Commuting to school by bike, campus-wide recycling initiatives, perhaps a zero-waste sporting event. Large or small, it doesn’t matter; show us what your school is doing for the Earth.

A winning entry could earn you up to $2,500 cash in Herman Miller’s third annual Student Video Contest.

Checkout last year’s winner, Fiona Green of the University of Ottawa, and get inspired.

Interior Design: Why did you become a designer?
Because I love building things. When I was 19 years old, I did an apprenticeship for a cabinetmaker and I became intrigued. I discovered that I could create or rethink the things I built. I enrolled at the RCA (Royal Academy of Arts) in London.

What does design mean to you?
That’s an impossible question. You could write a book or say something really stupid.

What do you most like to design?
The physical scale of furniture attracts me. It’s what I’m good at. And it’s what I really like.

Where do you get inspiration?
KG: It comes from everywhere—from daily life.

Visit Interior Design for the rest of Grcic’s answers.

Enter Gem, a new polyester upholstery fabric that is antimony-free, making it a good choice for the earth. Polyester is one of the world’s most popular polymers; unfortunately making it is harmful to the environment. Designing a better polyester meant replacing antimony, a heavy metal used as a catalyst, with titanium, a much more earth-friendly choice.

Gem is durable, inexpensive, and easy to take care of—and it’s part of Herman Miller’s quest for a Better World.

Check out Eye Delight-2011 for more interesting images.

Student designers at Drexel University recently rose to the challenge of making their mark at the school’s Library Learning Terrace. Part of an extra class project, more than 50 graphic design students created experimental compositions using words associated with Drexel’s learning outcomes. Sophomore Seth Fowler choose to “show growth through exploration and learning,” two words appearing in the trunk of his tree-like design; “the branches are the fruit of learning, represented by the word ‘knowledge.”

Five student designs were selected and will be printed on Herman Miller Resolve dividing screens located in the Learning Terrace, a hub for students to gather, study and collaborate with one another.

Physicians and nurses work through a space planning exercise. Photo: Joint Commission Resources

The design process can be overwhelming if you’re unfamiliar with its various phases, tools, and lingo. A new workshop aims to give healthcare professionals the skills to positively influence patient safety and quality during the design and construction of future healthcare environments.

Learning to read blueprints, articulate a future vision, and design for flexibility, these and other skills are covered in the Safe Health Design Learning Academy. This three-day session is organized by Joint Commission Resources (JCR)—a not-for-profit healthcare accreditation organization—and sponsored by Herman Miller.

Giving physicians, nurses, and healthcare leadership an active voice in the design of healthcare will result in safer spaces, better patient care, and satisfied caregivers—all noble goals.

The next JCR Safe Health Design Learning Academy will be held in April 23-25, 2012; sign up now.

It looks beautiful when it’s from the hands of designer Yves Béhar. Who, with Herman Miller, set out to dispel the misconception that affordable meant offhand design and questionable quality.

Looking for affordability in innovation, Béhar and Herman Miller engineers spent months developing a unique suspension material for the backrest of SAYL. The resulting breakthrough molded ergonomic support directly into the back of the chair, which was then stretched into place. It also replaced foam and fabric, typical to other low-cost task chairs, with a single recyclable material. Less material and fewer manufacturing steps, all saved money. A point not lost on Spencer Bailey of Bloomberg Businessweek, who recently described SAYL as “An executive-quality perch that doesn’t require an executive’s bonus to buy.”

An early prototype of the Eames lounge developed in 1946.

In 1945, Charles and Ray Eames introduced the world to molded plywood as a material for furniture. Using a process perfected in the living room of their Westwood apartment, the Eames created numerous prototypes. With each, they learned the characteristics and limitations of molded plywood, eventually landing on the forms of their iconic molded plywood chairs.

This February, see the Eameses’ hard work on display along with plywood designs by Aalto, Jacobsen, Yanagi, and others at Plywood: Material, Process, Form at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Hurry, the exhibition closes February 27, 2012.

Designer Yves Bèhar isn’t kidding when he says, “Every molecule in the SAYL chair had to work harder.” To achieve Bèhar’s vision of an eco-dematerialized design, every piece of SAYL was examined, sculpted, and hollowed out to use the least amount of material without compromising strength. Was it successful? Well, SAYL survived having a 300-pound sack dropped on it—multiple times.

