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Herman Miller debuts new modernist rebrand for 2024

2024-01-04T17:10:00-05:00

Herman Miller is heading into the new year with a changed branding identity inspired by its namesake founder’s 1960s-era experimentations with the Helvetica typeface, delivered by the Brooklyn-based design agency Order.

The move comes a year after Herman Miller’s 100th anniversary was celebrated with special exhibitions, a retrospective publication, and other programming. The prolific furniture maker’s signature ‘M’ logographic design from Irving Harper was preserved in the rebrand. The company says it is hopeful the refresh will help guide its next century of creative excellence.

“The last brand identity served Herman Miller well for 25 years, but that system predated many of the touchpoints we now have with the Herman Miller customer,” Herman Miller Creative Director Kelsey Keith recently detailed in It’s Nice That. “What we needed was an evolution of the brand, and a complete design system, one that could flex from a mobile phone screen to a physical space and everywhere in betwe...

Filmmaker Gary Hustwit is streaming his collection of design documentaries for free

2020-03-22T15:16:00-04:00

During the global COVID-19 crisis, while most of us are housebound, filmmaker Gary Hustwit is releasing his collection of full-length documentaries online, for free. It appears that they will be released sequentially, starting with his first doc Helvetica, until March 24th, with the rest of his titles following.

"Helvetica" is a feature-length independent film about typography, graphic design and global visual culture. It looks at the proliferation of one typeface as part of a larger conversation about the way type affects our lives.

"Objectified" is a feature-length documentary about our complex relationship with manufactured objects and, by extension, the people who design them.

"Urbanized" is a feature-length documentary about the design of cities, which looks at the issues and strategies behind urban design and features some of the world’s foremost architects, planners, policymakers, builders, and thinkers.

"Workplace" was a project for the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale abo...

The long-lost design bible of the New York subway is (briefly) back in print

2014-09-10T15:37:00-04:00

To many designers, the manual became an exemplar of the form—and a design classic in its own right. [...] When Hamish Smyth and Jesse Reed, who work at the New York design firm Pentagram, stumbled across a copy a few years ago, it was buried under old gym clothes in a locker. They digitized the manual, and now they’re reprinting it with the blessing of the MTA. A complete reissue, which includes a new essay on the manual’s history, is being sold on Kickstarter starting today [...].