David Hobbes (above) was the lucky prizewinner at a Designcraft launch of Herman Miller in Australia, winning of a trip to the USA staying at Herman Miller's Marigold Lodge on Lake Macatawa in Michigan. He recently returned from his travels and kindly shared some lovely photographs of his trip with us, along with this note.

I had a wonderful time at Marigold and during my day at the various Herman Miller facilities. Although everything I saw was fascinating I think the best part was the archives - seeing the original Charles Eames leg splints, the beautiful historic catalogues and the original textiles.

A very big thank you to all at Herman Miller for their hospitality and this fantastic opportunity.

All the best,
David

(above) Perusing the archives; historic catalogues and Alexander Girard textiles.

(above) Marigold Lodge and its boat shed.

(above) Canada geese and some colourful Summer annuals.

(above) Dawn at Lake Macatawa and the pond at Marigold Lodge

Posted by Lauren Evans

Whether it’s a weeknight dinner or a weekend crossword, this dining room has a grown-up allure for all occasions.  Photo: natalieyounger.com

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Our Then x Ten interview today is with French artists Mrzyk & Moriceau. Petra Mrzyk and Jean-Francois Moriceau are image makers in the purest sense, working typically in black and white using little more than pen and paper. Mrzyk & Moriceau have been commissioned by us to contribute a contemporary poster for our Then x Ten exhibition and will be unveiling a poster for the iconic Eames Lounge Chair and Ottoman, created in their equally iconic style.... we're looking forward to something great!

What led you to pursue a career as an illustrator? 
We feel more like artists than illustrators, we make sculpture, installation, wall-drawings, animated drawings, video-clips...but our main occupation is making drawings.

Describe a typical day at the office.
Coffee-email-internet-drawing-gardening-internet-drawing-email-beer

Can you reveal to us some of your tools of the trade and preferred artmaking materials?
The rotring 0.35. It's a pen for architects, but they don't use it anymore.

How has your approach evolved over the years, do you have any rituals or routines you follow before embarking on an illustration?
No rituals or routine, just a discussion with Petra or maybe take a walk on Getty Images when nothing comes.

What element of design could you not live without?
A chair and a table.

How has technology changed your art form if at all? 
Nothing's really changed, drawings need a pen and a paper only.  

What advice would you give to aspiring art makers? 
Don't listen to advice from the others, just listen to yourself.

How much of your work is influenced by the past? 
When I was a child I was very impressed by cartoons like "La planete sauvage" by Rene Lalou, "La Linea" by Osvaldo Cavandoli or stuff from Jean-Michel Folon. Then in Art School, drawings from Tony Cragg, Markus Raetz or Eva Hesse influenced me.

What influenced your style … How did it come about? How did you know when it was right?
After Art School Petra and I started drawing because we had no money and realised that we loved it! We've drawn together for 10 years, so we totally mix our style.

What have been your most rewarding achievements?
We're never totally happy with what we do, every time I think we could do better. 

Do you feel like a citizen of the world in terms of your trade, or are there geographic anchors to your work as an illustrator? 
We feel like a citizen of the industrialised world in terms of our trade.

We’re delighted you'll be participating in the Then x Ten Herman Miller exhibition. How do you feel about being chosen?
We're super delighted too! We are very curious to see what the others artists have done.

Can you share with us some early ideas of what you will be working on to create your poster for Herman Miller?
We had a few ideas, it's never easy to choose. One of them was to transform the Eames Lounge Chair and Ottoman like a character, Mr Ottoman with legs and arms and imagine some strange situation...

Posted by Lauren Evans

XTRA in Singapore (above) is Herman Miller' shop-in-shop concept store, so naturally we are delighted that it has been listed for this years World Architecture Festival, the largest festival and live awards competition dedicated to sharing architectural excellence around the globe.

The store opened in June 2012 and features a beautifully crafted plywood canopy designed by P.A. C., that guides visitors through throughout living, dining and home office settings of Herman Miller furniture. It's an important step in bringing our products to a wider Asian Pacific audience and we're thrilled for the recognition it's already receiving.

The full list of projects shortlisted for the festival can be viewed here (we're in the shopping category).

