FAST FOOD SEATINGS: Bringing Design For The Masses.

Fast food restaurants, such as McDonald’s, have been manipulating their interior space according to the company’s marketing strategy. Once ignored comfort over effectiveness, the sitting area has been slowly changing from repelling to designed seats. By using iconic chairs, such as of Arne Jacobsen’s Egg chair, McDonald’s is not only trying to upgrade its image to a modern and inviting restaurant, but making design accessible to people. The idea that a functional object should be simple, honest to its purpose, easily manufactured, and accessible to the masses has been a guidebook for what a modern design should be for many years. However, meeting this definition does not answer if a design is successfully functional or not. Through Arne Jacobsen's chair , McDonald’s made the design accessible to anyone, something that many functional products fail to be, but the use of the chair for the company’s marketing strategy caused controversy in the design world. At the same time, the previous McDonald’s chairs are examples of simple, machine made, mass produced, and fit to its seating purpose. However, they are not taken serious when it comes to design. There is a fine line between functional design and accessibility. While functional design can mean being timeless and modern with its value in society, breaking its value raises contradictions in its own definition.

First McDonald’s chairs, the rigid seats were intended to be uncomfortable for customers stay for a long period. They were planned in that way so the restaurant would have more vacant seats as possible for new customers. This idea exemplifies John Ruskin’s criticism about the lack of beauty because society is driven by the idea that a product should be simple, easily mass produced only to fulfill its purpose, making profit. Ruskin’s points out that there will be only design or appreciation of it when people become daily surrounded by beauty


The chair and table design is an example of mass produced, machine made design. There is not a intention to look handcrafted, not even esthetically thought, but to work efficiently. The final form is not to answer the consumer’s need, but to perform upon them.


The introduction of chairs with human factors in mind becomes a transition from sitting for a need to sitting for a choice. Functionalism become a style in which objects should be simple, well adapted to its purpose, standardized, and expressive. The form of the chair suggests a more relaxing and warming feeling and it is all part of the McDonald’s “Forever Young” campaign. It is the company attempt to reach the growing consumer’s looking for modern establishment.


Arne Jacobsen’s Egg chair influenced by the Bauhaus movement. The Bauhaus design is about merging craftsmanship and mass production. Using machines allows the product to be mass produced and reach wide consumers without class distinction.


By using one of the Jacobsen’s most iconic chairs, McDonald’s marketing strategy is to upgrade its image to a trendy and inviting restaurant. Jacobsen’s chair optimizes the comfortable, welcoming feeling with a modern spin. While the company uses the chair to meet the marketing agenda, by bringing design for the masses, it also raises one point of functionalism that many modern design do not address.