The Herman Test Lab, where SAYL was put through its paces, is infamous among our designers. Some have even dubbed it “the place where designs go to die.” Weights, pulleys, and pistons test every design to the brink of failure—and beyond—to ensure they meet the requirements of our standard 12-year warranty.

Engineers weren’t sure SAYL would make it. It did, thanks to some hard work making every piece work harder.

More than ever, working together defines how we get things done. And more than ever, getting things done often takes just two people. Recent research we’ve conducted at companies around the world found that nearly half the time collaborative events involved two to three people.

But no matter the number of people collaborating, companies are committed to making it happen. One approach they’re taking is to give their employees flexible workspaces. In a recent survey, 50 percent of corporate real estate executives said this flexibility enables collaboration.

All this focus on collaboration shouldn’t obscure the fact that people also need privacy and freedom from interruption. Research also suggests that some people, and especially introverts, are more creative when they can work on their own. Maybe the best way to get the creativity we’re all after is to design places that give people more choices for when, where, and with whom they work.

The American Institute of Architects each year recognizes one American building that is at least a quarter of a century old. “The idea,” says Robert Campbell of the Boston Globe, “is to recognize architecture that has proved its merit over time.”

This year, the AIA chose the residence in Santa Monica that Frank Gehry designed for his family. As much statement as structure, the house features materials familiar in an urban landscape: raw plywood, chain-link fencing, asphalt, corrugated metal—not the stuff of a quiet residential neighborhood.

But, Gehry has seldom been concerned with the expected. We have our own stories to tell about working with him on a factory-office facility we built in Rocklin, California. It has proved its longevity, too. Now owned by the William Jessup University, it’s become an award-winning student apartment building that preserves, as the award citation reads, “the original conversion of the Herman Miller furniture factory, designed by renowned architect Frank Gehry.”

Charles Eames, relaxing in the shell of a molded plastic armchair, seems lost in thought.

In keeping with much of his work—from potato chip chairs to Eiffel Tower bases—Eames’s answer may surprise you.

In 1969, Eames was interviewed by Madame L’Amic of the Musée des Arts Decoratifs as part of a design exhibition showing at the Louvre that year. The session proved fruitful, the source of several well-known Eames quotes, and eventually became an audio track on Design Q&A, an Eames Office film on the design process.

The book, Eames Design; The Work of the Office of Charles and Ray Eames, included a transcript of that interview. The following are a few memorable excerpts.

Q: What is your definition of design?
A:  A plan for arranging elements in such a way as to best accomplish a particular purpose.

Q: What are the boundaries of design?
A: What are the boundaries of problems?

Q:  Does the creation of design admit constraint?
A:  Design depends largely on constraints.

Q:  What constraints?
A:  The sum of all constraints. Here is one of the few effective keys to the design problem: the ability of the designer to recognize as many of the constraints as possible (and) his willingness and enthusiasm  for working within these constraints—the constraints of price, size, strength, balance, surface, time, etc.; each problem has its own peculiar list.

Q:  To whom does design address itself: to the greatest number (the masses)? The specialists…the enlightened amateur…a privileged social class?
A:  To the need.

What do materials bring to a design? Most immediately, they bring pleasure.

It’s the materials of a space that give it resonance, according to Susan Lyons, Creative Director at Herman Miller. Material colors and textures “provide the experience when you walk into a room,” she says.

Lyons says there’s a sort of alchemy that happens when everything comes together: “the form, the touch, the use, the product works, it looks beautiful, it feels good, and life is good.”

Pleasure is one of five material design principles: honesty, utility, economy, pleasure, and possibility. Each is essential to good design.

This is the last segment in a series on our thoughts about materials—how we choose them, and what we think about when choosing them.

One Laptop Per Child is a nonprofit that aims to “provide each child with a rugged, low-cost, low-power, connected laptop.” The focus is on children in developing countries, and so far almost two-and-a-half million of them have one.

