we would have financed this in a traditional way through investors, those investors after a couple of years would have said, you know, fuck you, where is the film? Like, you know, give me that film. ah And which would have made a different film.
00:06:38
Speaker
And I'm unsure if that different film necessarily would have been worse. i Like looking back, I think the possibility of not having a deadline,
00:06:51
Speaker
was not helpful. I would be curious, do you miss commercial projects at all? No, zero. And we still, strangely, we still get them offered, you know, I mean, to this day, i haven't touched it in many, many years. And meaning it's kind of pleasing or it's flattering that yeah commercial projects still come in and I have ready-made, ready-finished emails ah that say, you know, we're only doing ah self-generated things, but and then I have a couple of people, Jessica, of course, being one, but I have also some of of people that used to work with us that were involved with us, where I think these would be the right people
Global Progress and Media Perception
00:07:40
Speaker
to do it.
00:07:40
Speaker
Your most recent one work is called Now is Better. And I met you at one of your last sessions here in Vienna. So I know where that comes from. But for our listeners, what makes you think that now is actually better? I basically had reason to look at the world and its development from a long term point of view.
00:08:06
Speaker
And I was incredibly surprised that the outcome is literally the exact opposite than when you look at it from the short term.
00:08:18
Speaker
Short term catastrophes, scandals, short term things work brilliantly in a short term news cycle. And I would say all of our news cycles, be it the traditional news like TV and newspapers or magazines,
00:08:37
Speaker
or be it social media, all of it has a very, very short cycle and the shorter the cycle, the better negativity works.
00:08:48
Speaker
Now, much of that, I'm not talking about fake fake news here. Much of this is actually factual, but because good things take a very long time to become good, they tend to fall out of this new cycle.
00:09:04
Speaker
the And that gives many of us, specifically young people, but also older the people, also very, very well-educated people, a completely wrong sense of a state in the world because we overwhelmingly listen to short news cycles.
00:09:25
Speaker
And when I look at almost any direction that is important for human development, be it health, be it longevity, be it food, be it education, be it political systems like democracy, be it violence.
00:09:46
Speaker
All of these things have been measured over the past 200 years and all of them have provable, factually improved. And I can double check that with data or with looking at my own family history. I happen to have a fantastic family history because one of our cousins is possibly the most prominent historian in Frauberg in Western Austria.
00:10:15
Speaker
So I happen to have very good data about my own family. And it's the same thing. You know, my great-great-grandparents lost six of their children. The worst thing that can happen to a family.
00:10:30
Speaker
ah my great grandparents lost five of them and ah they were among the elite because they could read and write, which is just mind boggling to me that we're talking three generations back and only 15% of all Austrians were literate. You know what I mean?
00:10:49
Speaker
It's, I think we as humans in general tend to remember the good things more than the bad, which leads to some nostalgia.
00:11:00
Speaker
And in the present tense, we, including myself, tend to prefer, tend to find negative messages just more interesting than positive ones, which has serious consequences. You know, if you look at the entire idea of make America great again, of course, only works if everybody thinks things are shit. It was great. It used to be much better.
00:11:28
Speaker
Yeah. and This situation that this is possible that more than half of Americans believe this is of course, not just the fault of Fox News. It's just as much the fault of the New York Times or more liberal papers because in that front, they're about the same.
00:11:49
Speaker
I just saw the numbers. It's absolutely fascinating that talking about the New York Times, if you look at how Americans die, what percentage,
00:12:00
Speaker
die for what cause? 0.0001% of all Americans die in terrorist attacks. But if you look at the New York times and what percentage are given to people that die in a terrorist attack, it's 18%. So it's like thousands of times more than would actually make sense. if And but of course, I can't even blame the New York Times. I have to blame us because I also would much rather read about somebody who died in a terrorist attack than somebody who died in a traffic accident or a heart attack.
