This paper presents a new approach for gesture classification using x-and y-projections of the image and optional depth features. The system uses a 3-D time-of-flight (TOF) sensor which has the big advantage of simplifying hand segmentation. For the presented system, a Photonic-Mixer-Device (PMD) camera with a resolution of 160 × 120 pixels and a frame rate of 15 frames per second is used. The goal of our system is to recognise 12 different static hand gestures. The x-and y-projections and the depth features of the captured image are good enough to use a simple nearest neighbour classifier, resulting in a fast classification. To evaluate the system, a set of 408 images is recorded, 12 gestures from 34 persons. With a 'Leave-One-Out' evaluation, the recognition rate of the system is 94.61 %, and classification time is about 30 ms on a standard PC.