fold_it
sofa

The brief

I wanted to work beyond chairs and tables, so I went looking through the Slovak upholstery industry — and found the same thing everywhere: capable producers with no products of their own, no marketing, no sales. Kroslák was open to changing that. Samuel Kroslák was taking over the business his father had led for twenty-five years, and he knew the company had to move past contract manufacturing. He did not yet know how.

Identity before product

The instinct was to copy what worked at TON — me as art director, building an own-brand collection. But Kroslák was not TON, and pretending otherwise would have failed. Too many pieces were missing to launch a portfolio cold. So the first job was not a sofa. It was grounding what the company actually was: a production house with real craft expertise.

I built that identity in two high-quality print brochures — concept, photography direction, graphics, prepress, print all directed end to end. One told the story of a sofa from disassembled components through to logistics. The other, for the metal workshop, used a guide: a faux-metal beetle leading the reader through the non-linear processes — designed by Studio Guardabosques and fabricated by Kroslák in sheet metal for the purpose.

FOLD_IT — one gesture

With the identity grounded, the collection followed under the Arteston design line. FOLD_IT resolves a contradiction every sofa carries: formal and composed for the room, or genuinely comfortable for the body. One flip of the backrest switches between them — low and architectural, or raised to full head support. The 85cm seat depth makes it a daybed with no mechanism at all. Nothing hidden, nothing motorised. One hinge, two states, controlled with one hand.

JOIN_IT — the companion

JOIN_IT, developed in the same engagement, solves the formal/informal switch differently: free backrest pillows in place for a composed room, removed to open the full seat depth for lounging. Its signature is construction, not mechanism — a generous upholstered armrest resolved with a single gathered seam where a conventional one needs two. The gathering holds the form and becomes the detail. FOLD_IT and JOIN_IT are both in production through Kroslák Home, the umbrella the company built for its own products.

FORM_IT — the exception

Every collection needs its exception. FOLD_IT and JOIN_IT ask the same domestic question — formal for the room, informal for the body — and both hand the answer to the user. FORM_IT withholds it. This one was drawn for contract: the hotel, the lobby, the semi-public room where a sofa is specified once and never adjusted again. So I inverted the brief — no moving parts, no adjustment, one fixed gesture carrying ergonomics open enough for almost any body.

The gesture is the fabric. Almost paper-thin wool hangs free from the armrest and finds its curve under its own weight — soft and organic against the faceted shell beneath, the whole form lifted on a thin wire base. Nothing folds, nothing hides; the shape alone does the work. A search for beauty in form — and the piece that opened Arteston's door to the contract market.

What it cost and what it taught

The lesson was humility. A designer — even the art director — is not almighty; what you bring is a fresh pair of eyes and sharper questions, and they only land once you can speak past beauty. I learned to talk money, budgets, and the hard limits of what the factory could and could not do — and to work with the people who owned the other half of the problem, the strategist Michal Pastier and his team, and Mikina Dimunová, to raise a brand vision larger than any single sofa. I overpromised at the start, then adjusted as the situation taught me what was actually possible.

Arteston was the ambition — a real own-brand, sold under the company's own name. Reality led elsewhere, and that brand never fully reached the market as we meant it to. But the company did not stand still: Kroslák came out of it design-literate, developing projects beyond upholstery and standing as a manufacturing partner with something of its own to add. Turning a manufacturer into a brand is bigger than any one art-direction project — and that is the work these services exist to carry, the strategy that engagement set in motion.