Image: Eames Institute, Richmond
The fifth annual Eames Ranch Summer Picnic poster was created by Chloe Looker.
The poster continues a time-honored tradition of an annual Friends & Family Summer Picnic and is inspired by Steve Frykholm’s designs for Herman Miller. It has arrived with color and texture that evoke the season.
The Eames Institute’s posters include works by Nathaniel Russell, Yolande Mutale, Rose Wong, and Chloe Looker. Herman Miller began hosting its picnics in Zeeland, Michigan, and by midcentury, when the company became the exclusive US manufacturer of Eames furniture, the gatherings had become yearly outings.
The picnics featured summer food, children’s painting activities, three-legged races, pie-eating contests, and prizes ranging from an Eames Lounge Chair and Ottoman to a paid week of vacation. In February 1970, Herman Miller recruited graphic designer Steve Frykholm from the nearby Cranbrook Academy of Art, and one of his first assignments was a poster commemorating the company picnic and honoring its workers.
Frykholm’s use of massive scale, saturated color, and tight close-ups recruited all the viewer’s senses. By 1989, he had designed 19 more posters, which are represented in major museum collections worldwide, including on permanent display at the Eames Archives.
The Eames Institute frames the series as connected to people-first, socially conscious values and as a tradition celebrating nature, food, and agriculture at the Ranch.
