Although Don Chadwick has earned acclaim for his work on some of the world’s most iconic furniture, he still works hard. He is still in Southern California. He still gets hands-on. He still refines his process and sharpens his eye for design. He still has fun.

He continues to embrace constraints, using ergonomic elements such as tilt mechanisms, elastomeric materials, and casters to arrive at new designs. With nearly half a century of celebrated innovations, he remains influential to industrial designers and furniture manufacturers worldwide. His modular seating design for Herman Miller—originally introduced in 1974—was reintroduced at NeoCon in 2015.

An industrial design student at UCLA in the mid-1950s, Chadwick’s focus on furniture sharpened after attending a lecture by renowned designers Charles and Ray Eames. Ten years later, he had his own design studio in Los Angeles—a small space above a hardware store—where he spent much of his time trying to pitch his ideas to manufacturers. “It all started, I think, in 1972,” Chadwick recalls, when Herman Miller paid him a visit. Since then, he has designed and co-designed some of the company’s most recognized products. In the midst of his rising career (which soon took off), Chadwick returned to UCLA to share his knowledge with students as a professor, from 1976 to 1985.

An avid art collector, Chadwick is no stranger to museums—and they are no stranger to his design. The Aeron chair, an ergonomic icon he co-designed with Bill Stumpf for Herman Miller in 1994, became part of the Museum of Modern Art’s permanent collection before it went into production.

Chadwick admits that much has changed in recent years, including his process. For example, he is more attuned to the digital aspects of design, such as sketching on screen rather than on paper. But one thing about Chadwick’s design process has not changed in the 44 years he has been designing—his curiosity. He continues to question how designers and manufacturers use sustainable materials to improve how people live and work through design.

Chadwick and his wife spend a lot of time visiting art galleries or scouting new restaurants in Los Angeles, as well as abroad. An avid documentarian, he rarely travels without his camera. His current favorite camera is a Sony RX100M3. He says of his photography, “I tend to look at everything. If there’s any particular visual interest, I don’t mind capturing it. It doesn’t have to be beautiful, either.”

Recently, Chadwick revisited his and Stumpf’s most successful design: the Aeron chair. The designer and Herman Miller worked together for nearly two years to update every element of the chair for today’s workers. Under Chadwick’s leadership, today’s Aeron was redesigned to improve health, recalibrated for better performance, reconsidered for a better fit, and refined for modern environments.

Since childhood, Chadwick has found inspiration in the great outdoors. He still hikes the mountains of West Los Angeles with Stanley, his Greater Swiss Mountain Dog, seeking inspiration to influence his next design—no matter how innovative it may become. “I still feel the excitement,” Chadwick says. “And the curiosity. That’s what matters. If you’re not always looking at things and looking at them differently, with a general curiosity—you’re no longer a designer.”

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