Cognita Storage Bench by Herman Miller

Herman Miller History

Founded in 1923 and recognized today throughout the world as an innovator in office and residential furniture design, Herman Miller has been ranked since 1986 among the top ten in Fortune Magazine’s annual list of the 500 most admired companies. Their pioneering research into producing environmentally responsible furniture has earned them GreenGuard Indoor Air Quality certification for most of their products. Aesthetically, many of Herman Miller’s iconic designs, particularly from the 1940s and 1950s, are valuable collector’s items and on permanent display in museums such as the New York Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and the Smithsonian Institution.

In 1933, new furniture designs created by Herman Miller designer Gilbert Rohde exhibiting the smooth lines and unembellished shapes of the emerging mid-century modern furniture style were exhibited at the Chicago World’s Fair. In 1944, Rohde’s successor George Nelson designed such enduring icons as the Platform bench, and was famously responsible for teaming the company with such influential design artists as Alexander Girard, Isamu Noguchi and Charles and Ray Eames. Charles Eames, widely regarded as a genius in contemporary furniture design, produced one of Herman Miller’s most successful products in 1956, the elegant Eames Lounge chair. In 1994, Don Chadwick and Bill Stumpf introduced a new office chair called Aeron (derived from the word aeration, which describes how the mesh suspension promotes comfort), which became an immediate worldwide success and earned a spot in the New York Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) as well. Today, Herman Miller continues to attract world-famous designers like Jeff Weber, Jerome Caruso, the Studio 7.5 Design Team in Berlin, Yves Behar, Mark Goetz and many more.

If the purpose of design is to solve problems, and the relationship between design and business is synergistic, then Herman Miller today continues to be in the vanguard of design as a fundamental part of strategic planning.

Blu Dot Design Group

We are a design collective and have been from the very beginning. We are firm believers that the collective effort often yields results that can't be reached on a solo basis.
— John Christakos

Blu Dot, the Minneapolis-based design collaborative, was founded in 1996 with the simple idea that good design could be affordable. Formed by three college friends, John Christakos, Charles Lazor, and Maurice Blanks, who shared a passion for art, architecture and design, Blu Dot set a goal of bringing good design to as many people as possible, believing that good design is not just about style or form — it should also be about making our lives a little easier and more enjoyable.

The Cognita™ Storage Bench, designed for Herman Miller, is a sleek and innovative storage/seating solution for home or office use, so versatile that it can hold files on one side and your miscellaneous stuff on the other — while offering comfortable seating! With its combined soft seating and hard surface for home office technology, the versatile Cognita ensures that people will use its elegant modern design to reduce clutter and manage equipment for many years to come.

Blu Dot is recognized for its inventive use of materials, playful sensibility, and fabrication/assembly technology. The company has won many national and international design awards, and their work has been exhibited by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), The Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum, the Centres Pompidou and the Yale School of Architecture.