Nelson Office Seating [Poster Title]
Stephen Frykholm [Art Director, Designer]
Herman Miller International Design Group
[Zeeland, MI]: Herman Miller International Design Group, 1971. Poster. Original edition. 17 – x 22 –inch sheet printed with full bleeds via 4-colors recto and verso, machine folded into quarters [as issued]. Pinholes to corners, semi-gloss sheet reveals handling divots under raking light and small white paint [?] daub to verso. Crease lines with ink loss and handling overall, still a very good example.
17 – x 22 –inch semi-gloss sheet printed in 4-colors and machine folded into quarters [as issued]. Features product shots of four office chairs designed by George Nelson and marketing material with list of countries represented by the HM nternational Design Group. Unmarked, but from the library of James Prestini.
“To me, a poster is really nothing more than a postage stamp, except big. And I think posters should be large.” — Steve Frykholm
“In 1970, Herman Miller hired its first in-house graphic designer, a bright-eyed Cranbrook graduate named Steve Frykholm. Among his initial assignments was the task of designing a poster to promote the company’s annual picnic. Little did he know that the resulting poster would spark an ambitious series that has since made its way into countless museum collections and firmly landed him on the short list of Herman Miller’s illustrious design alumni.
“When I first got to Cranbrook, I didn’t know about Herman Miller. But the department was made up of graphic designers, product designers, environmental designers, and they would all go over to the annual sale at Herman Miller and come back to school with these treasures—an Eames chair or some Girard fabric, and that was my first awareness of this little company out in Zeeland, Michigan. When I was in Boston interviewing, my parents told me I got a call from Herman Miller, so I called them. They were developing an internal graphic design group and wondered if I’d be interested in interviewing for a position.” [Amber Bravo, Why Magazine]
In a characteristically wry 1944 correspondence with Herman Miller founder, DJ De Pree, George Nelson wrote that “your reservations on my suitability as a designer for Herman Miller Co., impressed me very much for they seem to be well founded… the question of lack of experience in the commercial furniture field is also important, but here, I am afraid, you and your associates will have to make the decision on your own.” Fast forward four years later, and Nelson once again found himself reflecting on the integrity of the Herman Miller Co., but this time, not as a potential hire but rather as Herman Miller’s founding creative director. In the 1948 introduction to the catalogue for his first ever collection for the company, he writes, “From the viewpoint of the designer, which is the only viewpoint I can assume with any degree of propriety, the Herman Miller Furniture Company is a rather remarkable institution.”
Whatever leap of faith was required of De Pree to hire Nelson, the affinity and mutual respect shared between the two was undeniably fruitful. Nelson credits Herman Miller’s singularity as a result of a “philosophy” or “attitude” compounded of a set of principles—that what you make is important; that design is integral to business; that products must be honest; that only we can decide what we make, and that there is a market for good design—that allow for a degree of autonomy and innovation unavailable to companies driven by the shallow demands of the market or sales. “There is no attempt to conform to the so-called norms of ‘public taste,’ nor any special faith in the methods used to evaluate the ‘buying public.’ The reason many people are struck by the freshness of Herman Miller designs is that the company is not playing follow-the-leader.”
George Nelson (1908 – 1986) possessed one of the most inventive minds of the 20th century. Nelson was one of those rare people who could envision what isn’t there yet. Nelson described his creative abilities as a series of “zaps” – flashes of inspiration and clarity that he turned into innovative design ideas.
One such “zap” came in 1942 when Nelson conceived the first-ever pedestrian shopping mall – now a ubiquitous feature of our architectural landscape – detailed in his “Grass on Main Street” article. Soon after, he pioneered the concept of built-in storage with the storage wall, a system of storage units that rested on slatted platform benches. The first modular storage system ever, it was showcased in Life magazine and caused an immediate sensation in the furniture industry.
In 1946, Nelson became director of design at Herman Miller, a position he held until 1972. While there, Nelson recruited other seminal modern designers, including Charles Eames and Isamu Noguchi. He also developed his own designs, including the Marshmallow Sofa, the Nelson Platform Bench and the first L-shaped desk, a precursor to the present-day workstation. He also created a series of boldly graphic wall clocks and a series of bubble lamps made of self-webbing plastic.
Nelson felt that designers must be “aware of the consequences of their actions on people and society and thus cultivate a broad base of knowledge and understanding.” He was an early environmentalist, one of the first designers to take an interest in new communications technology and a powerful writer and teacher. Perhaps influenced by his friend, Buckminster Fuller, Nelson’s ultimate goal as a designer was “to do much more with much less.”