Yves Béhar and his team at fuseproject designed the laptop, and now they’ve done a tablet version. Just like the laptop, the tablet is simple and functional, with tactile rubber grips, flexible cover, and solar charging battery.

Pro bono design work isn’t new to Béhar and fuseproject. Another of their efforts is “See Better to Learn Better,” a free eyeglasses program in partnership with the Mexican government and Augen Optics.

Good works and good work are both part of Béhar’s vision. On the latter score, 2011 brought recognition for the UP wristband, which uses tiny motion sensors to monitor the wearer’s sleep, diet, and exercise. It made Alice Rawsthorn’s design honors list for 2011. But then, we’re partial to Béhar’s work, especially the award-winning SAYL chair he did with us.

We mourn the recent passing of designers Eva Zeisel and Sori Yanagi, two masters of modern design. While perhaps lesser known than others of their generation, they are no less important. Both enjoyed long careers marked by many beautiful designs.

Eva Zeisel, a trained painter, took up the industrial arts to avoid becoming a starving artist. Beginning her career in a Soviet porcelain factory, the Hungarian-born Zeisel made her way to the United States, following a harrowing escape from Eastern Europe. In the U.S., she joined the growing design scene of the 1940s. Describing her own work as the, “playful search for beauty,” Ziesel drew upon human forms and relationships to create flower vases with belly buttons, bowls that nestled, and shakers that embraced. Rightly credited with bringing tranquility to the American table, Zeisel was 105 when she passed away on December 30, 2011.

For Sori Yanangi the fundamental problem was “that many products are created to be sold, not used.” In response, Yanagi designed everyday objects, ranging from kettles to motorcycles; in doing so, he helped define the look of Japan following the Second World War. One of his most famous designs, the Kikomann soy sauce bottle and its iconic red cap, is familiar to many Western eyes. Inspired by a Japanese shrine gate, the design is largely unchanged since it was introduced almost 50 years ago. Sori Yanagi was 96 when he passed away on December 27, 2011.

If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, there’s now more of it for every beholder of our classic Eames designs. MCL is a new premium leather that preserves the luxurious feel and texture of a material that has long been the epitome of upholstery choices.

Most upholstery leathers are sanded and pressed to make the grain—the natural pebbled texture of leather—look more uniform. By contrast, MCL celebrates the inherent characteristics of high quality leather. Soft and thick, MCL closely resembles the aniline leather used on the original Eames lounge chair and ottoman. Over a lifetime of use MCL will wrinkle and patina naturally, meaning it will wear in, not wear out.

“We have to be incredibly mindful and purposeful with how we use our resources,” says Susan Lyons, Materials Creative Director at Herman Miller. This is a major idea behind sustainable design at Herman Miller—doing more with less material is a constant challenge, but one we’re passionate about. A great example: the Setu chair.

As Lyons explains, Setu’s Kinematic Spine, inspired by the chambered nautilus, uses “structure instead of mass” to create its strength and flexibility. And this sustainable innovation, designed by Studio 7.5, yields a lighter, ready-to-sit chair; with Setu, there’s nothing to tilt or tweak, just immediate comfort.

Economy is one of five material design principles: honesty, utility, economy, pleasure, and possibility.

Where he’s all about moving on the set, Billy Wilder, a director from an earlier generation who did films such as Sunset Boulevard and Some Like It Hot, opted for catnaps on set. In 1955, while filming The Spirit of St. Louis, he started taking naps on a narrow plank held up by sawhorses. Wilder later told his friends Charles and Ray Eames he needed something similar—but a bit more comfortable—for his office.

They came up with a slender, armless chaise with a built-in wakeup call. It required Wilder to lie on his back with his arms folded over his chest. Once he dozed off, his arms relaxed, dropped to his side, and gently awakened him. We began making the chaise in 1968, and it’s been in the line ever since.

We’ve added other pieces in the ensuing years. And Sonnenfeld puts three of them through their paces in his search for the right furniture for working in the editing room: the Embody and Aeron chairs and the Envelop desk. Get his read on them, and then check them out for yourself.

Photo: Barry Sonnenfeld is an Emmy-winning television director and the director of Get Shorty and the upcoming Men in Black 3.

