39 HERMAN MILLER | CAHAN & ASSOCIATES
To Clark Malcolm, editor of Herman Miller’s See magazine, the most interesting thing about the publication is the way in which the process of creating it mirrors the parent company’s traditional way of doing business.

“Herman Miller is at the hub—to use a term current in the open-source community—of creative talent: designers, writers and artists around the world,” he notes. “In terms of designing products, Herman Miller is not vertically integrated—we’re open to ideas and influences from every direction. The same thing is true of the magazine, which accounts for its variety and unpredictability.”

See magazine returns to the STEP 100 this year as a repeat winner from 2005; in this case, the recognition is for the Spring 2006 issue, the theme of which was Connnections. See is very much a collaborative project,” Malcolm says, referring to the partnership between Herman Miller and San Francisco’s Cahan & Associates that produces the publication. “This issue’s theme also refers to the connections we have with the writers and artists we seek out as contributors. It’s their talents that make the magazine what it is—maybe even more than what Cahan and Herman Miller do.” As a publication intended to be useful to anyone involved in the designed environment—whether a customer for Herman Miller furniture or not—See carries its heart on its sleeve. “Good design reconciles differences without destroying them,” Malcolm maintains. “That’s as much true of graphics, art and writing as it is of the built environment.” by Tom Biederbeck