The Eye

by Nathan Williams

  The Zephyr Competition Team was a group of skateboarders during the mid-1970s. Hailing from Santa Monica and Venice, California, the “Z-Boys” invented specific aerial and sliding moves that have become the basis for the sport today.

  As a creative director, Spade is known for his unique sense of individuality, although it’s also true that his most enjoyable moments have come from great collaborations. “Working with brilliant people and creative problem-solving is what I enjoy most,” he says. “I choose my collaborators carefully, because it’s important that the people or organizations I work with are places and people that I have a healthy respect and admiration for.” He continues, “We normally have similar sensibilities and standards, and if not, we’re distinct opposites with the challenge of creating something completely new.” With such a diverse portfolio, one might think it would be difficult to decipher the most successful moment. But Spade answers without hesitation: “My daughter,” whom he goes on to call his muse, his inspiration, his life.

  Delving deeper into his creative process, Spade says everything affects his creative vision: George Lois, Marcel Duchamp, Peter Beard, skateboarding, Paul Smith, Woody Allen, National Geographic, Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, Motocross, “nonsensical” lyrics in songs like Blondie’s “Rapture,” the Beats. “Everything,” he stresses yet again.

  The list goes on, as Spade is never far from his passions. In fact, all of his work comes from an innate place within, he says. “Design, writing, filmmaking, chess. It’s all completely instinctual. I know a project is right when I feel like I’m floating,” he explains. “I almost lose all sense of reality, and time disappears because I’m immersed in the project so deeply and having so much fun.”

  Spade doesn’t have a preferred space dedicated to creation. “Anywhere!” he exclaims. “I often start an idea in one place and complete it in another place—maybe it happens when I’m running a red light in a cab, later that same day! I also bring my paper and pen on long runs, and I’m always looking around. I’ve been almost run over in traffic, several times.” He pauses, “I’m incredibly curious.” *

  I know a project is right when I feel like I’m floating.

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  In 2016, the duo released an updated team photo, with their employees joining them in the time-honored tradition of posing nude for studio portraits.

  Stefan Sagmeister & jessica walsh

  sagmeister & walsh

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  As a teen in Austria, Sagmeister pioneered the DIY graphic for Alphorn’s Anarchy issue by standing on a roof and photographing his classmates lying on the ground and forming the letter A.

  Stefan Sagmeister’s rise to the top of the design world has been well documented throughout the years. When he brought Jessica Walsh on as a partner at his namesake agency, the duo made the announcement with a nude portrait that earned them widespread global attention. Sagmeister knew the simple power of the human body. “I have always been interested in how design touches me and others emotionally,” he says. And even at a young 24 years of age, Walsh insisted that their newly established equality in the studio meant equality in photo shoots as well.

  Sagmeister’s first job was with the Austria-based youth magazine Alphorn. “I started to write for the magazine when I was just 15 and quickly discovered that I preferred doing the layout to the writing,” he says. Launching into a design career, he began working with Leo Burnett and M&Co, and then founded his own studio, collaborating with musicians like The Rolling Stones, Lou Reed and David Byrne. Walsh, on the other hand, graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design and went straight into an internship with Apple, going on to work with design studio Pentagram and Print Magazine before finally joining Sagmeister in 2010.

  We have been very fortunate to get to do interesting work for good people.

  After only minutes with her portfolio, Sagmeister knew he wanted to offer Walsh a position. Just two years later, he asked her to become a partner. While the choice was surprising to some, Sagmeister has always been known as an impulsive decision-maker. Perhaps he also hoped to be a strong mentor for the young designer. He credits the legendary Tibor Kalman with his own inspiration and design intelligence, even today.