Sometime good design moves to the background so you have room to enjoy life. Photo: Ira Lippke

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Swiss graphic designer Felix Pfäffli lives and works in Lucerne, where he runs his own studio and lectures at the Lucerne School of Graphic Design. Felix is contributing a poster to our upcoming Then x Ten exhibition which opens August 14 in Melbourne. He has kindly shared with us some of his thoughts on design and the motivation behind his work. 

What led you to pursue a career as a graphic designer?
I don't know. I kind of always enjoyed designing things. And to be honest, I really do not know what else I could do. It is simply the thing I enjoy most.

Describe a typical day at the office.
A typical day for me involves lots of drama and fun at the same time. Somehow, every day is like a little piece of an opera.

Can you reveal to us some of your tools of the trade and preferred artmaking materials?
When I design I work almost exclusively on the computer. But I differ greatly between the creative design process and the process of brainstorming. I'm pretty sure I never had a useful idea in front of a computer. The idea comes somewhere, sometime. On a walk, shopping, talking to someone. And the computer is finally simply my design tool, as the brush is for the artist.

How has your approach evolved over the years, do you have any rituals or routines you follow before embarking on an design?
Yes. Usually I start with a comprehensive research. I read myself into the subject, talk with people who I think are well informed, collect images, write down thoughts and seek for correlations between the subject and a visual language. I think only when you know as much as possible about something you can design and argue.

What element of design could you not live without?
That's funny. Even if I create, and look for the beauty in things every day, to be honest one object itself isn't that important for me. It is much more the moment when I see something beautiful, something perfect that moves me. It's the surprise.

How has technology changed your art form if at all?
I'm sure technological progress is always an advantage for the designer. And I think it is important that you are not deterred by the new; rather you have to work with it. Once you no longer go along with the progress, that stops everything.

What advice would you give to aspiring art makers?
Make big plans.

How much of your work is influenced by the past?
The past always plays a big role. Its environment can not and must not be ignored. In Switzerland graphic design has a big tradition. Therefore I'm sure I'm influenced in a way by this ideology, but this is not a disadvantage. I think in general it is important that you know know about the past. Because the more works, the more paintings, the more art you know, the better you know how to continue the story.What influenced your style … How did it come about?

How did you know when it was right?
I do not really have a style that's stuck. I try to start from scratch again and again. In my opinion, it's vital to learn something from each project. I don't like repeating myself, especial in my final output. That means I don't try to design using techniques that I've already mastered. I prefer using methods that I might not know already. If, for example, a poster has to be computer generated, I'll start learning programming. It's our choice whether or not we let the wide range of design possibilities become limitations or not.

What have been your most rewarding achievements?
I can live from something that I enjoy. Honestly, I feel my current situation as a whole is a success.

Do you feel like a citizen of the world in terms of your trade, or are there geographic anchors to your work as an illustrator?
I guess the internet made the world much smaller. The distances are now playing absolutely no role. I work for people all over the world. And funnily enough, it feels very normal.

We’re delighted you'll be participating in the Then x Ten Herman Miller exhibition. How do you feel about being chosen?
Of course it's an honor and a great feeling to work for a company that has worked with design giants like Armin Hofmann. That's priceless.

Posted by Lauren Evans

An emblem of the Swiss Alps, Matterhorn derives its name from the German words Matte and horn, meaning “meadow peak”, respectively. Photo: Nenad Saljic

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Craig Redman and Karl Maier are Australians living in New York and London respectively, but collaborate daily (hence the skype portrait above) to create bold graphic works that are filled with simple messages executed in a thoughtful and often humorous way. Craig is the creator of the wonderfully dry blog Darcel Disappoints which has always managed to get a chuckle out of us. They have a particular talent for graphic installations that transform everything from car parks to gallery spaces, some of which they've shared with us here. Craig and Karl are working together on posters exploring Charles and Ray Eames and The Hang-It-All for our upcoming exhibition Then x Ten. In our interview below they shed some light on their working relationship and creative processes.

(above) Monster Children exhibition

What led you to pursue a career as an illustrator?
It wasn’t a conscious decision, we both studied graphic design at university (where we met) and started illustrating as a means to create original imagery to accompany our work. It kind of developed from there. As kids, between the two of us, we’d alternately be redesigning family members homes, sketching out hilarious installation ideas or turning our initials into logos, so I guess it was inevitable we’d end up in one creative field or another (or all of them).