When Charles and Ray Eames were asked to produce a film for the American National Exhibition in Moscow in 1959, they agreed, but on the condition that the film would not be reviewed before the show.

Government officials who had sanctioned the film were clueless on the progress—even the subject—of the film, as documented in Eames: The Architect and the Painter. During regular check-ins, a representative would sit down for a showing, the reel would start, and then shortly thereafter go blank. “Well that’s all we have so far,” was the comment from the Eames Office team. “Oh, okay, looks good I guess,” was the typical response from the minder. And so it went, all the way to opening day.

Arriving in Moscow the night before the scheduled opening, film in hand, Charles and Ray were ready to premiere their Glimpses of the U.S.A. Displayed on seven screens, each 20 feet high by 30 feet wide, their film stole the show. Time magazine called it “the smash hit of the Fair.”

But how does such a film end? It was George Nelson, exhibition design director, who suggested the Eameses finish “with love,” and they did: a single shot of forget-me-nots, translated literally in English and Russian.

As a Japanese-American in a time when the world was at war, Isamu Noguchi embraced both sides of his heritage culturally and artistically; because of this, it is fitting that Isamu means courage.

During World War II, Noguchi voluntarily entered a relocation camp for Japanese-Americans in Arizona as a protest against the camps—and then was unable to get permission to leave. After seven months, he was granted liberation. “I was finally free,” he said gratefully. “I resolved henceforth to be an artist only.”

Much had happened during his internment, including with Noguchi’s art. He discovered that someone had “borrowed” his design idea for a three-legged table. To Noguchi’s protests, the borrower replied, “Anybody can make a three-legged table.” Noguchi designed one as only he could, balancing a freeform glass top on a curved, solid wood base. The ethereal result has been in production since 1948.

Most widely known for his sculptures made from any and every material, Noguchi’s artistic experimentations were diverse: from baby monitors to stage sets, children’s playgrounds to fountains. “I like to think of my work as having some kind of relevance, no matter how abstract or how small or how big,” said Noguchi. “It has a voice which other people can hear.”

Solving problems through design is a core goal at Herman Miller. Because materials are an integral part of our designs, they can solve problems, too. In this segment, third in a series on Herman Miller materials design, Susan Lyons discusses the possibilities of materials and how they play a key role in problem-solving design.

“We spend a lot of time out and about, looking for materials that we may have no idea what we’re going to do with them,” says Lyons. Our job is then to ask, “How can we possibly begin to use this? What could we do with it? What could it turn into?”

The answers to these questions sometimes come naturally. “Nature is the most efficient designer,” she has said, and the best innovations already exist in nature. GreenShield, a sustainable nanotechnology textile finish, mimics the lotus leaf’s “micro-roughness,” repelling dirt and oil naturally. By experimenting with GreenShield and our own materials, we developed Quilty—a high performance textile that stays clean because of its design, not chemicals.

Possibility is one of five material design principles: honesty, utility, economy, pleasure, and possibility.

“We are at a watershed moment in education design,” says Susan Whitmer in a conversation with Nicholas Jackson of The Atlantic. “The convergence of knowledge and circumstances provide us with the opportunity to revolutionize the built environment for all of education.”

How will the built environment, the physical places on campus, be revolutionized? One way, according to Whitmer, an education consultant and researcher at Herman Miller, is they’ll become movable. In a paper she co-authored on fostering innovation, she notes that education needs “highly malleable spaces that users can interact with almost like a living thing.”

Change is sure to come. According to Whitmer, it can’t happen too soon: “Our world is changing at a rapid pace, yet education is mired in hundreds of years of tradition.” Boola, Boola!

It’s always fun to get a behind-the-scenes glimpse of how a favorite design is made. In the case of the Select Nelson tray table, we returned to our roots to show you the process of molding plywood—a manufacturing process we helped to pioneer.

Although the process of molding plywood is essentially same as it was in the 1940’s, when it was developed, modern technology has allowed for greater speed, precision, and strength. While the production process does utilize machinery, as you can see in the slideshow, it is certainly not automated and requires hands-on work.

The tray table, designed by George Nelson in 1955, like many of Nelson’s designs, was a reaction to modern living. New, smaller residences lacked space for a dedicated room for hosting guests. Hence the tray table, a collapsible, portable table that could be brought out for entertaining and easily stored away when not in use.