  When Sagmeister first decided to come to New York, he was determined to meet with Kalman, calling his office daily for six months. “When he finally agreed to see me, it turned out I had a sketch in my portfolio rather similar in concept and execution to an idea that M&Co was working on. He rushed to show me the prototype out of fear I’d say later he stole it out of my portfolio,” Sagmeister remembers. “I was so flattered.” Sagmeister began working with the firm five years later. Kalman’s incredible passion for design is what drove his career and as such, his advice to Sagmeister was to always do everything twice: “The first time, you don’t know what you’re doing. The second time, you’ve got it. By the third time, it’s boring.”

  Sagmeister saw some of himself in the young Walsh, whose persistence proved to be the key to her early success. Paula Scher was the first strong woman designer who supported Walsh after she graduated, and Sagmeister entered soon after, helping her shape both her design and business philosophy. Today, the duo agrees on one simple point: “Taking risks and constantly challenging ourselves is so important to the process of creating something new,” Walsh says.

  As partners, Sagmeister and Walsh aim to develop the strongest concept for any design problem and execute it in the smartest, most beautiful way possible. “Our greatest strength in terms of client work is that we’re very good at listening,” Walsh says. “I’ve always loved not only the creative design side but also production and business management. We like to be involved in every part of the process from ideation to creation, through to production.”

  Working together has been even better than they hoped. The designers give each other support and direction, in addition to assistance throughout a design’s conceptual development and execution. In the studio environment, the partners might take the lead but leave plenty of room for input. “Concepts often come from the two of us, but sometimes a designer or an intern will have an amazing idea that we run with,” Walsh says. A small team allows everyone’s voice to be heard. They can make decisions and push through ideas without layers of approvals or egos involved. This strategy, they say, produces better results, which is why they’ve intentionally remained small despite their steady rise. For the duo, the approach also translates to nonstop work. “But I feel great joy and fulfillment from what I do. We have been very fortunate to get to do interesting work for good people,” says Walsh. “My life-work balance is very much okay right now, mostly because of Jessica,” Sagmeister adds. “She takes many of my worries away.”

  When asked what he enjoys most about his job, Sagmeister responds enthusiastically: “I have a list!” On it is everything from traveling to new places to having well-executed things come back from the printer, programmer or builder. He also enjoys the peace of a new hotel room. “I find it easy to work in a place far away from the studio, where thoughts about the implementation of an idea don’t come to mind immediately. I can dream a bit more freely,” Sagmeister says. Trains are another creative refuge. “The forward motion together with a view out the window and enough space for a sketchbook; this works very well for me.”

  For Walsh, her immediate surroundings often find their way back into her designs. She visits museums and attends shows, listens to music, reads books about psychology and science and blogs about popular culture and always has lengthy conversations on everything with friends. “I like creative work that touches me emotionally. I was never drawn to work that was cold and perfect—I like seeing the human element within the result,” she says. “Inspiration comes from everywhere, and we’re always pulling from our subconscious. The more varied our experiences and knowledge, the more interesting our work.”

  Both Sagmeister and Walsh value design as an avenue to enga
ge viewers, a tool to affect the bigger picture. In fact, it’s the foundation that built such a successful partnership. The culture at Sagmeister & Walsh is simple—they work incredibly hard, with tremendous passion, to do the best they can. But not without a bit of emotion, humor and wit. *

  We have been very fortunate to get to do interesting work for good people.

  H.P. Zinker

  Sagmeister earned four Grammy nominations for his first CD cover, for the experimental hard rock band H.P. Zinker in 1995. Founded by Hans Platzgumer (guitars, vocals) and Frank Puempel (bass, vocals), the group toured Europe before relocating from their native Innsbruck, Austria, to New York City in 1989. Using stereoscopic illusion, the cover for Mountains of Madness features the relaxed face of a man behind its red casing; removing the booklet reveals the man’s screaming face in green, red and white. Although this was the band’s final release, the group was the first release on New York City’s now-iconic Matador record label. The late career recognition earned Sagmeister prominent clients such as The Rolling Stones and Lou Reed.

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  Guadagnino studied literature at the University of Palermo and graduated from Sapienza University of Rome, where he completed his thesis on director Jonathan Demme.

