Illustrated sofa by Alja Horv
CUSTOM ILLUSTRATED SOFA
A while ago, Noah Living reached out and asked if I’d like to customize
one of their sofas with my own fabric design for my own home.
Designing something for furniture feels very different than designing for paper or a screen. You live with it every day. Personally for me, and for this particular sofa that will live in my home, I didn’t want the illustration to be too empty, but it also couldn’t be too busy.
At first, the plan was only to wrap the back panels with my custom fabric. That actually helped a lot, as I came up with the illustration idea. Each panel would represent the different part of the day/and also life:
Morning - day - night
Childhood - adulthood -elderhood
Sketch for the illustration
I included things from my childhood, small memories - stuff that shaped me as a kid who loved drawing. I remember a specific moment from primary school - we had to draw an animal for a class, and I chose a horse, and I was so proud of how the drawing turned out, and the teacher was amazed. And it’s such a tiny moment, but I still remember it so vividly all those years later.
So adding a horse to the illustration felt kind of like a little nod to that younger version of me.
When I started applying the illustration to the sofa, I was curios how it’d look if I covered the whole sofa with it - and I fell in love!
Final illustration
On my instagram profile you can see a behind the scenes + process video for this particular illustration.
If you’d like to work with me, send an email to hello@aljahorvat.com