Describe a typical day at the office.
We both live in different parts of the world so we talk daily via Skype to discuss what's going on, usually as one of us is finishing up for the day and the other is beginning.  We talk through projects we have on the go, and discuss ideas for new ones. Post conversation we’ll play with executing the ideas and reconvene at the end of the day or the beginning of the next (depending on our locations at the time) to swap notes and refine our work.

(above) Sculpture of film director Michelangelo Antonioni, installed in the Castle Estense Ferrara, the city of Antonioni's birth.

Can you reveal to us some of your tools of the trade and preferred art making materials?
Coffee, iPad drawing program + pen, iPhone camera, Illustrator, Skype, Facebook, Instagram, Wacom & an art supply store.

How has your approach evolved over the years, do you have any rituals or routines you follow before embarking on an illustration?
We’ve always worked in a similar way, it's important for us to collaborate during the initial conceptual stage of a project in order to figure out what we'd like to do and how we'd like to do it. From there we consider how to approach it in more practical terms, which is informed by any number of factors; the nature of the project, which aspects might play to our individual strengths, how much time we have to play with and so on. Sometimes it makes sense for both of us to work on one project and on other occasions to divide the labour. Whenever possible we like to work collaboratively towards a singular outcome because it tends to result in new or unexpected outcomes.

(above) An installation of neon and lightbox signs, created as part of the 206 Bourke Street development in Melbourne's Chinatown.

How has technology changed your art form if at all?
It completely dictates our every day. We wholeheartedly embrace technology and use it both as a means to produce our work and as a huge source of inspiration.

How much of your work is influenced by the past?
We like to think there is a healthy combination of nostalgia mixed with internet futurism in our work. We’re constantly aware of our surroundings and taking snippets of lots of different things, from any era, that we can Frankenstein together into a big new idea.

What influenced your style … How did it come about? How did you know when it was right?
Our influences are pretty eclectic, from PONPONPON to Urs Fischer, Peter Max to My Bloody Valentine, NeNe Leakes to David Hockney, The Renaissance to Memphis design to John Baldessari. There’s no conscious decision to head towards one thing or another, it’s just our personalities loosely guiding us in a direction.

(above & below) An immersive mural created for the underground carpark of a private residence in Sydney, Australia.

What have been your most rewarding achievements?
We're really proud of our recent 72DP car park mural (see above). It was a wonderful opportunity to completely transform an entire space and it all came together really well. The client was quite adventurous—it's not the sort of commission that comes along everyday—and they enabled us to have a lot of fun with it.

Probably also the project we did for Nowness last year. It involved attending all four fashion weeks (New York, London, Milan and Paris) and illustrating our observations and experiences - everyday for 28 days. It was both heaven and hell.

(above) Neon installation for Oroton, a luxury accessories house, rolled out across their Australasian stores.

Do you feel like a citizen of the world in terms of your trade, or are there geographic anchors to your work as an illustrator?
We’re both Australian but we now live in New York and London respectively, over the years we’ve worked across so many geographic locations and time differences that we’ve figured out a way to make it work for us. We’ve figured out a way to make our daily Skype face-time very efficient. We actually find it allows us to be more productive in a number of ways - one of us is invariably awake and working at any time of the day.

We’re delighted you'll be participating in the Then x Ten Herman Miller exhibition. How do you feel about being chosen?
We’re always honoured to be involved in projects with brands that we love like Herman Miller, and to be involved in group exhibitions with peers that we have huge respect for. We’re very much looking forward to seeing all the artwork installed together.

(above) reinterpretation of an emoticon for the launch of the Samsung Galaxy Note

Can you share with us some early ideas of what you will be working on to create your poster for Herman Miller?
We’re lucky enough to have been allocated Charles and Ray Eames and the Hang-It-All, both designers and object fall right into the heart of our aesthetic. We’re going to tackle the piece in our portrait style where we break the face/s down into colourful parts then recompose it back into it’s traditional form, with emphasis on the individual components. It’s going to be fun to try and integrate all the parts into one cohesive piece.

http://www.craigandkarl.com

Posted by Lauren Evans

We're really pleased to introduce Abak Exchange, a height-adjustable workstation that allows you the versatility of working from a sitting to standing position with the touch of a button. Research shows that alternating between sitting and standing positions throughout the day refreshes muscles, improves circulation and reduces back pain. These small movements make a big impact over the long working hours we all so commonly put in and also have the added benefit of promoting productivity and interaction between the staff. It's a product that fits with our philosophy of improving the human experience - making the time spent at work a more comfortable and health positive experience.