00:12:43
Speaker
Yeah. So it's it's us. It's just how we are made. But the interesting result is that I feel many of us, almost everybody, has a much too dire view of the world as a whole than what it is. And I also believe that social change comes from positive and negative reinforcements. There's many examples that show that. And if we only have negative reinforcements, which is the situation right now, many people give up because all that anxiety is not empowering, it's debilitating.
00:13:25
Speaker
So I think if we, want to take care of the many things, of the many problems that need taken care of. I'm talking climate catastrophe. I'm talking the deaths of species and many other problems. You know, the the the slight going back in democratic systems. All of these things, if we want to take care of those, it is good to know where we came from and where it used to be to plan correctly where we want to go.
00:13:56
Speaker
And that's basically what I'm doing. that's I try to make exhibitions, but also clothes, products, morals, whatever media I can get my hand on, books, articles, presentations, that offer a little bit of the carrot in order to have some sort of equilibrium between the carrot and the
Social Media and In-Person Interactions
00:14:24
Speaker
stick.
00:14:24
Speaker
Media delivers plenty of the stick, ah Or in German, you could say Zuckerbrot und Päitsche. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I was thinking about that. i want to dive deeper a little bit on on one aspect that you mentioned, which is this news cycle that we have right now.
00:14:42
Speaker
At the beginning of 2026, I wrote a trend report called Friction Reloaded. And one of the things that came up or or the main theme was that people are actually looking for elements of friction in an age of optimization and sameness.
00:14:56
Speaker
like same day delivery, ah we are not really excited about getting items then if we don't have to wait. So we actually want to have elements where we where we have this this element of friction or handcrafted items that but become more valuable than than the mass product things.
00:15:13
Speaker
So I would be curious, one of the aspects that i that i that I looked at was also social media consumption. And I personally think we should stop calling it social media because it's more like algorithmic media now.
00:15:25
Speaker
I don't see my friends on social media anymore. I just see what the algorithm wants to feed me. And due to that, we what we see is since 2022, social media usage actually has decreased 10%. There's only one market...
00:15:41
Speaker
Since 2022. And this is ah global numbers? Global numbers from the Financial Times. Okay, great. And there is only one market where social media consumption still goes up and that's the United States.
00:15:55
Speaker
But the interesting thing is that I feel like, and I call this chapter the algorithmic exhaustion and its escape, that more and more people actually retreat from social media. Also because i I think we all know it's not good for our mental health. Yeah.
00:16:09
Speaker
So you also mentioned that a little bit in in the Q&A afterwards that you think, yes, if we want to stay optimistic, maybe we should decrease or change our media consumption to like monthly papers or like less social media. So I would be curious, what are your thoughts on on quitting or decreasing social media and how do you use social media yourself?
00:16:29
Speaker
Well, I use it much less, for sure, because of the points that you just pointed out, because it's so much more algorithm and so much less your friends. i also felt that specifically on Instagram, the tone has gotten more negative.
00:16:47
Speaker
Like i for a long time, i used to, I mean, for years, I used to critique work of young designers that they had sent in.
00:16:59
Speaker
And I noticed that throughout the last year, that the comments on my critique, specifically towards the young designers, has become much more negative and cynical.
00:17:14
Speaker
Like, specifically, if that young designer came from a country that was not accepted, you know, namely Israel or Russia or whatever it might be, there were even a couple of shitstorms against those young designers.
00:17:30
Speaker
And who needs it? you know meaning like like Like if I don't feel that this is time well spent, well, I'm doing something else. Like, you know, it's of it's not necessary for me to do that. And I kind of, I mean, I didn't do an official fuck you all, I'm stopping this.
00:17:50
Speaker
But I kind of quietly went away from it. And ah I think I now have a time limit on Instagram of 15 minutes a day.
00:18:01
Speaker
there's many days where I don't need the time limit. And that's a result of the algorithms because they catch me surprisingly because I'm pretty, I'm a, I would say out of the people i know, I'm one of the more, um I'm a person who can really concentrate.
00:18:25
Speaker
And I definitely catch myself looking for something on the phone and somehow wasting three minutes on some silly little whatever soccer videos or whatever it's. Yes. deliver yes And it leaves me empty in the belly.
