Sayl Side Chair 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 Béhar, 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.

Yves Béhar

“If a project isn't ethical, it can't be beautiful, and if it isn't beautiful it shouldn't be at all.”
— Yves Béhar

Born in Switzerland in 1967, educated in Europe and the U.S., Béhar is known around the world for his whimsical, innovative and humanistic designs for the Herman Miller LED Leaf Lamp, the Mission One Electric Motorcycle, the acclaimed Jawbone Bluetooth headset, and Béhar’s most high-profile project, One Laptop per Child, which offers $100 laptops for the developing world.

Following his philosophy that “design should continue to make a difference beyond the commercial world,” Béhar got involved when he learned that a Mexican optics company had discovered that students' eyesight — especially in the country's poorer states — was having a drastic impact on their marks. Béhar set about designing children’s glasses that would be durable, ergonomic, fashion forward and available in a choice of vibrant colors to make wearing the glasses fun and personal. The See Well to Learn Better, a non-profit program, will provide 400,000 free pairs of these stylish specs to children in need.

“Designers have a responsibility to show the future as they want it to be — or at least as it can be, not just the way an industry wants it to be.”
— Yves Béhar.

Known for tackling big challenges in a cost efficient way, Béhar collaborated with Herman Miller on his newest creation: the SAYL chair. Béhar says the search for SAYL began with these questions: Can the same principles that are used to suspend a bridge over water be applied to a chair? Can a chair be designed to enable an unprecedented sense of freedom for the sitter while delivering the most comfort with the least materials? What could be taken away from the design to allow it to do more?

Creating the SAYL involved rethinking the concept of a task chair from the ground up to eliminate unnecessary materials yet provide proper support, a process of elimination that had another beneficial effect: reducing the impact on the earth.

A leading figure in the field of contemporary industrial design, Yves Béhar has worked with Herman Miller, Mini, Nike, Cassina, Microsoft, Johnson and Johnson, Swarovski, Toshiba, Sony, One Laptop Per Child, Target and Coca Cola. His work is in the permanent collections of the Centre Pompidou in Paris and New York’s Museum of Modern Art and Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.