More information and specifications available on Abak Exchange here.

Our Then x Ten interview today is with French illustrator and character designer Genevieve Gauckler. Genevieve's quirky and playful characters have been adopted by many well-known companies such as Nokia, Lacoste and Paris store Colette. Gauckler was commissioned by us to contribute a contemporary poster for our Then x Ten exhibition and has chosen to design a poster for the Setu chair, inspired by what she refers to as its "organic technology".

What led you to pursue a career as an illustrator?
I started my career with graphic design, working for publishing companies and record labels. I was more and more attracted by illustration, I was starting to draw characters and realised it was so much fun. Also, making an illustration is like building up a miniature world, it reminds me when I was a child playing with toys and imaging a landscape with people and animals. I still enjoy using typography. Choosing a font, searching for new fonts is so cool.

Describe a typical day at the office.
I’m an early bird, I’m very efficient in the morning and I’m working on the challenging jobs. The afternoon is dedicated to research.

Can you reveal to us some of your tools of the trade and preferred artmaking materials?
My tools are mainly computer and the usual applications such as Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. I like using both together, Illustrator to draw with vectors of course and then Photoshop to add some textures to the artwork, to “humanise” it.

How has your approach evolved over the years, do you have any rituals or routines you follow before embarking on an illustration?
A few years ago, I used to draw a lot, which I still do sometimes, but not that often. I like to look at my favorite books and to have a look at my favorites blogs and websites before starting working. If I’m creatively stuck, I go outside, sit in a café or go to a good bookshop, or even better, go to a museum.

What element of design could you not live without?
Without doubt my MacBook Pro. I’ve been an Apple addict for many years now. Also I love my large Italian (Moroso) sofa where I spend a lot of time working!

How has technology changed your art form if at all?
The Macintosh has changed many things, the creative process is more simple, more direct, quicker of course. Of course it has its traps because it makes everything uniform.

What advice would you give to aspiring art makers?
To be passionate, curious, to explore, to be patient.

How much of your work is influenced by the past?
I want to be influenced by the past! I’ve always studied the masters of the past. If you don’t know them, your work may be superficial. The more rooted, the better, the further you can go creatively.

What influenced your style… How did it come about? How did you know when it was right?
I loved American graphic design from the 50’s to the 70’s, Paul Rand, Saul Bass, George Lois. It’s like good design: form and function are working together, it’s well balanced.

What have been your most rewarding achievements?
An ad campaign like Lane Crawford in Hong Kong with Big Active, my comic book I wrote a few years ago about a family tree, the “Food Chain” show in Eindhoven.

Do you feel like a citizen of the world in terms of your trade, or are there geographic anchors to your work as an illustrator?
Definitely I feel like a citizen of the world, I like the idea of creating artworks and characters that can be seen everywhere. At the same time, I feel deeply rooted in the French culture. I still don’t know what “being French” really means, I would say a mix of classical way of composing an image plus an anarchic way of destroying it!

We’re delighted you'll be participating in the Then x Ten Herman Miller exhibition. How do you feel about being chosen?
I feel extremely honoured, because I’m fond of the Herman Miller design pieces that are so iconic, part of the design history, masterpieces of the 20th century. It’s really about following a tradition and trying to add my small contribution, it’s fantastic.

Can you share with us some early ideas of what you will be working on to create your poster for Herman Miller?
First I prefer to choose quite a recent piece of design, the Setu chair that I would qualify some kind of ”organic technology”.  I made some “serious” drafts, because I was impressed. After a few days, I realised the danger with being serious is to become boring. So I’ve incorporated one of my characters to interact with the actual chair. I’ve been very focused on the drawing, spending a lot of time with the shapes, curves. I’m super proud of the final result.

Posted by Lauren Evans