  LUCA GUADAGNINO

  call me by your name

  a bigger splash

  i am in love

  No filmmaker engages all five senses quite like Italian director Luca Guadagnino. His films are cinematic psychostimulants, an exceptional kind of sensory overload—something he has honed over a 20-year career as the director of films like A Bigger Splash (2015) and Call Me By Your Name (2017). Apart from sight and sound, taste, smell and touch become the means of his film’s transportive narratives—for example, the downward yank of Primo Reggiani’s briefs in Melissa P. (2005) or Tilda Swinton’s orgasmic bite of a prawn in I Am Love (2009). The New Yorker said watching Swinton was “the best sex you will get all year.”

  Where many filmmakers would skip these details in favor of action, Guadagnino lingers over them, creating a languid portrait of how people live and interact. Rather than deter the drama, they heighten it. Despite his own approach, Guadagnino grew up on a diet of cinematic turmoil: Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho and David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia were favorites as a child.

  Suspiria, by cult Italian filmmaker Dario Argento, was also an early influence.† At age nine, Guadagnino was hypnotized by the film’s poster—a silhouetted dancer dripping in crimson blood. “I saw the movie when I was 13,” he recalls. “It was an experience that went beyond my comprehension and allowed me to think that you can do something unpredictable and powerful with cinema.” He continues, “It was something deep that rooted into me, to a degree that never left me, to the point at which now I’m remaking it.”

  Despite having film classics on heavy rotation and a strong desire to add to that canon, he wasn’t always drawn to a career behind the camera. It was a former university classmate, Daniela Polizzi, who pushed him to take the plunge while the pair were in school. “She came to me and said, ‘You talk about being a director, you share all your plans, but you do nothing to put these plans in motion. Why don’t you put these plans in motion? Do it!’” he remembers. “By frightening me in a harsh and direct, brutal way, she woke me up. That’s how I decided I was not going to stay in Palermo anymore, and at the age of 21, I left home to become a professional filmmaker.”

  Born in the small Sicilian town and raised in the sizzling climes of Ethiopia, Guadagnino was exposed to a wealth of culture at a young age. Having relocated from country to country, Guadagnino stresses sense of place in his films. Critics have gone so far as to dub them “postcards,” a description the director rebukes. If true, he says, “it would be a small plan.” Instead, he plants his stories in authentic places—not to abet the drama, but to underscore it. “Place is everything to me,” he says, “because if you do not put the characters into a specific place, then you have a disconnected narrative that is only there for the aspect of drama.”

  Dario Argento, who Guadagnino has long looked to for inspiration, is an Italian director, producer, critic and screenwriter. Working mostly during the ’70s and ’80s, Argento is best known for his influence on the horror film genre, particularly in the thriller or crime fiction subgenre known as giallo.

  As much as Tilda Swinton and Dakota Johnson are essential members of his rotating cast, his true muse is the Italian landscape. It is both his home and where a majority of his films are made. “I always live in a sort of ‘beyond,’” he explains. “I am always restlessly thinking of being somewhere else even though I enjoy being in Milan.” Though it’s the place he’s most affected by, he’s intrigued by other cities. “I could say Paris, but then maybe I would be in Paris and I would like to be somewhere else,” he says. “So probably my next place to live is the next one in which I’m going to be.” What inspires him, regardless of the city itself, is “the light and how it behaves in a specific environment.”

  Guadagnino also employs fashion and music to astounding effect. On A Bigger Splash, he collaborated with Dior’s former creative director Raf Simons to create costumes for Tilda Swinton. Fashion designer Silvia Venturini Fendi even has a producer credit on I Am Love. When it comes to music, Guadagnino generally favors classical, but he has injected songs into his films by artists like Sufjan Stevens and The Rolling Stones. Radiohead’s Thom Yorke is working on his remake of Suspiria. “My repertoire of music is also shared with my editor Walter Fasano, and I have many people I love,” he says of the soundtracking process.

