Tribute: Robert Blaich FIDSA

TRIBUTE

REMEMBERING ROBERT BLAICH, FIDSA

We first met Robert I. Blaich (who we will refer to as Bob, as did his many friends and colleagues) in 1975 when we were co-chairs of design at the Cranbrook Academy of Art and designing an exhibition for the Cranbrook Art Museum entitled Knoll/Herman Miller. The exhibit presented the two companies’ parallel, but very different, groundbreaking design processes, philosophies, and forms. Bob, as Herman Miller’s director of corporate design and communications, was responsible for supplying us with Herman Miller furniture and information for the exhibit. This is when we first realized that although Bob was known as one of the top American design directors and managers, above all he was a design educator. He had a passion for teaching the public, corporate leaders, and his design staff the principles of design excellence, and this exhibit was part of that passion.

Herman Miller After joining Herman Miller in 1953, Bob became the connection between the company’s consulting designers, the company’s product development process, and the company’s executive leadership as Herman Miller ventured into educational furnishings, airport seating, healthcare equipment, and office landscape systems. Bob shepherded design classics like the Eames Aluminum Group Chairs by Charles and Ray Eames and designs by George Nelson, FIDSA, Alexander Girard, Don Chadwick, and Bruce Burdick into production. He also managed the company’s internal design activity, including projects by Bill Stumpf, Ray Wilkes, and Robert Probst.

Bob was involved in the transformation of the modern office landscape with innovative products like Action Office by Probst and the Ergon Chair by Stumpf. Drawing on his architectural education at Syracuse University, he was able to communicate the functional benefits of interior planning with these revolutionary office furnishings to interior designers, architects, and their clients, coordinating the design of Herman Miller showrooms and design marketing, often working with the design writer and thinker Ralph Caplan, H/IDSA. At Herman Miller, Bob developed his belief in design as “a holistic activity that combines product, communications and environment design,” a position he advocated frequently in design conference presentations. Design Michigan Shortly after the Knoll/Herman Miller exhibit, Bob asked us to form a team of Cranbrook graduate design students under our direction to create the Design Michigan program, funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. This was part of the NEA’s Federal Design Improvement Program of the 1970s, dedicated to educating government leaders and citizens about the value of design. This included an exhibition of the best of Michigan design and educational materials, which were distributed through the Michigan state government. Bob acted as the initiative’s executive director and our insightful client, steering the conceptual direction and forging essential connections throughout the state. Again, Bob’s approach was that of a design educator reaching out to the public, government, and industry.

Philips In 1980 Bob took on a major new challenge as the managing director of corporate industrial design for Philips Electronics in the Netherlands. He inherited a vast international design staff of hundreds that lacked a coherent design philosophy to unify the company’s 14 product divisions, including consumer electronics, small domestic appliances, personal care products, professional equipment, medical equipment, and lighting. At Philips’ Corporate Industrial Design Center, again Bob took the approach of a design teacher and organized a series of “Interdesign” seminars, lectures, and workshops for the company’s designers, which hosted designers and design thinkers like Bill Moggridge, FIDSA, John Rheinfranck, Klaus Krippendorf, Reinhart Butter, and us. Many workshops focused on human-centered design strategies to identify what people needed and wanted in their products and to develop more user-friendly product interfaces. Simultaneously, the design staff were encouraged to explore product semantics, designing expressive new product forms that proved to be resonant influencers in the emerging global consumer culture while also enhancing Philips’ bottom line.

Bob especially supported and mentored the corporation’s younger designers, who eventually rose to leadership positions in the company and designed a plethora of award-winning products. A major focus of Bob’s work was the development of close relationships

A group photo from Robert Blaich’s personal archive taken in 1975 at the Walker Art Museum’s Herman Miller exhibit. Front row, from left: Alexander Girard, George Nelson, FIDSA, Ray Eames. Back row, from left: Robert Propst, Robert Blaich, FIDSA, D.J. De Pree (founder of Herman Miller), Charles Eames.

with Philips’ corporate leadership, from the company’s CEO down to the myriad product managers around the world. Design policy became corporate policy. And synergistically, Janet Blaich built a productive relationship with Philips’ CEO as she shaped corporate global policy through her insightful speech writing. Through these connections, Bob instilled a corporate culture that harnessed design and design thinking as a powerful competitive advantage and a key element of corporate strategy on the global stage. Under this multidimensional design leadership, Philips became known as an international design leader.

Teague After retiring from Philips in 1992, Bob and his wife Jan took up full-time residence in Aspen, Colorado, in their charming Victorian cottage near the Aspen Music Tent and the former site of the influential Aspen Design Conference. But quiet retirement was not in Bob’s plans. In 1998 he joined Teague, formerly Walter Dorwin Teague Associates, and became chairman of the board, guiding its expansion beyond its longtime clients by supporting the wealth of talent within the group in the way he had done at Philips and sparking the dynamic renewal of one of the oldest industrial design firms in the US. At home, Bob served as the formidable chair of planning and zoning for the city of Aspen, while he pursued his goal of skiing his age in days each year as an Aspen Ski Ambassador.

Design Organizations and Educational Institutions Bob recognized the importance of design organizations, both in the US and internationally, to support design’s excellence and influence and to educate the public about design. His leadership positions included IDSA Michigan chapter chair, IDSA national board member, and finally president of ICSID, the International Congress of Societies of Industrial Design.

In these roles, Bob developed programs that communicated the strategic value of good design and the importance of the new discipline of design management internationally to business and government leaders and the public, the consumers and users of design. His 1993 book with his wife, Product Design and Corporate Strategy, cites four spheres of design management: contributing to corporate strategic goals, managing design resources, managing the design process, and cultivating an information and idea network.

Bob generously contributed to design’s idea network in academia, bringing many resources to the Cranbrook Academy of Art’s Graduate Design Program and joining the board of directors of the Illinois Institute of Technology’s Institute of Design in 1995 for many years of service. Other boards he served on included the College of Visual and Performing Art at Syracuse University, the Beal Centre for Strategic Creativity at the Ontario College of Art and Design, and INDEX 2005 and 2007, based in Copenhagen, Denmark. Bob donated his extensive professional files from his long career and his design library to Syracuse University for the benefit of design scholarship and research.

“Connection” was a word that aptly characterizes Bob’s contributions, a word he appreciated, along with both Charles Eames and Ralph Caplan, who Bob retained to conceptualize Herman Miller’s distinctive late-1970s “Attention/Connection” posters and publications, designed by Herman Miller’s longtime graphic design consultant John Massey. Bob’s vision evolved and expanded from his architectural and industrial design education at Syracuse University into architectural interiors and innovative furniture design development and from public design education to defining strategic product planning and design management for global corporate leaders. The connections between these major contributions and accomplishments were Bob’s commitment to design, his ability to articulate a design vision, and his talent for forging groundbreaking relationships across the boundaries of design, defining design management as an essential discipline for business. Bob was the master of what he called “The Fertile Ground Factor,” the nurturing of cultural, technological, educational, and corporate awareness of design excellence.

—Michael McCoy and Katherine McCoy, FIDSA mdmccoy9@gmail.com; kjmccoy1945@gmail.com

Katherine and Michael McCoy are the former heads of design at the Cranbrook Academy of Art and senior lecturers at IIT’s Institute of Design. Their many awards include the first Smithsonian Design Minds National Design Award. Katherine is a past IDSA president and Michael chaired IDSA’s 1986 national design conference.

You can read more tributes to Robert Blaich on the IDSA website: www.idsa.org/news/passages/robert-i-blaich-fidsa-1930-2021.