legendary designer stefan sagmeister and his team at sagmeister inc. recently relaunched their website.
The homepage is now a bird’s eye view of their NY office courtesy of a fish eye camera mounted on the ceiling. It’s updated in real time, too, so whenever you visit sagmeister.com you can see what the designers are up to at that moment. Given that it’s the holidays and the end of the year, you can bet they’ll be at it pretty late.
Of course, it’s still a functional website, and to incorporate their site links into the video feed they installed six large appliques on the floor that work like buttons. (See the installation in the video above.) The art blog It’s Nice That spoke with Jessica Walsh from the studio to find out more about the redesign.
Hi Jessica, can you explain to our readers what makes your new site so special?
You can watch us live while we work, which is certainly different from most studio websites. Whether or not it is interesting is up to the viewer! I’ve always been intrigued by what goes on in different types of design studios, and this makes our studio life very transparent. We are still getting used to living in a giant website!
You’re a small team – did everyone have input into the project?
Richard The is the designer / technical genius behind the website and camera, he realized the project alongside Stefan and another developer. Of course being such a small studio, all the designers even a few interns have either touched the project and had input along the way.
The biggest decision was the camera angle which we spent many months trying out. At one point we tried to sneak onto the roof of the building across the street to have the camera looking into the windows of the studio instead of having it inside the studio, but i’m not sure that would have been as reliable or legal. In the end we all agreed the top fish eye angle was the best.
Do you still have a printed portfolio at Sagmeister Inc.?
There are printed materials of our work, along with the two Sagmeister books which are good portfolios in of themselves. Of course the direction of portfolios is going towards digital, especially with laptops and iPads so portable. It was definitely time for the website update.
What have you got planned for 2011?
Stefan will also be working on filming a documentary, and the studio has several identity, book, and web design projects on the way. You could watch us working late this week as we finish up the work before the holidays. It will be great to be able to update the world with the work on the new website in 2011.
designer: stefan sagmeister