00:18:43
Speaker
Like I feel like I feel the same as if I've eaten too many lemon wafers. Yes. Get that little sugar rush, but ultimately it leaves you empty. And if you feel very much like it's a waste of time and I can only imagine how a 13 year old is captivated on TikTok. I mean, it's crazy. It's absolutely crazy. And I'm very much on the side of my friend, Jonathan Haidt, who wrote that book, The Anxious Generation, that I think made probably as much difference as anybody else in this world. yeah
00:19:24
Speaker
And I'm sure was instrumental in this world I think I'm not sure if you follow that. Where both Meta and YouTube were indicted or indicted on on the addiction of a user. Yeah. yeah yeah So ah I think are getting there.
00:19:48
Speaker
um I feel that I'm mainstream enough that I could see many other people feeling that way. Like ultimately, yes, you get a little sugar rush, but after having been captured by it for 10 minutes or 20, you really do feel empty.
00:20:04
Speaker
And it's a, it's the kind of emptiness that I don't feel when I watch a good documentary. Yeah. That I definitely don't feel if I've been out for dinner with friends.
00:20:16
Speaker
Yes. And i think that we are getting there. I'm unsure what happens to people who grew up with that and kind of got addicted to that sort of sugar wretch. I'm unsure. I can't say.
00:20:30
Speaker
oh yeah The numbers that Jonathan has in his books are dire and are really terrible. So we'll see. When we then think about, so if people move away from social media, if it's just a little proportion of the whole population, but what we see is that more and more people turn to in real life activities from run clubs to book clubs, business events, offline dating communities. And it seems that after the pendulum has started swung very hard to the digital realm during COVID.
00:21:00
Speaker
More and more people actually now long, as you mentioned, to a dinner party that is just real. And I feel like this also fits very well with your theme of now is better because some things are just also better experienced now and in real life.
00:21:17
Speaker
What do you think from a from an artist, from a designer's perspective, what makes in real life happenings actually so much better? I mean, I think that's just in general who we are, you know, in that time when we made the the film and the exhibition on happiness, of course, one of the things that was on the top of any research on happiness, no matter from which from which culture that research came out of, was that the connection to other people.
00:21:51
Speaker
in And this will be the close connections to a partner, to family members, to really close friends, but also through ah to to acquaintances, that this was the differentiate the differentiator that has consequences also in biology, where people who have a lot of collection of connections are healthier, live longer.
00:22:17
Speaker
I think this came up over and over again. You know, i do a number of things that i'll do online. Let's say like I'm learning Spanish with Duolingo.
00:22:28
Speaker
Yeah. And I'm spending a good amount of time, probably 20 minutes, half an hour every day. and there were times when I was in Guadalajara, but also in Madrid, where I had a proper teacher in Madrid, somebody who came in, and put somebody on on on Zoom.
00:22:46
Speaker
And you could see the differentiation. Like the woman in Madrid, we became friends. Like, you know, talked about ah cultural happenings in Madrid. She gave me tips on concerts. She came to our opening. Like we became friends.
00:23:04
Speaker
Yeah. That was also the case, but to a lesser degree with the guy in Godra Chava, who also came to visit us in Godra Chava. And out, but to a lesser degree.
00:23:18
Speaker
And of course, it's not the case at all. bisolingo i'm not friends with do or thista ah And that's a significant disadvantage.
00:23:28
Speaker
And that is true for all of these online apps or or things. As practical as many of them are, they 100% are ultimately against what we really like to do, which is to create or make or be with other human beings.
AI's Role in Design and Media
00:23:52
Speaker
I want to close us off with one final topic that is kind of like a ghost that goes through every industry right now, which is AI. And I would be curious, what makes you optimistic about design and life in an age of AI?
