With the title “135,000 people are today out of extreme poverty”, the iconic graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister took ABC has the highest in design by transforming one of their covers into one of their works of art. This was shown on Wednesday at La Térmica in Málaga, where he presented for the first time in Spain the exhibition “Better”, an exhibition that cries out for optimism and progress.
The more than 400 newspapers, with an ABC cover designed by the Austrian artist, are part of this exhibition in which Sagmeister exhibits through around a hundred works of art the improvements obtained over the last centuries and thus justifies the optimistic message that can be found if we look at the present in relation to the past.
During the presentation of the exhibition, the first of which in Malaga will be the starting point of a journey that will take these works to other museums in United Kingdom, France and Germany, Sagmeister criticized the large amount of negative news plaguing television news and newspapers. He also regretted that there was practically no positive information.
When asked why he thought this happened, he replied that one of the “many reasons” was human nature itself, since tonsil This makes us pay more attention to the negative than the positive.
Write without getting bored
In this sense, he indicated that a study from last year, which analyzed how users of digital newspapers “click” depending on the type of title, showed that they were much more attentive if the the title was negative. Thus, he felt that one of the biggest challenges journalism faces is writing positive things that are not boring.
“He real challenge What he proposes with the exhibition is to write something positive without it being boring. I think it’s much more difficult than writing something negative and interesting. The people who will be most successful will be those who can write optimistic things without boring them,” the artist said.
The designer, who has exhibited at MoMA in New York, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, SFMoMA and MAK in Vienna, admitted to feeling attracted by this negative news himself. Specifically, he shared that a very good friend of his owns several channels in which there is only positive news. Although Sagmesiter is a subscriber, he admitted that he does not read them because they are “too boring“.
Austrian merges design with data in ‘Better’ works
In ‘Better’, the designer Fmasterfully uses design with data and statistical graphics to create works that convey an uplifting message in this turbulent present. Thus, the hundred works that compose it include data such as the ratio of prisoners in different countries, the percentage of social expenditure in GDP, the number of people enrolled in university, the population living below the poverty line or hours spent on household chores.
Stefan Sagmeister
Austrian by birth, Stefan Sagmeister studied Graphic design at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. He later received a scholarship to study at the UniversityPratt Institute of New York and it was in this city that he founded his agency in 1993. He has an illustrious career and a varied portfolio that encompasses commissioned design projects, book publications, films, exhibitions and public installations.
Sagmeister’s work appears in prominent international institutions such as MoMA New York, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Art Institute of Chicago, SFMoMA, and MAK Vienna; its clients include the Guggenheim Museum, the Rolling Stones and the platform HBO.
