The Herman Miller Collection draws on George Nelson’s vision of “a permanent collection designed to meet fully the requirements for modern living.” This portfolio offers a breadth and depth of products to furnish environments for both residential and contract. We launched the Herman Miller Collection site to showcase this set of products in various settings including the opportunity to photograph products in the Eames Case Study House. We also directed and shot a Herman Miller factory video that illustrates the craftsmanship and quality that goes into every Herman Miller product—from sculpting the molded plywood to hand-stitching fabric and materials.

Herman Miller needed us to create a digital destination for the Herman Miller Collection that highlighted the breath of the collection and illustrated how the collection could fit into a wide variety of professional and residential environments. The site needed to tell a wide variety of engaging stories that brought the furniture, the designers, and the iconic brand to life.

In 1952, George Nelson described Herman Miller’s collection as a “a permanent collection designed to meet fully the requirements for modern living.” We intended to create a site that showcased the collection in a clear, functional, engaging system and embody Herman Miller’s passion for elegant, effective design. We needed to show the breath and depth of Herman Miller’s furniture at a glance and empower users to view by designer. Then we wanted to give context to the furniture with immersive photography that suggested an alluring design-driven lifestyle. Our strategy included subtle rollover that brought users deeper into the experience and educated them about Herman Miller’s powerful legacy of innovation.

We started with reviewing Herman Miller’s goals and objectives. Then developed the information architecture for the site. Once we had the information architecture, we created the wireframes, focusing on the end-users experience and ensuring that every feature and every page on the site would be an intuitive human-centered experience. Then came the photography, as life-long students of design it was a pleasure to photograph the collection, we were especially excited to have the rare opportunity to photograph the furniture in the Eames Case Study House. Once we had the strategy, the overall design, the content, and the immersive full-color photography, we brought all the pieces together. Our development team then used CSS, HTML, JavaScript to bring the site to life—ensuring that the site worked as smoothly on mobile devices as on desktops. Finally, we tested the site across platforms and browsers to ensure the best user experience possible.

Our site embodies the Herman Miller Collection’s unique combination of aspiration and accessibility, sculpture and usability, elegance and informality, beauty and comfort. The site offers a delicate balance of storytelling, user-centered design, and technology. It inspires and educates a new generation about Herman Miller’s history and brings the brand’s enduring relevance to the forefront. The Herman Miller Collection consistently moves forward by using the latest technology—it’s only natural that the brand brought this philosophy to its digital touch points. The final site is a powerful educational tool that tells the product story while reminding us of the importance of craftsmanship, materials, and design. The Herman Miller Collection site not only shows the quality and value produced by the dedication, thoughtfulness, and individual human touches of the designers—it embodies them. We believe that details make a difference—as Charles Eames said, “The details are not details. They make the product.”