Herman Miller Designers

Charles Ormand and Ray Kaiser Eames

The very personification of modern design, Charles and Ray Eames created films, exhibits, graphics, and above all furniture - all of which epitomize the substance and style of American design.

With a grand sense of adventure, Charles and Ray Eames turned their curiosity and boundless enthusiasm into creations that established them as a truly great husband-and-wife design team. Their unique synergy led to a whole new look in furniture. Lean and modern. Playful and functional. Sleek, sophisticated, and beautifully simple. That was and is the "Eames look."

Mark Goetz

People feel close to their furniture. They get attached. "So my goal is to design furniture that fits into someone's life," Mark Goetz says. "I want even office furniture to feel as personal as any object someone has at home."

Of course, furniture must solve a problem, Goetz says, but that's only half of the designer's mission. "You could live with a good solution and not really like it. Objects should be loved and wanted as well as provide a solution."

George Nelson

Architectural critic, design theorist, and designer of exhibits, clocks, lamps, and furniture, George Nelson observed and informed the Golden Age of American design with wit and insight

An early zap came in the 1930s, when he was an architectural student in Rome. Before returning home, an idea struck him: He would travel Europe and interview leading modern architects, hoping to get the articles published in the U.S. He succeeded, and in the process introduced the U.S. design community to the European avant-garde. This set in motion a sequence of what he called "lucky" career breaks that were really the inevitable outcomes of his brilliance as a designer, teacher, and author.

Isamu Noguchi

Born in California, trained as a cabinetmaker in Japan, set designer for Martha Graham and a sculptor at Brancusi's studio, Noguchi's fluid, organic shapes make his furniture and lighting among the most artistic forms in modern design.

"Everything is sculpture," said Isamu Noguchi. "Any material, any idea without hindrance born into space, I consider sculpture."

Noguchi believed the sculptor's task was to shape space, to give it order and meaning, and that art should "disappear," or be as one with its surroundings.

Don Chadwick & Bill Stumpf

Collaborated on the Aeron Chair

Don Chadwick isn't one of those designers who say that their "real" studio is in their mind. Chadwick's real studio is in Santa Monica, thank you, and anyway, he prefers to call it "an experimental lab."

Bill Stumpf once said, "I work best when I'm pushed to the edge. When I'm at the point where my pride is subdued, where I'm an innocent again. Herman Miller knows how to push me that way, mainly because the company still believes--years after D.J. De Pree first told me--that good design isn't just good business, it's a moral obligation. Now that's pressure."

Studio 7.5

Collaborated on the Mirra Chair

When Burkhard Schmitz, Claudia Plikat, Nicolai Neubert, and Carola Zwick founded Studio 7.5 in Berlin, Germany, they were looking for freedom to work on projects that interested them, freedom from rules, roles, and titles.

And that's pretty much how they've operated ever since. "There are no bosses here," says the group, which also now includes Carola's brother Roland. Preferring to be heard as a single voice, they continue, "Everybody does everything. That's how we cultivate ideas and maintain our openness and curiosity."