Express Yourself With Roeland Otten's ABChairs

It just so happens that Roeland Otten is a graphic and media designer by trade, but his new ABChairs might just take his career on a new path.  These sharp new san serif alphabet chairs looked like they're ready for icon-dom, literally, if not figuratively.  The best news is that Otten wants to produce the ABChairs for the mass market!

ABChairs in 'san serif' typeface by Roeland Otten: photography by Bas Helbers

Otten started working on the concept of ABChairs 10 years ago, while a student at Design Academy Eindhoven, as 'communicative furniture' for use in a public space.

"As a graphic designer it was a challenge to design these series of chairs that also had to form a consistent font (typeset)," Otten told Design.nl.  "The forms of the characters arose from totally different rules where capital and cabinet are by each other depending what is best to sit on. I used sans serif, unless necessary (and then the radius of the serif corresponds to the curves of rounded letters) and as there were still quite some serifs needed, I decided to change the thickness of the lines significantly: 15 cm for vertical lines, 5cm for horizontal lines and 5 centimeters for the thickness of the material when used as the back of a chair."  The seat heights are either 18 inches or 31.5 inches high; the taller ones might even make very cool counter stools!

 The A Chair from Roeland Otten's ABChairs: photography by Bas Helbers

R Chair from Roeland Otten's ABChairs: photography by Bas Helbers

T Chair from Roeland Otten's ABChairs: photography by Bas Helbers

The ABChairs are prototyped in lacquered MDF (medium-density fiberboard), but Otten wants to mass produce the chairs on rotational molds in plastic, so that they are more accessible to the public.  In the meantime, all 26 prototypes will show at the 100 x Summer Design (June 6, 2010), at the Gallery MajkeHüsstege in Den Bosch (June 20 - September, 2010) and at Dutch Design Week (October 17 - 25, 2010) in Eindhoven.

Oh, and Rotten is working on ABChairs for kids too!

Sources: Dezeen, Design.nl, Roeland Otten (images via Dezeen)