Herman Miller's Franco Lodato, the vice president of design, exploration and development, was a guest speaker at the Sarasota International Design Summit last week. Lodato, an Italian design expert brought to Zeeland by Herman Miller last year, is an expert in bionic design.
He tries to use cues from nature in design, whether it be a Motorola phone, or a Maserati (the last thing he worked on before joining Herman Miller).
Now he is working on office cubicles. He told the St. Petersburg Times last week that nature is a "database" that helps you understand design opportunities.
Lodato, 43, formerly was chief designer of Motorola iDEN Subscribers Group. Franco was the design strategist and visionary of the new lines of phones and co-branding for Nextel/Sprint products and its partners worldwide including the Wearables Offspring concepts, NASCAR series, Phat Farm, Baby Phat, and the Special edition phone for Bloomindales, including the Pininfarina limited edition phone. He holds 45 US design and implementation patents in very well known consumer products.
Sources: Herman Miller, St. Petersburg Times
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