00:24:08
Speaker
If I look at design, it is very clear to me that design was always driven by technological advances, be it underneath the Roman how we created typography in stone with the serif development, or be it from Gutenberg, ah with the invention of the printing press or 30, 40 years ago with this desktop publishing, the design was always reacting to these to these incredible inventions.
00:24:43
Speaker
And what happened with all of these inventions was that in the beginning, the use these new technologies to do the stuff that we could do already before to do it faster and cheaper yeah and i've never meaning i can see why this would be productive for society but it's not very interesting i mean we could already do this now we can do it faster so i'm you know if i see
00:25:17
Speaker
whatever, a clip of some dystopian movie that's been completely AI generated and it's hyper-realistic and there is whatever, explosions going off and people are running and it's all of that.
00:25:34
Speaker
Yeah, it's interesting because that scene probably would have cost a couple of hundred thousand dollars to shoot two years ago. And now you can prompt it if you're a good prompter. But ultimately, I don't find it all that interesting.
00:25:47
Speaker
I think that where it will become very interesting is when we use AI to do things that we literally couldn't do before. or I've seen beginnings of that, but most of the things that, you know, if you go to any of the models and you look at the galleries of what's been created,
00:26:14
Speaker
That's all stuff that was being able, that you could do before. It's just now that it's easier. And, ah but I have big hopes that we are using it for complete, that we will be using it for completely new things. And my overall idea about when I look back in how we use AI, how we use technology in the past, there were always people who used it for bad.
00:26:43
Speaker
The usual example is with the invention of the hammer, more of us built a house than killed the neighbor. And now with AI, it's a bit more complex because of course there is this possibility that it becomes sentient and does its own thing, which wasn't really a possibility before.
00:27:04
Speaker
So there is some uncertainty that what worries me there is that people who know much more about it don't really seem to have similar answers to this question.
00:27:17
Speaker
But in general, from how we use it, I'm quite optimistic. Also knowing that, let's assume the positive developments of AI are 50% towards the negative development of AI. It's just in the middle.
00:27:39
Speaker
I can guarantee you that we're going to read 95% of all the news will be about the negative developments of AI and only very, very little will be about the positive developments.
00:27:53
Speaker
It's just because we're more interested in it. that you know Even now you read so much more about deepfakes than you do about crazy research with DNA that is made so much easier.
00:28:08
Speaker
And so we'll see. Yeah, you really are through and through an optimist. I love that. And I definitely ah want to walk in a similar direction because I feel like whether we are optimistic or pessimistic, stuff still happens.
00:28:23
Speaker
But if we are optimistic, then As you mentioned also, no invention ever was made by someone who was pessimistic. So final question for you is, this podcast is probably listened to by lots of marketing and communications people.
00:28:40
Speaker
Do you have any advice or recommendation for them how to stay optimistic? I mean, I would say that in general, the communications job, or would say the job The role of advertising, let's put it this way, got much, much, much more difficult because product reviews are everywhere now.
00:29:06
Speaker
So in the, let's say when I grew up in the seventies and eighties, you could still build a whole Halo around the pretty mediocre product because nobody quite knew how good or bad that product is and it was very difficult to find out.
00:29:26
Speaker
Now, if you go to Amazon, but then on on almost anything, if you do a lot of advertising on a mediocre or a bad product, you're just going to ruin it very much quicker because people will see the one-star reviews very fast and will avoid that thing. which of course, I think in general is a fantastic thing, you know, or then on top of this, with the death of magazine advertising, with the downturn of, of TV, it's basically mostly poor people who have to watch ads because the rich people can pay themselves out of that situation.
00:30:08
Speaker
And, you know, all my streaming services are paid because I don't want to watch any of the ads. Of course, I also pay on Instagram because I don't want to see any Instagram ads. Oh, for sure. So it i think that job became much more complex.
00:30:24
Speaker
Now, of course, you asked if I can see a positive role in there. You know, not sure because I'm not in that role anymore. So I have to admit, I haven't thought about it.
00:30:39
Speaker
So it's ah I'm sure if I would be more steeped in that world, I probably could see silver linings all over the place. But because and I really have not been in that world for many years now, I don't think I have any good directions or advice.