The 2011 limited-edition Select Nelson tray table features an inlay pattern inspired by George Nelson’s mid-century masterpiece, the Flock of Butterflies clock. The design juxtaposes diamonds of walnut and santos palisander veneers with white ash, finished with a process that arrests the wood in its natural, freshly cut state.

The meaning of Magis—”more than”—captures the Italian company’s approach to design and manufacturing. “We add to Herman Miller because we are complementare, complementary,” explains Alberto Perazza, Co-Managing Director of Magis. “Even a world apart, we do the business of design in similar ways. Both companies have many and continuing collaborations with the greatest world designers.”

Much like Herman Miller, Magis employs innovative processes that maximize performance, while minimizing volume of material, energy use, and environmental impact.

The names of Grcic, Morrison, and Fukasawa join the ranks of Eames, Nelson, and Stumpf, as Herman Miller is now the exclusive distributor of Magis products in the U.S. and Canada.

Learn more about Magis designers.

Check out the HermanMiller Store for more details.

While the home has been preserved, nothing has been restored. It is just as Charles and Ray intended. It feels warm, inviting and has the patina of use: the paint is chipped, the dinner bell is rusty, and the leather on the lounge chair and ottoman is cracked from sitting. Their collections are on display everywhere. It couldn’t feel more different than the sleek, museum-like interiors that we see their furniture featured in today.

Throughout, there are examples of Eames design–but not the ones you and I know. A patio table built from the base of their famous ottoman sits outside, probably a little rustier than when they used it; a walnut stool became a Lazy Susan holding a TV; and a plant is perched on top of an extra, extra tall modified table base. They simply used what they had to make what they needed.

Outside, old trucks and other toys litter the yard and in the corner are remains of a wooden fort built for the grandchildren.

Visiting the home of Charles and Ray Eames and glimpsing into their life together transformed two design icons into people, who, in many ways, were just like you and me.

The point is that to dictate any mode of working is not a good idea—even the most creative and team-oriented people in the world need to work alone sometimes. The answer is to give workers a choice, which is why we make everything from desks that snap together to cubicles that turn the idea of the cubicle upside down.

In conclusion, it seems that the underlying issue you are dealing with is not so much the cubicle and your annoying co-workers as much as it is your boss’s management style. Change her (or him or whatever), and your spirits will be lifted no matter what type of office you are working in.

Sincerely,
Mr. Randall w. Braaksma
Assistant to the Assistant

Art by Dave Albers

Recently, PBS Arts, in an episode of its Off Book, took a look at product design and what it means to three practitioners. For Yves Béhar of fuseproject, the San Francisco-based design and branding company and designer of our SAYL chair, “what design does, at its best, is to accelerate the adoption of new ideas.” Harvey Moscot, a fourth generation owner of a classic eyewear brand, and Peter Schmitt, an MIT researcher looking to revolutionize the product experience through 3D printing, offer two other perspectives.

It’s certainly the case that the role of design is much in the spotlight lately. It can make the difference, some say. It can change the world, claim others. For us, design is something we get—according to FastCompany. It’s how we solve problems. It’s not just an approach to products, though, it has also become, as George Nelson said in 1948, “a central part of our business.”

Thanks to Rusty Blazenhoff of Laughing Squid for bringing this video to our attention.

The lords are leaping and the maids are milking, but who’s been making all these stockings?

For the fifth year, holiday stockings hung along the corridors of the Herman Miller Design Yard and multiplied into the hundreds. And they’re not cookie-cutter stockings either—each are one-of-a-kind and handmade out of our textile leftovers. In fact, every once in a while, passersby try buying one for themselves to hang over their fireplace.

However, these stockings were not for sale, but rather made for a greater cause. In the season of giving, Herman Miller employees volunteered their lunch hours for sewing and decorating a total of 477 stockings. All those carefully crafted stockings were distributed to these handpicked charities: Holland Rescue Mission, Urban Family Ministries, Love INC, and St. Jude’s Ranch for Children. These organizations work directly with the families who took the stockings filled with goodies home for the holidays.