The Happy Film – poster

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title / Happy Film (2016)
size / 44 x 31 cm
technique / Riso print on paper
edition / 3

This film will not make you happy. These are the opening credits to ‘The Happy Film‘ by Austrian designer Stefan Sagmeister. Sagmeister, an influential New York designer (originally Austrian) has designed album covers for (among others) the Rolling Stones, Jay-Z and the Talking Heads. He decides to turn himself into a design project. Can he redesign his personality to become a better person? Is it possible to train his mind to become happier? He pursues 3 controlled experiments involving meditation, therapy, and drugs, grading himself along the way. But real life creeps in and confounds the process: art, sex, love, and death prove impossible to disentangle.

We asked Stefan Sagmeister for official permission to watch the pre-release of his film with a small group. Together with design platform Nieuweklasse we watched it. It wasn’t brilliant, but fun nonetheless. To announce the event, i risoprinted this poster at AGAlab together with the people from KNUST, in a couple of variations.

It was a quick experimental (fifteen minute) design using photos i took on the street beforehand. The first (greenish) one is the original concept (still a bit static), the other two are printed using leftover work by other designers, so mixed up with ‘found’ work. Here some interesting forms and combinations start to occur, especially with the second one, which is my favorite.