00:31:00
Speaker
sorry All good. I can tell you what makes me optimistic about the industry that I work in. Ever since I started working in advertising and marketing, it was proclaimed that agencies are going to die.
00:31:14
Speaker
I started working in marketing 18 years ago. There are still a lot of agencies out there and a lot of amazing agencies doing great work. Same with consulting, with marketing. When ChatGPD came out, everybody was saying, okay, now all of the marketing teams are going to be let go and people are going to take care of that with AI.
00:31:34
Speaker
It was the same as you mentioned with designers when Photoshop came out. Designers were like, oh my God, everybody's going to lose their job. Well, there are still designers. And I feel like the main task of marketing is always to change people's behavior.
00:31:49
Speaker
Whether that is to buy a product, to vote for a political party or candidate. And... In order to do that, you need to understand what makes people tick and what drives them.
00:32:02
Speaker
And an AI can't do that because an AI isn't a human. And this deep understanding where you need to have empathy, how people actually think and feel about stuff. And for me, marketing is a lot about feelings, about thoughts and feelings. and This is something I can't reproduce so far, and I don't see it coming up in the near future.
00:32:25
Speaker
So I feel like there is going to be a demand for people who are good at being empathetic with other people and then taking their point of view and then giving them a solution and appealing also to them as humans. So that's what makes me optimistic.
00:32:41
Speaker
I'm not sure if I would agree. I think that AI can be quite good in knowing what appeals to people, how they think and how they feel. My own guess is that the designer in a number of years will be a person who has very good taste and is very charismatic and is able to be that center where other people believe that, yeah, that is the right direction.
Future of AI in Design and Society
00:33:14
Speaker
but who isn't necessarily able to execute anything herself and isn't really particularly talented in crafting.
00:33:29
Speaker
You know, I would say i had a mentor like this long time ago, very influential on me by the name of T-Buck Hallman, but probably more famous in music would be a person like Rick Rubin, you know, who is a musician, but,
00:33:45
Speaker
who is charismatic and has incredible taste and knows directions. ah I could see that ah so far from the results that I see, and I'm not sure if that's gonna stay that way, but so far people who did great work before AI are doing great work with AI. yeah And people who sucked before are so
00:34:12
Speaker
sorry. So it's it's kind of, It goes on that way, but you know, it's, I think what is new is that it's so incredibly sophisticated that I'm not sure if that notion that was definitely true for something like Photoshop, or ultimately it's a tool, if that is true for AI, or if it really is more than that.
00:34:38
Speaker
So we'll see. We'll see. I really appreciate you also disagreeing with me there. I always find that very interesting because it also sparks some curiosity inside of me. I think we need to have more discussions like this. Maybe we can do a redo in a couple of years and then we'll talk about how it all developed and what each of us saw back now. Well, you know, in Vienna, there, of course, is the TED AI yeah conference. It's always in Vienna. I actually wanted to attend it last year, ah but out there.
00:35:10
Speaker
I think that we had an exhibition that came right on that day and I had to be at the opening in Madrid, but otherwise I would have definitely
Conclusion and Call to Action
00:35:18
Speaker
come. ah you know Specifically with the situation where this technology is developing much faster than previous technologies ever did, i think it might be good to, don't know, attend a conference like this.
00:35:34
Speaker
Stefan, thank you so much for taking the time. I really appreciate it I've been a fanboy of you since I finished my studies, which was a long time ago. Now I feel old also. But really, thank you so much for taking the time, speaking with me, sharing your perspectives and your optimism. Wonderful. Thank you. Have a great evening in Vienna. Thank you so much. Bye. Thanks. Bye-bye.
00:35:56
Speaker
And that's it for today. If something here made you think, send it to someone who could use it. You can find me on LinkedIn or through my newsletter called Future Strategies on Substack for More.
00:36:08
Speaker
And if you're ready to move your marketing from insight to action, reach out. That's what I do. Until next time.