Geoff Hollington picks up his fresh, black Edding 55 fibre-tip pen and draws a little square in the top right corner of a clean, white sheet of A4-size copier paper. The square will enclose the date, the project code, and the sheet number for his next design. Creating the square is a ritual that redefines the paper as a field for ideas. Repeated for countless sheets of unmarked A4-sized copier paper, the ritual itself becomes the first step of each design.
The ritual is characteristic of Hollington's attention to details. He thinks about how the handle will feel when a person opens a drawer on a Relay desk. He knows what he wants a person to experience when they use any of the Relay line of products available from Herman Miller for the Home. Geoff encourages a sense of surprise and discovery in those who see and use his products. He expects a person slipping for the first time into the Hollington executive chair, also available from Herman Miller for the Home, to say, 'Yes, of course, this is how a chair should feel.'
Hollington studied design at the Royal College of Art in London in the early 1970s and shortly afterward 'discovered' Herman Miller and the furniture of Charles and Ray Eames. 'If you asked me, way back, what's the one company in the world I'd really like to work for, it would have been Herman Miller,' he says.
His hands come up to carve a rectangle out of the air as he describes the designer's challenge of creating a humane environment for work. 'In the 1960s and 1970s, we tended to think of offices as factories or laboratories. We're moving into a time when we think of offices as places where we can be creative.'
It is this approach to design that makes his designs as appropriate for the home as for the office.
Hollington's desk is littered with used Edding 55 pens that no longer draw fine lines. He readily tosses copier paper into the bin. The paper, in fact, has commodity status, he says. No brand is perfect. Ideas are tried and rejected. It is the ritual.
