Southern Californian Don Chadwick studied industrial design at UCLA. While there, he attended a lecture given by Charles and Ray Eames, and their talk convinced him that industrial designers could make a real difference in people's lives. And he set out to do just that.
Chadwick says that one reason he's not afraid of innovation is his "LA recklessness. There's less fear of failure out here, so people are more apt to take risks. It's fertile ground for innovation." That recklessness certainly came into play when he and Bill Stumpf decided to design "a totally new kind of chair," which required that they discard all preconceived notions of what an ergonomic work chair should look like, how it should work, and what it should be. What they came up with was the Aeron chair, which revolutionized pretty much everything about how people sit while they work.
Don Chadwick & Associates
Santa Monica, California