Stefan Sagmeister on why he prefers small teams

This April, we spoke with the icon, the legend, the outstanding designer – Stefan Sagmeister. This interview was so inspiring and thought provoking, that we are still processing it. 😮 🤩 

👇 Below, we've put together our favourite quotes from Stefan about the beauty of working in small teams. Watch the full interview to hear his insights on leadership and design process, as well as the story behind him parting ways with Jessica Walsh and his ideas of where the design and advertising industries are going. It’s a true gem. 💎

😍 3 reasons not to grow

“I believe that you can do the best work from a quality perspective in small teams. It's not just the quality. I also find it's more joyful to work in small teams when everybody knows their contribution. When you work, let's say in a team of three or five, everybody's very much aware of what they actually contributed.”

“Probably the only historic design company that is relevant right now would be Pentagram. And that has a lot to do with their internal structure because they're basically 30 partners with team of three, four, five, maybe eight people.

So ultimately, it's run like 30 small design companies that were smart enough to get together under one big name like Pentagram, which, of course, allows them to do gigantic branding projects.”

“I had a mentor, Tibor Kalman, who basically said that the only difficult thing in running a design company is to figure out how not to grow. Everything else is very easy. And I very much believed in that.”

Want to go further?

Want to go further with your leadership journey? Learn hands-on from leaders at Pentagram, Wolff Olins, Zaha Hadid Architects, Saatchi & Saatchi, Google, Amazon, and many more on our Design Leaders Programme 👇