Brooklyn design agency Order has overhauled Herman Miller, a trailblazer in the production of modern furniture. The new wordmark references a period in the late 1960s in which Herman Miller was using Helvetica. Söhne from Klim Type Foundry was chosen as a continuation of Helvetica and is a significant change from Meta, Herman Miller’s previous typeface that is more synonymous with 90s digitisation – read more about that interesting history here.
The rebrand comes after Herman Miller’s 100-year anniversary, with evolution clearly front of mind for the team. “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,” says Kelsey Keith, brand creative director. “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 between, in all regions of the world.”
The Herman Miller logo has been left largely unchanged. It is one of the more recognisable brand symbols out there, designed by Irving Harper back in 1946 – it famously took only an hour to design, hurriedly put together in place of furniture photography for a catalogue. For both Order and Herman Miller, the logo was “off-limits”, though Jesse Reed, partner at Order and co-founder of Standards Manual, says it’s been “set free into the more dialled-up aspects of our new visual language”.
