John Massey (1931–2019), a Chicago-based graphic designer and serigrapher, significantly influenced modernist design, blending Bauhaus and Swiss International Style principles. Massey was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1931.

After graduating from high school, Massey studied at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts and and received a BFA from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1954. His early exposure to the young, Basel-based Armin Hofmann and Zurich-based Josef Miiller-Brockmann, whom he met as a student intern at the International Design Conference in Aspen in 1953, deeply influenced his minimalist modern designs and approach to geometry, abstraction, scale, asymmetry, texture, white space, and the restrained use of modern, sans serif typography.

After graduating from the University of Illinois, Massey founded his own design firm in Chicago. Two years later, in 1956, he accepted a job at the University of Illinois Press, where he worked under the direction of Ralph Eckerstrom, co-founder of Unimark International. Eckerstrom became director of design at Container Corporation of America, and he invited Massey to join him there in 1957. Container Corporation of America purchased Massey’s practice and created a separate division, Center for Advanced Research in Design. After Eckerstrom’s departure from Container Corporation of America in 1964, Massey assumed the position of director of design, advertising, and public relations at Container Corporation of America. He helped guide decision making related to the impact of design on advertising, policy, marketing, management, and communications.

While at Container Corporation of America, Massey began doing work for Herman Miller, an American company that produces office furniture, equipment, and home furnishings that was founded in 1905, as Star Furniture Co. In 1968, Massey updated Herman Miller’s iconic “M” logo, originally designed by Irving Harper in 1946, pairing the bold, French-curved “M” with an all-lowercase Helvetica word-mark, replacing the earlier serif typography. This modernist refinement aligned with Swiss Style aesthetics  for Herman Miller lasted nearly four decades. Massey’s work, including posters for Herman Miller’s Eames Soft Pad Group, reinforced the company’s visual identity. His philosophy, “Be classical or extraordinary,” shaped his impactful designs, influencing later Herman Miller re-brands in 1998 and 2024, which echoed his modernist approach.

Massey’s commissions included an iconic cultural program for the city of Chicago, beginning in 1967, for which Massey designed bold abstract and geometric graphics in primary colors for banners and posters. He had been impressed by the public graphics he spotted in Zurich (and other cities), and he conceived the idea of a “planned civic graphics program” for Chicago. The program would be “a graphic expression of the city as a place of cultural and human enrichment.”

Massey also did work for Inland Steel, the Atlantic Richfield Company, and Herman Miller Furniture. He made a significant contribution with his 1974 graphic system for the U.S. Department of Labor. This work included a recognizable logo mark, visual identity, and the Graphic Communication Standards Manual. His work for the U.S. Department of Labor was part of Richard Nixon’s Federal Design Improvement Program, directed and coordinated by the National Endowment for the Arts. Massey made bureaucratic life a little bit better by providing the Labor Department with a high-quality graphic scheme that set the standard for future publication designs.

In 1983, Massey left Container Corporation of America and again started a practice under his own name, doing extensive work especially for Herman Miller. He taught at UIC (1984–2000) and received an AIGA Medal in 1994.

In Print magazine, Massey stated, “Graphic design is in a position to influence industry in greater depth than ever before … . It is necessary that people concerned with design do not concern themselves solely with the organization, placement of elements and color within the confines of two dimensions …. Increasing the designer’s responsibilities is the only way that he can be in a position to evaluate the purposes and objectives of everything he works on. This kind of approach, I believe will help reduce the superficial and trite solutions that are often superimposed unthinkingly in many printed messages and will contribute to a greater efficiency in communication between product and consumer.”

Equally inspired by the masters of modern art, Massey produced work that combined mathematics and play. It was both practical and artful. “Massey thinks as artist and designer simultaneously,” wrote Victor Margolin, the founding editor and co-editor of the academic design journal, Design Issues.