  All told, the director’s use of sound and cinematography is a perfect recipe for emotional turbulence, with pulse-quickening scenes about love and heartbreak shining through. One scene at the end of 2017’s gay love epic Call Me By Your Name is particularly shattering. Timothée Chalamet’s character, Elio, is reeling from the end of his fling with Oliver (Armie Hammer). “Ma Mère l’Oye” by French composer Maurice Ravel softly plays as Elio, sitting on the couch crying, is comforted by his father (Michael Stuhlbarg). Stuhlbarg delivers a moving speech about fully embracing that emotional pain. The scene was shot in three takes. “We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster than we should that we go bankrupt by the age of 30 and have less to offer each time we start with someone new,” the character says. “But to feel nothing so as not to feel anything—what a waste!”

  What brings audiences to tears, however, leaves Guadagnino unmoved. “That’s cheesy,” he says when I suggest that filming these scenes must bring a tear to his eye. “No. You are like a dressmaker working with a piece of cloth. You’re sewing it together, so you’re not seeing the thing in the same way the client of a couture house will see the final piece. You see the making of it.” He continues, “It takes a long time to be detached enough from your work that you can see it in a way in which you can feel the emotion that as a filmmaker you wanted to communicate to others and your audience.”

  However, when his ideas come, they are accidental, he explains, not divine. And however they’re put to celluloid, he has no regrets. “I’m that kind of person who doesn’t have to deal with regrets, luckily enough.” *

  Guadagnino has directed short films for brands like Fendi, Giorgio Armani and Cartier through his production agency, Frenesy. “I have so many friends who are fashion designers who are so inspiring to me in the way they see the world,” he told WWD.

  I live in a sort of “beyond.” That’s my attitude in life.

  ENTERTAINMENT ARCHIVE

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  Hitchcock allegedly hated watching his own films. “I never go to see them. I don’t know how people can bear to watch my movies,” he said during an interview in 1963. He was also reportedly fearful of eggs. The portly British director is responsible for some of the greatest suspense thrillers of all time.

  1899–1980

  ALFRED HITCHCOCK

  Alfred
Hitchcock started working in motion pictures in his native England before studio head David O. Selznick convinced him to come to Hollywood. If a director’s job is to represent a narrative, Hitchcock was a master manipulator. Each brief cameo in his own films was a sly reference to the fact that he was an omnipresent, omnipotent force. Over the course of his career, the director explored some of the most taboo aspects of humanity—homicidal impulses, sexual compulsion and seemingly innocuous fears—into crescendoing dramatic operas of suspense and heightened paranoia, communicated through a type of dream logic. He was legendarily disdainful of the wants and needs of actors (even comparing them to “cattle”), but he worked with many stars of the era, and made some—such as Cary Grant, Grace Kelly and Tippi Hedren—iconic in their roles. Hitchcock was a great example of someone who worked within the studio system to make provocative work. One of his fans, the French New Wave director François Truffaut, convinced “Hitch,” as he was called, through a complimentary letter, to agree to a series of interviews about his work. They ended up speaking for 30 hours, and Truffaut published the interviews in a book entitled Hitchcock/Truffaut, which sought to illuminate the self-aware, strategic auteur behind the Hollywood gloss. In it, Hitchcock revealed a great deal about his process. Each detail, from how he hid a small lightbulb in a glass of potentially poisoned milk—adding a surreal, foreboding effect to a scene in which Cary Grant carries a tray up a flight of stairs to Joan Fontaine’s bedroom in Suspicion—to how in Vertigo, the act of Kim Novak dressing in the clothes chosen by James Stewart in an homage to the dead woman was a representation of “necrophilia.” His personal life, which remained stable and uneventful except when he was on a film set, only emphasized the richness and turbulence of his inner psyche. He was able to bring it to life on-screen.*