Herman Miller

Founded in 1923 (its predecessor, Star Furniture Company, was founded in 1905), Herman Miller bet its survival on contemporary furniture during the Great Depression of the 1930s. This gamble was a great success, and in 1945, Herman Miller stopped producing traditional furniture and focused on contemporary furniture, which would later be called modern furniture. In 1960, the company began to explore the true needs of office workers and the needs of companies and organizations. They realized that office productivity was a major issue in business. The "Action Office" that was developed in this way became the norm for subsequent office systems. Herman Miller believes that innovation is not a goal but the result of research. Innovation comes from research into customer needs, exploration of materials and processes, and design that responds to social and economic innovation. Of course, designers add inspiration on top of that. Charles and Ray Eames' plywood chairs, Robert Propst's Action Office, Bill Stumpf's Ergon and Aeron chairs, and Ayse Birsel's Resolve system are all the result of such interactions. What connected them to Herman Miller was a shared belief that design exists to solve fundamental human problems.