Herman Miller expands offering of archival posters with five new designs
February 23, 2024
ZEELAND, MICH: Herman Miller continues to introduce iconic posters from its extensive archives, with the launch of five new archival prints that honor the brand’s rich graphic design history and its talented designers. Launching on February 27th, the revivals embody the boldness, rigor, joy, and tactility innate to the Herman Miller brand, and serve as visual time capsules. The posters—spanning 1960 to 1981—represent an era of design that is experiencing a strong resurgence in popular culture.
Throughout its history, Herman Miller has worked with many graphic designers and artists who came to define the look and feel of their respective eras. This creativity often manifested in the form of striking posters that encapsulated the spirit of their time. Each graphic was visionary and bold for its time, representing the design values Herman Miller leaned into when planning its new brand identity, launched in January 2024.
Ideas Poster
From 1978 to 1982, Herman Miller produced Ideas magazine, a quarterly thought leadership-focused publication about users and specifiers of Herman Miller office products. The Ideas Poster represents the front cover of an issue that discusses the exponential rate of growth and change faced by organizations, indicated by a graphic chart over a bold set of variegated colors. Designed by Linda Powell in 1978, the front cover has been faithfully reprinted.
Action Office 2 Poster
A revelatory experience viewing work by Swiss design legends Armin Hofmann and Josef Müller-Brockmann at Aspen’s International Design Conference in 1953 convinced a teenage John Massey to pursue a career in graphic design. During his career, he played a key role in establishing Herman Miller's corporate identity. A spirit of idealism and playfulness carried through the work Massey did for Herman Miller. His Action Office 2 Poster, designed in 1978, is representative of the sharply defined style Massey brought to Herman Miller communications.
Wilkes Modular Sofa Group and Chadwick Modular Seating Posters
As part of an internal project affectionately referred to as “The Big Book,” a series of 44 black-and-white diazo-print posters were created by individual members of Herman Miller’s in-house graphic design team in 1981. Within Herman Miller’s showrooms, “The Big Book” was used as an environmental catalog, allowing salespeople to demonstrate the breadth of the portfolio and prospective clients to flip through.
The Wilkes Modular Sofa Group Poster was designed by Barbara Loveland as one of these 44 posters. The design shows off the product's inherent modularity, as well as its rounded edges reminiscent of the shape of a piece of Chiclet gum.
The Chadwick Modular Seating Poster was designed by Steve Frykholm as part of "The Big Book" project as well. The design shows a top-down view of an inventive configuration of Chadwick Modular Seating modules that turns, circles, winds, and zigzags around the page, suggesting that’s exactly what you could do while specifying this sofa. The launch of this poster coincides with the 50th anniversary of Chadwick Modular Seating, which Herman Miller will be celebrating during 2024.
Herman Miller Brochure Cover Poster
During her four years with George Nelson’s office, designer Tomoko Miho brought a clean, understated coherence to Herman Miller’s corporate graphics and identity system. From 1960 to 1962, she designed a series of price list and brochure covers for Herman Miller that featured a stylized version of the Herman Miller logo, saturated in bold colors and accentuated with geometric lines. The cover design has been faithfully recreated as a high-resolution poster and is available in three color ways. Available in Spring 2024.
All five posters feature faithfully recreated prints of the original designs on 100% cotton paper, framed in American maple with a clear, white, or black finish. The framed options appear to float in the frame, creating a graphic look when hung on a wall. An embossed logo on the back of each poster certifies authenticity. The posters will be available online in the US and Canada through Herman Miller.
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