“Herman Miller’s former President and CEO Max DePree once advised us all to “make room for people who have unusual and creative gifts.” Enter ArtPrize—the international art show and competition based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Grand Rapids is a burgeoning city that is making its mark among design and innovation circles. It also happens to be minutes away from our Zeeland headquarters.

ArtPrize provides us a fantastic opportunity to support creativity within our local community. In fact, we’ll be sponsoring a central resource center for ArtPrize called The Hub, which is located downtown in the Old Federal Building. From September 22 to October 10, The Hub will host a visitor center, voter registration area, artist lounge, and volunteer offices—all furnished with our products.

ArtPrize and its prize money—totaling $449,000—have proven to attract a tremendous amount of talent and votes, but they also attract a community excited about art and its city. It’s a great event and we’re thrilled to be a part of it.

1. Jeffrey Scherer’s Blog: An Architect’s Musings Occasional postings from an articulate architect who also happens to be the designer behind The Design Yard here at Herman Miller. Where to Start: An interesting and thoughtful piece on the iPad.

2. Emdashes I had dinner last night with Clark Malcolm who has been a writer and editor at Herman Miller for a very long time. He embodies all of the things I really enjoy about this company – a keen intellect, a sense of humor and that rare ability to see big picture as well as drill down to fine details. He is also an absolute stickler for grammar and I know I horrify him at times. Emdashes is for him. The blog is a mix of personal musings, geeky grammar and lots of  personality from journalist, founder and editorial director Emily Gordon. Where to start: The post titled “So You Love Punctuation?” I think Clark should have been the judge for that competition.

3. ArtPrize There’s a lot of buzz around Michigan’s ArtPrize competition this year and the final count shows over 1700 artists from around the world will be involved. You get to vote for the winner and the top prize is $250,000. You can read more about it on the ArtPrize blog. Herman Miller is one of the sponsors and we’re bringing out artist and architect Maya Lin. I’m a huge fan of her work and this lecture is free. It’s on Saturday, October 2 at 6:30 in the Grand Rapids Art Museum.  Where to start: The incredibly cute baby sporting the new ArtPrize clothing range.

4. Five Books This is such a cool idea – every day the editorial team posts the best five books recommended by a leading writer, thinker or politician in their area of expertise.  Where to start: Even if you don’t buy a single books the blog is a good read all by itself – start at the top.

5. Keiichi Matsuda There are times when I feel like the world  of technology is rushing forward at breakneck speed and I will have to work very hard to catch up. And then I come across a designer and film-maker like Matsuda who manages to write a blog that clearly and concisely deals with new technology and thinking in a way I can actually relate to. Where to start: The only annoying aspect of his cleanly-designed Tumblr blog is you can’t link to individual stories. Find the August 3 post on technology – Disney-style.