Designtex and Steelcase Collaborate on Pattern of Pride

Members of the Steelcase Pride team and its allies partnered with Designtex and the Steelcase surface materials and industrial design teams to create a one-of-its-kind fabric called Addition Plus that features colorful addition signs that can be applied to most high-performance chairs.

Designed to include all of the colors, identities and orientations represented in the expanded Progress Pride flag, Addition Plus is symbolically significant in a number of ways. Working closely with Pride team members, Steelcase industrial designer Jenna VanFleteren utilized Designtex Digital Studio to select a pattern and then worked with Designtex’s Custom Digital Printing team to further customize the pattern over the course of dozens of iterations in applying Pantone Progress Pride colors to the design. Aside from the addition sign being intrinsically inclusive, the pattern never appears the same on any two chairs – capturing the individualism of the LGBTQ+ community. Moreover, the variation in color and size of the addition icons creates the visual appearance of a waving flag – a playful perk of the design’s distinctiveness.