Well, I started at Herman Miller in 1970.
I was the first internal graphic designer the company hired.
I said, I'll stick it out for a couple of years, see what I can learn.
Now it's 44 years.
The company picnics, there were sporadic things, and then mid-40s they become an annual tradition.
The year was 1970.
They said, do you think you might be able to do a poster for it?
I could design a poster, but we could also print a poster.
I had to learn about screen printing because I was in the Peace Corps,
teaching at the government trade school for girls in the Hama, Nigeria.
I felt I should teach something that might be useful when I graduate.
I got a few screen printing books.
It was easy. All you need is a frame, fabric stretched over it, not squeegee.
I like the smell of the ink, cutting the stencils, the saturation of the color.
It's the physicality.
Why do people like to plant vegetables, dig in the dirt, see things grow?
Because you just do it for the joy of doing it.
John was the pressman.
He was the lead dog.
He printed each one, all 20 of them.
He'd look at every poster as it went through the press, up the conveyor into the dryer.
He just trusted the guy that he's going to do a good job.
Everybody's looking for it. What's he going to do this year?
Seven layers salad.
How do I draw this stuff?
I get some peas, some celery, and I get some carrots.
Dice them and put them on the Xerox machine.
Those became my patterns.
Boy, what a tour de force.
One of those popular things that people bring to potluck sellers.
Ice cream cone was one of my favorites.
Drips, fingers around a cone.
They really deconstructed the type, so they became chips of chocolate.
I scattered them all through the ice cream.
When I got the letter, you've been accepted into the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Giddy is the word that I was. It was cool.
MoMA was the first to put several in their collection.
They got a fair amount of press.
People liked them.
We decided to reprint the first one because it really has become iconic.
I knew it only had three colors. We could get it done in a day.
I mean, you know, it's a nice posture.
It's a sequence of events.
One color at a time.
And then that last one goes on, and it's better than you imagine.
I'm most proud of the picnic posters.
I mean, you see all 20 on a wall. It looks nice.
If something sticks out, that's all I could hope for.
