Remembering that time I had coffee with a design legend at the now-closed Vista Starbucks.

Chris Trainor at The State broke the news last week that the Vista Starbucks in Columbia is permanently closed. I used to meet people there from time-to-time when I needed a place downtown to work for a couple of hours.* I haven’t been to that store in years — lately, I’ve been more likely to stop by their new Bull Street location — but one of my favorite professional stories took place at that now-vacant storefront.

Back in April 2008, AIGA South Carolina hosted a lecture by Stefan Sagmeister. At the time, he was probably considered one of the most famous designers in the world and was doing a book tour. Sagmeister’s staff had arranged all of his travel so his stay in Columbia wasn’t our typical speaker visit. He was flying into Columbia on the morning of the lecture and then, after the event, was taking a car to Charlotte for another lecture the next day. I picked him up at the airport and we took him to lunch at Motor Supply with some board members and students from the design program at USC.

Our normal routine at the time was to take the speaker to the hotel after lunch so they could relax and get some work done, but Sagmeister wasn’t spending the night in Columbia so we didn’t have place for him to hang out. We offered him Marius’s office at the School of Art, but Stefan simply wanted a place where he could grab some coffee and check his email. Starbucks in the Vista was the location we settled on.

For three hours, we sat at the outside tables at the corner of Gervais and Lincoln. It was misting rain so we stayed at the tables with the green Starbucks umbrellas. He checked email, drank coffee and smoked, but mostly, we talked about design and the creative process.** We also talked about his “fame” and he noted that if he were truly famous, he wouldn’t be able to sit at an outside table at a busy intersection without being noticed.

This is the only picture I took of the Sagmeister lecture.

The lecture that night went exceptionally well. About 160 people from all over South Carolina gathered to hear his talk at the State Museum auditorium. But my strongest memory from his visit was sitting at the Starbucks in the Vista with Sagmeister and talking shop for a few hours. He was kind and thoughtful and I appreciated getting to chat with him.

Hopefully, soon, another store or restaurant will fill the vacant storefront, but every time I pass that intersection, I’ll think of the old Vista Starbucks and Stefan Sagmeister.

* Keep in mind that there were very few independent coffee shops in Columbia at the time. And reliable wifi wasn’t a given in 2008 like it is today.

** If you want to know what our conversation was like, take a look at the Answers page on his site.

Bob Wertz writes about design, technology and pop culture at Sketchbook B. Bob is a Columbia, South Carolina-based designer, University of South Carolina Ph.D. student, mass comm researcher, husband and dad. He’s particularly obsessed with typography, the creative process and the tools we use to create. Bob occasionally and begrudgingly posts to Twitter and Instagram. He got vaccinated and boosted to protect his community. #TeamModerna