Amelia Pegorin: the challenge for art directors? Being storytellers

I took my first steps as art director at  Saba with a precise mantra in mind: design objects – sofas, in this case – have to have a playful element – allowing people to interact with them, making it easy for them to change their look and, with that, the geography of the spaces.  

I’ve always looked at sofas as products, with a question firmly in mind: can this object be useful and can it make people happier? The core part of  working on projects is always to free them from the structural constraints that render the products unmovable,  deconstructing the parts by adopting simple solutions, without mechanisms. I believed right from the beginning that this would help consumers free up their creative imaginations.  

I would now refine this mantra by summing it up in two words: “design should excite” and if I have to define a method, it would be based on two assumptions: the evocative power of form and colour and the flexibility of the product. 

Being an art director is a fascinating, yet complex job – you have to protect the founding values of the company in order to preserve its identity, while being an innovator, focusing on the rapid evolutions of this fragile and interconnected time.  

Companies expect their identities to be understood in an authentic way, so the design process is shaped by ethics and skill, because it is through transparency that trust is gained. The narrative has to be credible and authentic so that the target market can renew its trust every time. 

The challenge of today is being a storyteller because, from Homer to the present day, the best way of communicating who we are is by telling a story in which there are two key chapters: knowing how to tell who we are and what we are about (in the sense of knowing how to set out our added values).  

Looking beyond comes naturally to me, perhaps because I am a woman and work with a team of special women in the company, together we are defining what may be the most important challenge in the short or medium term: contextualising our products in exhibition displays that will trigger special experiences. 

I’ve always had a positive attitude to work, it kept me going even when things were tough and helped me believe in my dreams. I have always been a dreamer, and still am, and I’ve always believed in the magic of life and in its apparent fortuities.  

That’s led to significant encounters: with Antonio Marras, with Cristina Celestino and now with the Quincoces-Drago studio, which will design the project for our stand at the Salone along with Paolo Volpato. 

In June, as well as Cristina Celestino’s amazing Gala sofa and the Teatro Magico sofa designed by the 967 studio, there will also be a desk, an indoor/outdoor accessory and a bed by the designer  Alain Gilles.