This is the seventh profile in our series on American design entrepreneurs, looking at how they got where they are, what they do all day, and what advice they have for other designers running their own businesses. Read last week’s profile here.
In 2007, Dwell magazine described the Brooklyn-based designer Jason Miller as witty, youthful and enjoying a “meteoric rise” in the U.S. design scene. Today, Miller, 41, laughs at the notion of sudden success. “I’ve been doing this for many years,” he says, “so it doesn’t feel meteoric.”
Still, Miller did cause a splash when he opened Jason Miller Studio in 2001 and released lighting designs like his Antlers series, which captured the animal-head-as-decor trend with a chandelier composed of glazed ceramic replicas of deer antlers.
In 2010, Miller spun off a new company, Roll & Hill, to manufacture high-end contemporary lights by a variety of designers. “We sell relatively expensive things, we make them on demand, and we make them to the customer’s specifications,” Miller explains. “While we are a manufacturing company, we are not a mass producer; we still make everything to order.”
Above and below: Miller’s office in his Brooklyn studio
Miller now helms his studio and serves as the creative director and CEO of Roll & Hill. He has 20 employees between the two businesses and is having to deal with fast expansion. This, ahem, meteoric rise in company growth means that staff needs have outpaced the infrastructure of business management. “When you have two or three people working with you, it’s easy to stop in the hall and ask questions and have an impromptu meeting,” Miller says. “But now that I have 20 employees, it’s easy to get lost in that world. It’s easy to be in meetings all day. My door, unfortunately, is glass, so people peer in thinking that any minute I’ll be free.”
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