Last week Linda Powell talked to our class about what she did on her sabbatical 2 years ago. Her sabbatical took place at Herman Miller, where she’d worked for years before beginning her time as a teacher for the Graphic Design program at Ferris State University. There were 3 main projects that she ended up working on for the 16 weeks she was there.

PROJECT ONE
The first project she joined in on was a manual that would be used by sellers of “Herman Miller for the home” products. Immediately, she was given a creative brief on the project. The manual would give retailers ideas of what they could do with the store, advertisements, billboards, and more. Also, the manual had to be inclusive of all types of stores, they didn’t want to exclude anyone.

Before designing the manual, the team had to design an entire identity for a hypothetical company which would be used in examples throughout the manual. The company’s name was Mid Mod Habitats.

Linda began by creating a logo for Mid Mod Habitats. She kept the logo tight so that retailers might be inspired and see common elements between Mid Mod Habitats and their own store.

Next came putting the logo into various other elements such as advertisements, billboards, signs, and a website.

For the sponsor advertisements, Linda created both vertical and horizontal layouts as well as all different sizes. Before doing sketches, she found a sponsor booklet to see what the different formats where. She then sketched and prototyped various layout options. There were also magazine ads which had a similar process as the sponsor advertisements.

Linda also trekked into unfamiliar ground and design a website for Mid Mod Habitats. To do this she researched and referenced websites of other retailer’s sites.

A lot of retailers show the brands they sell on their store fronts so Linda did a study of how Herman Miller would compete with other brands. The study showed that the “Herman Miller for the home” logo was being pushed out by the other company’s logos so she found a way to make the logo larger to help the Herman Miller logo stand it’s ground with the others.

The final manual was used by retailers big and small across the country for inspiration on what they could do with their store to show that they sell Herman Miller products and promote themselves as well.

PROJECT TWO
The second project that Linda worked on was a holiday card that would be sold to the salespeople to give out to their clients.

Again, Linda received a creative brief before beginning the project. It had to be non-religious and corporate. The cards would be sold nationally as well as internationally.There was also a very low budget, they wanted the cards to come to no more than $1.

Through a lot of brainstorming, thumbnailing, and prototyping she created a card that she and the team at Herman Miller could be proud of, the cards even came in well under the $1 limit.

PROJECT THREE
The third project Linda did was a binder to suggest a logo change from the Herman Miller logo with word mark and symbol,

to just the symbol.

The idea of the binder came from something Bruce Mau said to Steve Frykholm, “Invest in the mark,” and was titled as such.

In the binder, Linda showed the interim steps to changing the representation of the mark as well as what it would look like once the change was completed. The almost 300 page binder was filled with magazine covers and advertisements, signage, website pages, company trucks, and much more. Each example had a before and after of the current logo and the revised logo made of only the symbol.

In the end, 3 binders were made to present to board members and show them why they should “invest in the mark.”

I really enjoyed hearing about all of the projects that Linda worked on, mainly because it showed that even she, after years in design, must go through the process and struggles that we do as students. There’s a creative brief, just like with our projects; research must be done, along with thumbnails, roughs, iterations, and prototypes, to get a good final product; and people change there minds and opinions often, which we have seen quite a bit with our senior level internships.