Last night I had the pleasure of seeing Stefan Sagmeister speak at the Salazar Awards. He was totally inspirational, but really – what was I expecting? The guy is throughly entertaining and he managed to make all of us polite Canadians squirm and laugh at the same time with his stories of jelly fish exhibits gone awry, leaving his intern to be interrogated by the FBI and simply shouting "shut the f#%k up!" to a noisy bunch on the other side of the room.

He went through his book "Things I Have Learned In My Life So Far" telling us of his process. The book is beautiful, inside and out:

The book design reminds me of Chip Kidd’s follow up book to The Cheese Monkeys, The Learners:

Both designers use type that is hand drawn or drawn from the materials around them. The type becomes the image.

Chip Kidd, Geoff Spear, Saul Ferris’s book jacket for "Bat-Manga!: The Secret History of Batman in Japan"

Also in common is their great one liners:

Chip Kidd: "Good is Dead" "Do you see?"

Stefan Sagmeister: "Trying to look good limits my life."

Check out Chip Kidd’s website "Good is Dead" and Stefan Sagmeister website for "Things I’ve learned in life so far".