For this year’s New York Design Week, Herman Miller raised a toast — and gave special guests a glimpse of upcoming designs — at the High Line room of the Standard in downtown Manhattan’s Meatpacking District. Read more
With just under a week until the Melbourne, Australia opening of Then X Ten, an exhibition celebrating the power of the poster, we present six ways to reach a few of the diverse, exhibited artists.
Where we’ve spent our time for the last seven days.
1. This thoughtful interview with industrial designer Yves Béhar (creator of our SAYL chair) from Tastemakers@Google on YouTube.
2. “30 Eye-Catching Interiors Featuring The Iconic Eames Lounge Chair” at Freshome.
3. This tour of Vitamin, a design and marketing firm in Baltimore (via baltimore.citybizlist.com).
4. A look at how tech is creating workplaces everywhere — and shrinking the office — from USA TODAY.
5. “The Wit and Wisdom of Alexander Girard” at Metropolis Magazine.
6. Tips for converting space into a home office from Arizona Daily Star.
7. Back in March, we featured a post on Sinuous Guitars — and we’re glad to see Greg Opatik’s Eames-inspired instruments continuing to create buzz (via Rapid Growth).
8. “The 15 Things Charles and Ray Eames Teach Us” at DARE+.
9. Huffington Post’s photos of the George Nelson exhibit opening this weekend at Cranbrook in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.
10. Apartment Therapy’s coverage of our Alexander Girard exhibit at NeoCon 2012 (where we were very proud to be recognized with multiple awards).
Photo: Janel Laban for Apartment Therapy
Still smarting from the end of this season of Mad Men? (And can we make it through another year without being able to spot the mid-century modern pieces popping up in Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce?) While you wait, get your design fix from a few modern-day ad agencies that Don Draper — or perhaps his design-loving wife Megan — would be proud to call home.
In celebration of the start of the 2012 NeoCon design exposition and conference, we’ve been taking a Community Pulse — a series of thought-provoking questions on work, life, and all the spaces in-between. (Have you participated yet? If not, start here.)
As our thank-you for taking part, we’re offering 11 free downloads for your desktop, iPhone, and iPad, all inspired by the different ways Herman Miller defines “community.” Explore several that shape our NeoCon 2012 experience by downloading your favorite wallpaper now.
For the past few weeks Susan Lyons, our Materials Creative Director, has covered Herman Miller’s five material design principles over on our Discover blog. We’ve heard about honesty, utility, economy, pleasure, and possibility and the role these principles play in helping us choose the materials for our designs.
One principle is particularly relevant to Lifework readers: It’s the idea of utility. Lyons talks about utility in connection to Embody – a chair that finds its way into many a home office. “When we talk about material utility,” Lyons says, “what we really mean is that we use materials to solve problems.”
To hear Lyons talk about the rest of the principles simply follow these links: honesty, economy, pleasure, possibility.
To find a home office chair check out our tips on how to choose the right one for you. (And FYI – we’re now shipping our most popular office chairs for $29. Read all about that here.)
I met Eames Demetrios at the art collector’s lounge this morning. He’d just checked in and had a chance to take a quick look around the fair. He was amazed at how many Herman Miller pieces were dotted around the vast hall.
“There are so many booths that have Eames pieces in them,” said Demetrios. “You expect the plastic chairs but there are DCMs and they are serious chairs to drag around a big space when you don’t have to…I think it’s great.”
Adam Call (the Herman Miller Collection Lead) and I headed out to the floor to do a bit of furniture spotting ourselves and Eames was absolutely right. We were everywhere. As Call said this may very well be our first year here but it looks like we were at Art Basel even before we were at Art Basel!
Top: Eames Molded Plastic Chairs in white with wire bases and art still waiting to be hung. Above: A Nelson Swag Leg Work Table hard at work.
The private art collector’s lounge and both public restaurants at this year’s Art Basel | Miami are populated with over 650 pieces from the Herman Miller Collection. You’ll find our brilliantly upholstered Eames dining chairs in pink and orange, the Eames Lounge Chair in white leather and creamy ash along with Noguchi’s iconic coffee table – with an ash base. Tuxedo sofas have been covered in a luxurious wool Girard fabric and they share the floor with crisp Nelson Coconut Chairs in black and white. And our new Magis pieces – Konstantin Grcic’s sculptural Chair One and Stool One are casting beautiful shadows all over the lounge area. It all feels just right for this buzzy fair – a celebration of the contemporary art scene with 260 galleries from all over the globe representing over 2000 artists.
From a Lifework perspective it is wonderful to see people “work” the fair. One man sank into an Eames Lounge Chair and pulled out his iPad and began furiously typing. A photographer spread out on the Tuxedo sofa and started downloading images to a laptop perched on the Noguchi.
Jack Schreur, Vice President of The Herman Miller Collection wandered the halls with me this morning before the crowds arrived. “The big theme is this - this is not about what used to be. Our presence here is about taking some of the most amazing pieces of furniture in the world and contemporizing them, showing how they live and work today. We arrange our technology around us instead of the other way around - it fundamentally opens up opportunities for all of this great furniture. It didn’t work great when you had to put an IBM Selectric out there to do your work but now … look at this.” Schreur points to a group leaning over a laptop, each perched comfortably on a Setu chair upholstered in deep red.
Look out for more Art Basel and Design Miami coverage over the next few days.
Where we’ve been this week…
1. Four – as in four-legged friends. It takes a lot to get me to linger on a pet’s site so this wonderfully designed doggy destination was a surprise. Check out their post on Kuntzel+Deygas who painted the Eames chair below.
2. Designer Alvin Aronson‘s site for this cool prototype of a perfectly white digital clock.
3. Design Milk for their post on this pencil holder from Giha Woo.
4. Swissmiss for her post on Instagram – an obsession I share. It’s a lithe little bit of social media perfect for capturing just about everything and now it looks like the pics can be accessed more easily, making it an even better work tool.
5. Cool Hunting for the story on all-natural cleaning porducts. Perfect for getting that desktop sparkling.
6. Wallpaper magazine for their lovely “Letter from Japan” architecture update. Below – House in Seya, Kanagawa, by Suppose Design Office.
7. Design Applause‘s coverage of Belkin’s green power strip.
8. Dwell’s excellent “Small Spaces” series (the house below is the most recent addition to the series).
9. A Brief Message for Hugh Graham’s short essay on design – “We have the opportunity and the responsibility to create a world where each object and experience is filled with value, where living with less but better is both joyful and meaningful.” We couldn’t agree more.
10. Field Notes new red notebooks. I use these little notebooks in the car and always have one on hand in my purse. Nicely designed, small and light weight.
We’re excited to now be able to offer you the Eames Lounge Chair and Ottoman in premium white leather and white ash along with Noguchi’s classic table, also in white ash. We unveiled these pieces, along with the Eames Aluminum Group outdoor series, at ICFF this year. Both are now available for the first time at the Herman Miller store.
I also mentioned at the beginning of summer that we would be offering Magis pieces. Well, you will now find Konstantin Grcic’s Chair_One at the Herman Miller store. This is an iconic piece of design that we are proud to include in our furniture collection.
Look out for more on these pieces in the coming weeks.
