HÅG Credo 2000
Design: 1982
Licensee: HÅG
HÅG Credo 2000: 1982-1992
HÅG Credo 3000: 1992-2003 (Renamed to H04, 2004)
H05: 2000-2017
Creed: 2017 -
HÅG Credo was the first office chair that tilted freely
The chair for every position
HÅG Credo was launched in 1982 with the motto “The chair for every position”. The double meaning referred both to the many positions of the body and to positions within the office hierarchy – at a time when office chairs were strongly associated with both task and status.
At the heart of Credo was the balanced tilt. Peter Opsvik joined the seat and backrest to form what he described as the body of the chair. The chair body could tilt freely forwards and backwards around a centrally positioned axis, with the sitter balanced above it. The feet could then be used to control the movement of the chair. For Peter, balance meant control.
Credo also introduced an innovation that was much easier to demonstrate: the sliding seat pan. It allowed the seat depth to be adjusted while the user remained seated, making it easy to adapt the chair to different body sizes. Peter had first introduced a sliding seat pan in his 2010 chair for HÅG in 1975, but that chair had gained little attention. With Credo, the solution was new to most users – and easy to see, demonstrate and understand.
The balanced tilt was different. Its value was not primarily something to look at or adjust. It had to be experienced. The chair body remained responsive to the body’s changing balance, ready to tilt forwards or backwards as the sitter changed position. What made Credo different was therefore not simply that it could tilt. It was how it tilted, who controlled the tilt, and what that made possible.