In the year 2000, Stefan Sagmeister decided to take a sabbatical, away from deadlines, briefings, and clients, in order to explore how his work as a graphic designer could evolve if he were free of the anxiety and stress of the business. During his year off, Sagmeister kept a diary, in which he jotted down whatever was on his mind, as and when it came to him. When his studio reopened, Sagmeister received a series of job offers that allowed him a considerable amount of freedom. The first of these offers came from a magazine that commissioned him to design six pages that would be inserted before the same number of sections in the newspaper. The rules were incredibly simple, and there were no briefs or special requests; he just had to fill these six pages with whatever he wanted. What’s more, he was not selling or promoting anything, so he had complete freedom. Sagmeister was enthusiastic, and immediately accepted the offer, but he soon realised that completing the project without a brief or any kind of restrictions or parametres was much more challenging than he had initially thought. He was unaccustomed to working without a deadline and to having so much artistic freedom, and now that he could say anything at all, he struggled to decide what message he wanted to convey. Weeks passed and Sagmeister’s search for inspiration became increasingly frustrating. So, he opened his diary from the previous year, and reread the list he had written of the things he had learnt in his life so far. The list was hastily written but honest, and each entry expressed a simple and sincere meaning, without cynicism or ridicule. He chose the entry ‘everything I do always comes back to me’, dividing the words across the commissioned pages typographically, but he avoided using predictable graphics, so as to allow the reader to reflect on each page from a personal perspective. He chose, for instance, not to confine the words into making a full circle, as this would have reflected the content too directly, leading to a pre-packaged response that would have hindered any kind of dialogue with the reader before they even opened the pages to see it.